Takuya Matsumoto, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University (at the time of research), found that chimpanzee children eat highly nutritious foods when they are with their mothers, while they are easily available in the environment when they are not together. He presented the possibility of acquiring and consuming food by himself.
Since human offspring are fed by adults such as mothers even after weaning, it has been said that human offspring are dependent even after weaning in the discussions on the evolutionary process of humankind. rice field.However, no clear conclusions have been reached as to how important the child's own food acquisition was in the evolutionary process of humankind.
Therefore, in this study, in order to examine the importance of food acquisition in offspring, we conducted a detailed record analysis of feeding behavior in chimpanzee offspring, which are most genetically related to humans.When comparing how the child eats and how the food is different between the scene of eating with the mother and the scene of eating at different timings, the chimpanzee child has high nutritional value such as fruits when eating with the mother. While eating foods that are only available in limited places in the environment, at different times than mothers, foods that are common in the environment, such as the stems of terrestrial herbs, and can be eaten all year round, including foods that adults do not eat. It became clear that they were eating at a high rate.
The results of this study suggest that early human children may have had the aspect of being active predators, rather than being passive enough to be fed by adults.
Paper information:[Journal of Human Evolution] Opportunistic feeding strategy in wild immature chimpanzees: Implications for children as activeforagers in human evolution
