What do primates eat. Types of monkeys with names, characteristics of each breed. Rations and feeding techniques for monkeys

Swiss photographer Carl Ammann found his subject in 1988 while traveling along the Zaire River in West Africa (subsequently, materials from his trip served as the basis for Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness). There, in one of the rural markets, he counted two thousand smoked primate carcasses and about a thousand fresh ones. Monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas... To Amman, it looked like an open-air morgue.

Since then, for most of his life, he has been engaged in the study of the issue of consumption. wild animal meat in Africa, where gorillas in particular are threatened with extinction (experts estimate that 800 individuals are killed each year); and in Indonesia, where orangutans are on the long list of endangered species. Amman is a fanatic of his work. According to him, many tribes, like the Fangams in Gabon, practiced cannibalism a few years ago, and this practice was eradicated only thanks to the efforts of missionaries and colonial authorities. He also notes that the genetic code of chimpanzees is 98.6% identical to that of humans, and asks a reasonable question: is hunting these animals 98.6% murder, and eating their meat 98.6% cannibalism? ?

Not everyone is so emotional, but the concerns of conservationists are indeed not unfounded. It is also true, however, that for people living in many areas of Central and South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, monkeys and other inhabitants of the bush and jungle were the main source of protein for tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of years. Even today in the western and central regions of Africa, the so-called bush meat accounts for more than half of the animal protein in the diet of millions of people, and in some places such meat is the only source of it. (Raising livestock in the tropics is often impossible due to lack of pasture, the presence of deadly tsetse flies, and a variety of epizootics.) The World Wide Fund for Nature quotes the following data:

The meat of wild animals provides 50% of the protein consumed in certain areas of Equatorial Africa, and 75% in Liberia;

Half a million inhabitants of the Brazilian state of Amazonas annually consume up to three million individuals of wild mammals (plus half a million birds and several hundred thousand reptiles);

Of the 214 species found in West Bengal, 155 are used by the local population as sources of food, fuel, fibre, livestock feed, medicines or for religious rituals.

Amman asks the logical question: how long will this continue? The American Biosynergetic Institute, a conservation organization dedicated to solving the problems associated with the consumption of bushmeat and one of Amman's allies, raises the issue no less sharply and claims that in 1998, in the forested areas of West and Central Africa, an army of 1,500 beggar hunters has killed more than 2,000 gorillas and 4,000 chimpanzees, and annually puts under the knife more great apes than are kept in all the zoos and science centers in North America.

Centuries-old gastronomic traditions alone are responsible for what CNN has described as "Africa's biggest conservation problem since the ivory hunters." German, British, Japanese, French, and American-owned logging companies deep in the tropical rainforests brought workers there, driving up the demand for everything people needed. Previously, local hunters killed as many animals as they needed to feed their families. The balance of births and deaths of representatives of the local fauna remained positive, and nothing threatened them. Now the natives were camping near the lumber camp and hunting to sell them the meat of the jungle dwellers. Laying roads through the forests facilitated its transportation to nearby large cities - Dua Lu and Yaounde in Cameroon, Brazzaville and Puet Noire in the Congo, Kinshasa in Zaire - where trucks with dozens of animal carcasses tied to the sides became commonplace in the markets. Just as often, you can find smoked meat, parts of carcasses (arms, legs, etc.), pieces for steaks and goulash there.

There is no ban on such trade. “Meat from a wide range of jungle and bush creatures could be seen in all major markets, regardless of the hunting season,” Amman wrote in 1998 in one of his regular reports, which appeared both in a number of newsletters and on the Internet. - True, in some markets the meat of protected species was sold under the floor, but in others it was put up for sale quite openly. On our very first evening in Veso, the gateway to the famous Nouabal Ndoki National Park, we photographed a truck loaded with tons of wild meat, including silver-striped gorillas.”

Amman says that the trade in such meat “has become so commercialized that it has become an integral part of the local economy, a problem that is not only worthy of attention by conservationists. According to him, even the loggers had to reconsider their position. One of the leaders of a large French company admitted to a CNN correspondent that they began to be afraid of poachers, who now have automatic weapons in their arsenal. Some German firms, aware of the ugliness of their newfound image, in 1997 asked the transport companies serving them to ban drivers from transporting bushmeat. In response, the drivers went on strike, and the loggers and the owners of the car park were forced to give way.

Amman visited various outlets to compare the prices of wild and domestic meats, in particular pork and beef. Here is what he writes: “We went to the bush meat market in Yaounde and bought two gorilla hands. Then they bought an equivalent amount of beef. They then purchased a frozen chimpanzee head and, for comparison, a much larger pig head. All this was brought to the hotel and they put up price tags to show that beef and pork are more than half the price of gorilla and chimpanzee meat.”

