Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit
The sharing of wild plant foods is infrequent in chimpanzees, but in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a ‘social tool’ for nurturing alliances and social bonds. Here we report the only recorded example of regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated, non-provis...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2007
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964537/ |
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pubmed-1964537 |
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oai_dc |
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pubmed-19645372007-09-12 Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit Hockings, Kimberley J. Humle, Tatyana Anderson, James R. Biro, Dora Sousa, Claudia Ohashi, Gaku Matsuzawa, Tetsuro Research Article The sharing of wild plant foods is infrequent in chimpanzees, but in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a ‘social tool’ for nurturing alliances and social bonds. Here we report the only recorded example of regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated, non-provisioned wild chimpanzees, and the contexts in which these sharing behaviours occur. From direct observations, adult chimpanzees at Bossou (Republic of Guinea, West Africa) very rarely transferred wild plant foods. In contrast, they shared cultivated plant foods much more frequently (58 out of 59 food sharing events). Sharing primarily consists of adult males allowing reproductively cycling females to take food that they possess. We propose that hypotheses focussing on ‘food-for-sex and -grooming’ and ‘showing-off’ strategies plausibly account for observed sharing behaviours. A changing human-dominated landscape presents chimpanzees with fresh challenges, and our observations suggest that crop-raiding provides adult male chimpanzees at Bossou with highly desirable food commodities that may be traded for other currencies. Public Library of Science 2007-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC1964537/ /pubmed/17849015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000886 Text en Hockings et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Hockings, Kimberley J. Humle, Tatyana Anderson, James R. Biro, Dora Sousa, Claudia Ohashi, Gaku Matsuzawa, Tetsuro |
| spellingShingle |
Hockings, Kimberley J. Humle, Tatyana Anderson, James R. Biro, Dora Sousa, Claudia Ohashi, Gaku Matsuzawa, Tetsuro Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| author_facet |
Hockings, Kimberley J. Humle, Tatyana Anderson, James R. Biro, Dora Sousa, Claudia Ohashi, Gaku Matsuzawa, Tetsuro |
| author_sort |
Hockings, Kimberley J. |
| title |
Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| title_short |
Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| title_full |
Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| title_fullStr |
Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit |
| title_sort |
chimpanzees share forbidden fruit |
| description |
The sharing of wild plant foods is infrequent in chimpanzees, but in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a ‘social tool’ for nurturing alliances and social bonds. Here we report the only recorded example of regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated, non-provisioned wild chimpanzees, and the contexts in which these sharing behaviours occur. From direct observations, adult chimpanzees at Bossou (Republic of Guinea, West Africa) very rarely transferred wild plant foods. In contrast, they shared cultivated plant foods much more frequently (58 out of 59 food sharing events). Sharing primarily consists of adult males allowing reproductively cycling females to take food that they possess. We propose that hypotheses focussing on ‘food-for-sex and -grooming’ and ‘showing-off’ strategies plausibly account for observed sharing behaviours. A changing human-dominated landscape presents chimpanzees with fresh challenges, and our observations suggest that crop-raiding provides adult male chimpanzees at Bossou with highly desirable food commodities that may be traded for other currencies. |
| publisher |
Public Library of Science |
| publishDate |
2007 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964537/ |
| _version_ |
1611399433333768192 |