Chimpanzees usually dine on plants in the wild, as well as termites if they can get them. They are also known to eat vertebrate flesh—one group is known to hunt other primates with spears, and some are even known to engage in cannibalism.
Meat & Eggs
One of the earliest and most significant discoveries made by Jane Goodall was that chimpanzees hunt for and eat meat. Prior to this, chimpanzees were believed to be vegetarians. However, meat and other animal products can account for 6% of a chimpanzee's diet.
Most primates eat meat rarely, if at all, but meat sometimes provides substantial immediate energy and protein gains. The main importance of meat is probably as a source of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients. Chimpanzees eat more meat than all other nonhuman primates, but much less than African hunter-gatherers.
Unlike lions and other obligate carnivores, primates can live healthy, happy lives on a plant-based diet of leaves, fruits and nuts (and some do). Individual chimpanzees can go months, or even years, without eating meat.
Three percent of the average chimp diet comes from meat. On average, nine days a year are meat days for chimps. But because chimps don't share perfectly, most chimps probably gets less than this. Bonobos appear to eat even less meat than chimps.
Gorillas stick to a mainly vegetarian diet, feeding on stems, bamboo shoots and fruits. Western lowland gorillas, however, also have an appetite for termites and ants, and break open termite nests to eat the larvae.
Chimpanzees can 'cook' and prefer cooked food – study.
By starting to eat calorie-dense meat and marrow instead of the low-quality plant diet of apes, our direct ancestor, Homo erectus, took in enough extra energy at each meal to help fuel a bigger brain. Digesting a higher quality diet and less bulky plant fiber would have allowed these humans to have much smaller guts.
Humans and chimps have DNA that is 95 percent similar, and 99 percent of our DNA coding sequences are the same as well. However, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in our DNA, while chimps only have 22. The difference makes bearing healthy young difficult, and the offspring would be infertile.
Some carnivores, called obligate carnivores, depend only on meat for survival. Their bodies cannot digest plants properly. Plants do not provide enough nutrients for obligate carnivores. All cats, from small house cats to huge tigers, are obligate carnivores.
Although providing live prey is not desirable in zoos and aquariums, a wide range of food items can be provided to chimpanzees as long as the nutritional composition of the total diet is known. Encouraging species-appropriate foraging has been a recognized aim of most enrichment programs.
Researchers have observed several cases of meat-eating in wild Sumatran orangutans, although not in Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmeus: Russon et al. 2009). However, meat-eating is rare at the Sumatran orangutan sites where this behavior has been observed despite numerous observation hours (van Schaik et al. 2003).
Chimpanzees have been found to more often partake in reactive aggression, though proactive aggression does occur in some groups, particularly in cases of intergroup aggression and warfare.
However, a 2015 study by the Mammal Review shows hippos “occasionally” feed on animal carcasses, a more omnivorous behavior. Hippos are known to attack and eat animals like wildebeests, zebras and kudus, as well as other hippos in cases of cannibalism, according to AZ Animals. They also steal meat from other predators.
The taste can vary widely depending on the diet of the animal but typically has a slightly gamy flavor not unlike wild deer (though deer has a texture closer to beef, which a monkey does not).
Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject, but it's safe to say that human DNA has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible.
There have been no scientifically verified specimens of a human–chimpanzee hybrid, but there have been substantiated reports of unsuccessful attempts to create one in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and various unsubstantiated reports on similar attempts during the second half of the 20th century.
Answer and Explanation: No, gorillas and chimpanzees cannot mate. The two species are evolutionarily too distant and their DNA is too dissimilar for a gorilla and a chimpanzee to produce offspring.
Not only can humans obtain all the necessary protein and nutrients from a no meat diet, but there are a plethora of health benefits associated with offsetting meat intake with plant-based foods.
The diet of the earliest hominins was probably somewhat similar to the diet of modern chimpanzees: omnivorous, including large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat (e.g., Andrews & Martin 1991; Milton 1999; Watts 2008).
In Leviticus 11, the Lord speaks to Moses and Aaron and sets out which animals can be eaten and which cannot: “You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. There are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, but you must not eat them.
At a 1.95-million-year-old site in Koobi Fora, Kenya, they found evidence that early humans were butchering turtles, crocodiles, and fish, along with land-dwelling animals.
A new study credits the advent of simple stone tools to slice meat and pound root vegetables, which could have dramatically reduced the time and force needed to chew, thus allowing our more immediate ancestors to evolve the physical features required for speech.
Back To Our Roots
Fruits, green leafy parts of plants, shoots, seeds, nuts, roots and tubers are the fundamental components of the primate eating pattern – and common sense tells us that these foods should be the foods that humans eat, too.