People living outside of Africa and other underdeveloped regions of the planet, especially those living in Europe and the United

states, eating primate meat perceived as something shocking, absolutely unacceptable.

"It's no surprise that many of us primate researchers and conservationists feel uncomfortable when they find primate dishes on restaurant menus," Anthony Rose of the Biosynergy Institute wrote in 1998 in Pan-Africa News. - Perhaps this discomfort is self-centered, that is, caused by purely subjective reasons, being due to our own gastronomic taboos, or the fear that the animals of our field laboratories may be destroyed before the research is completed. Perhaps it is anthropocentric: we just don't want to eat something that looks so much like ourselves. Or maybe it is explained by biocentric concern for individuals and species that occupy the first links in the food chain or vividly show emotions that can suffer.

Whatever the reason, an alliance of more than thirty international organizations has formed to change the diet that has existed for millennia, not only in Africa, but also in Latin America, as well as in South and Southeast Asia. These organizations are sounding the alarm about how hunting methods have changed. Not so long ago, animals were hunted with bows and arrows, with spears and nets for the sole purpose of providing food for their own family, and from time to time the surplus that appeared was sold in the local market or divided among the villagers free of charge. Today, automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns are used, and the prey is taken out of the forest in the same vehicles in which the hunters arrive there. Now even some local river boats are equipped with freezers.

In this way, bushmeat reaches the markets faster and more economically, and the markets themselves are steadily expanding. In 1997, as a result of a study in the small Congolese town of Veso (11 thousand inhabitants), it was found that more than six tons of "hunting trophies" are sold in its market every week, including the meat of eight species of monkeys, including gorillas. Such trade was banned in Cameroon, but despite this, in 2002, up to 90 tons of "bush meat" were delivered to the four specialized markets of Yaoundé every month.

The market is not limited to Africa. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, in 1998 gorilla and chimpanzee meat could be found in restaurants as far from Africa as Paris and London, where it was offered cured, smoked, in the form of steaks, as well as fatty and nutritious stews. Monkey meat is a popular food item in rural areas of Southern China and Southeast Asia.

As alarming as it may sound, many jungle animals (if not most), whose meat dishes are included in the menu of restaurants of exotic cuisine and in the diet of residents of tropical countries, do not appear on any lists of endangered species. But many primates - gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, one species of baboons and more than a dozen other species of monkeys, on the contrary, appear on such lists, and therefore their meat should not be eaten, no matter how significant the local population is. The consumption of meat from other bush and jungle animals can, in principle, be considered acceptable if their abundance does not raise doubts about the conservation of the species.

Three African countries - Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa - export bushmeat to Europe, and a number of local private ranches invite tourists on traditional safaris that reproduce the atmosphere of Ernest Hemingway's hunting expeditions. A hunter who is able to pay the appropriate amount can add to his list of trophies eland, impala, kudu, duiker, springbok, bush pig, zebra and hartebeest.

It's not hard to imagine what Hemingway would have said about the many "jungle restaurants" operating today in major cities around the world. Among them, in particular, two in Africa, both under the sign "Carnivore" ("Carnivores"): one in Kenya, beloved by the writer, the other in South Africa. The first was opened in 1980 in the suburbs of Nairobi and quickly became a popular tourist attraction. The restaurant offers two types of wild animal meat daily - subject to availability. First, the carcass is roasted whole on a large fire, which is bred in a pit at the very entrance to the restaurant; then her traditional Maasai machete, the panga, is cut into pieces, which are laid out on hot metal plates. At the height of the winter season, the restaurant serves more than 10,000 visitors a month, 70% of which are tourists. There you can try the crocodile grown on a special farm near the coast, as well as the meat of zebra, eland, black buffalo, hartebeest, gazelle, giraffe, impala, camel, oryx, wildebeest and ostrich.

Restaurants of this type exist in various parts of the world. There are dozens of establishments in Australia that serve bush tucker, which is local slang for food that was previously perceived exclusively as Aboriginal food. Today, kangaroo fillets, ostrich and crocodile steaks are not just acceptable, but a welcome dish. Here and elsewhere, restaurants with "exotic cuisine" or "jungle cuisine" are reminiscent of Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe, in the sense that here entertainment is as important as the food itself. So, in Singapore's African Heartbeat, they serve ostrich potjiekos (stewed) with polenta and fresh vegetables, African King salad with dried venison and fried with papadums and green onions under Discovery channel documentaries. In Kenya's Carnivore, a 350-seat dining hall is adjoined by a 2,500-seat concert hall, as well as six bars, a playground, an internet cafe, a water park and attractions. Prices in such establishments are appropriate. Apparently, according to the owners, to make food, which was once associated only with the natives, attractive to others, you can only ask for an exorbitant price for it.

