Juicy fruits just too tempting for chimpanzees

Study reveals chimpanzees have a taste for crops

April 2012. New research reveals that like humans, wild chimpanzees - our closest living relatives - are unable to resist the temptation of succulent fruits such as mango and papaya grown by their human neighbours. These findings are perhaps unsurprising as chimps in zoos are notoriously partial to fruits like bananas, and are considered specialist fruit-feeders in the wild.

Chimps eat 36 different crops
However, Great Ape researchers Dr Kimberley Hockings and Dr Matthew McLennan from Oxford Brookes University found that wild chimpanzees in fact eat a surprising diversity of agricultural crops - 36 different crop species. By examining records of crop feeding by chimpanzees across Africa they were able to identify those crops that chimps routinely target as well as those that they ignore.

Fruit preferred, but many others taken
While crop selection by the apes reflects a species-typical preference for fruits, chimpanzees also feed on the leaves, stems, and underground tubers of many other crops, raiding both local people's staple food crops and commercial cash crops.

Dr Hockings said that "Globalisation means that new foods, especially cash crops, are being introduced into areas where they were previously absent. This provides chimps with opportunities to access new high-energy food sources. Interestingly, chimpanzees seem to ignore some crops altogether, often those that are too spicy or contain toxic compounds."

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/chimpanzee-fruit.html