Meat of wild animals for the most part less juicy and tougher than the meat of livestock, and in addition, it has a stronger smell and taste. Since wild mammals and birds have to get their own food, their muscle tissue is more developed than that of domestic animals, which, in fact, explains the greater stiffness of the meat. Although the younger the animal, the more tender the meat - it is not for nothing that some people prefer not beef, but veal. As for the strong odor, in most cases it comes from fat, and therefore the problem can be largely solved by cutting it off the carcass.

To make the meat more tender, Carnivore chefs marinate it for 8 to 24 hours in a marinade of vegetable oil, water, soy sauce, lemon juice, tarragon, red wine, salt, white pepper and cardamom seeds, and during cooking, pour over the sauce for barbecue, which is made from honey, lime juice, vegetable oil, soy sauce and cornstarch.

Almost any meat of wild animals can be stewed, grilled, baked. It makes good Stroganoff meat. In South Africa, the curing of narrow-sliced ​​meat of the bush pig and some gazelles is still widely practiced - an old way of harvesting it for the future.

Under natural conditions, the main food of monkeys is vegetable, therefore, in the cage, it forms the basis of the diet. Only some species of semi-monkeys feed almost exclusively on arthropods, mainly insects and their larvae, but they also consume fruits, tree sap, honey and fresh shoots of trees or shrubs in a certain amount. In a cage, monkeys can eat almost anything that a person eats.

But even in this case, the main food should be predominantly of plant origin: rice milk porridge, white bread with milk; boiled potatoes with vegetable oil are also recommended, which all monkeys love very much. This table can also be varied in the widest possible way. Depending on the season, they can be given pieces of cabbage, beets, carrots, turnips, tomatoes, as well as boiled corn, peas, beans, etc. In winter, bulbs or green onion feathers are useful; all narrow-nosed monkeys willingly eat it.

Rations and feeding techniques for monkeys

Proper feeding is the first condition for keeping monkeys healthy and alert. They usually have a good appetite, eat a lot, stuff part of the food into their cheek pouches, but put much more into other places in reserve, where the food soon becomes unusable, they begin to emit a bad smell. Therefore, you need to feed the monkeys at least two or three times a day, give food strictly according to the norm, but at the same time make sure that they are not hungry.

The amount of food per day is best determined empirically, since monkeys and semi-monkeys, even with the same method of keeping and age, have a different appetite. On average, a balanced diet per 100 g of food should contain at least 300-350 kcal of metabolizable energy, while pregnant and lactating females receive rations with the highest content of metabolizable energy. The diets of macaques, monkeys, capuchins and marmosets should contain 22-26% crude protein, up to 5% crude fat in the presence of 0.5% linoleic acid, 2-4% crude fiber and 10% crude ash. The content of amino acids in the diets of monkeys should be at least 1.35-1.68% arginine, 1.2-1.68% lysine, 0.85-1.03% methionine and cystine, 0.22-0.28% tryptophan , 0.59-0.61% histidine, 1.78-2.5% leucine, 1.2-1.3% isoleucine, 2.04% phenylalanine and tyrosine, 0.94-0.98% threonine and 1.3-1.4% valine. In addition, in the diets of monkeys there is calcium - 1.0%, phosphorus - 0.75%, sodium - 0.5%, chlorine - 0.05-0.5%, potassium - 0.5-0.8%, magnesium-0.05-0.19%.

On the basis of these scientifically based feeding norms, a standard mixed feed was developed and successfully tested, having the following composition: cod fish meal - 13%, soybean meal - 36%, corn meal - 24%, wheat bran - 8%, sugar -10%, refined soybean oil - 4%, mineral mixture - 3%, vitamin mixture - 2%, granulated feed with a granule size of 4.5 to 15 mm - monkeys readily eat such feed. In the premises where they are kept, fresh water must always be in the drinkers. On average, monkeys drink up to 400 ml of water per head per day.

However, there are usually no mixed feeds for monkeys on sale, so the owners try to make them themselves or feed their pets with various feeds according to their own diets, one of which is presented in the table.
Potatoes are given boiled once or twice a week instead of cereals, butter or sugar. Monkeys of all groups kept in unheated premises, with the onset of cold weather and before the snow melts, additionally receive a diet with an increase in calorie content by 10%. In the period from January to May, vitamins are added to the diet of all monkeys.

Milk porridge (rice, millet) is boiled hard, and raisins or dry fruits are added to improve the taste. Mineral (eggshell powder) and vitamin feeds, as well as butter or vegetable oil and sugar, are included in cereals or mashed potatoes.

A cub left without a mother or taken away from a nursing female at the age of six months should receive daily fresh fruits, onions, carrots, fresh herbs. As can be seen from the table, keeping one monkey at home will not be burdensome for the family budget, since it is not necessary to buy special food for it - you can feed it with food from the family table. When keeping several animals, it will be necessary to increase the purchase of special feed.

For some species of semi-monkeys, the main food is various invertebrates, especially insects and their larvae, some of them (meal worms, house fly pupae, etc.) can be successfully bred at home.

Insects as food for primates

From insects, flour worms, May beetles and silkworm pupae can be prepared and fed to semi-monkeys, which are given both live and dried, adding powder from them to soft food (rice, millet porridge). Insects contain animal protein, which includes many essential amino acids not found in plant proteins.

May beetles can be harvested in significant quantities in late April - early May, when the beetles that have overwintered in the ground begin to fly. In the morning and afternoon, the beetles sit on the trees and can be easily collected on the sheets spread under the tree by shaking them off the branches. Then the collected beetles are dried in an oven or gas oven, crushed and stored in glass jars with a tightly closed lid.
In areas where the silkworm is bred to feed the semi-monkeys, its pupae can also be used, which are dried and fed to the semi-monkeys in the same way as the cockchafers. Dry pupae contain up to 57% complete protein and about 20% fat. Due to the large amount of fat, it is difficult to store them, as the pupae quickly deteriorate even when dried.

Mealworms are the larval form of the large mealworm, a black beetle with a slight brown tint. Larvae are yellowish-brown, cylindrical in shape, 25-30 mm long. This is a good food for semi-monkeys, but they are not always on sale, they are expensive, so it makes sense to breed mealworms at home.

The large flour beetle should not be confused with its "relative" - ​​the small flour beetle, which is smaller (the length of the beetle is up to 5.5 mm) and has a rounded oblong body of chocolate or dark brown color. Small beetle larvae are less suitable for feeding insectivorous semi-monkeys, so they should not be bred. In addition, a small beetle is very difficult to keep in a box, as it easily crawls out of it, gets into food, especially cereals, pasta or flour, and then it will be difficult to get rid of it.

What does an amateur need to do so that he always has flour worms? From smoothly planed boards, a box is made like a chest or a large box. For air access, a hole is cut in the lid, which is tightened with a fine metal mesh so that worms cannot crawl through it.

In such a box (size: 35 x 25 x 15 cm), pre-pasted with foil, lay in several layers of rags, sprinkling them with bran. Then flour worms or an adult flour beetle are placed in a box and placed in a warm place (temperature about 25 ° C). Meal worms soon turn into pupae, and then into beetles, which will lay eggs in the bran and larvae will hatch from them, i.e. flour worms. In the box periodically you need to put bran, fresh herbs, and when the bran turns into "flour", they are replaced with fresh ones. Instead of bran, you can use the remains of any unusable cereals, any grain, crackers, etc. Larger boxes will also come in handy, it all depends on the need for mealworms.

They are also willingly eaten by other monkeys (monkeys, macaques, etc.), but for them mealworms can serve as a delicacy, and not the main food.
The development cycle of beetles is quite long at room temperature, so to speed it up, the box with these insects must be placed in a warm, dark place. Small (6-8 mm long) worms at a temperature of 20-25 ° C appear after 7-8 weeks, and their development to the pupal stage continues for another 3-4 months. The entire development cycle of a flour beetle from an egg to an adult insect takes about 6-8 months. In order to provide the prosimians with worms, it is more convenient to have several boxes. Then you can take worms from the first one until pupae appear in it. For further reproduction, you need to select all the pupae from the first box and arrange them in 15-20 pieces in other pre-prepared boxes with bran. Each female large flour beetle lays 600-700 eggs per year.

After all the flour worms in the first box have been selected, in the second adjustable box, by this time, and then in the future, young meal worms will appear from the eggs laid by the females. With the appearance of pupae from the second and subsequent boxes, pupae are again selected to be placed in new boxes. This is how the conveyor for growing flour worms for feeding semi-monkeys will work.

To feed them, flour worms are selected from rags, where they crawl to pupate. For development, flour worms need small amounts of wet food: turnips, beets, cabbage, raw or boiled potatoes. To prevent bran from molding, you can make vegetable feeders from a tin can with holes in the bottom and sides. This is where the flour worms will crawl. The feeder is buried in the bran a little more than half. When only rot remains from the vegetables, they are replaced with fresh ones. For the development of beetle larvae, water is also needed. It is best to use a bottle as a drinker, which is buried up to the neck in bran. A wick of long-staple cotton wool or a linen cloth is inserted into the vial, flour worms will suck water out of it.

Instruction

The largest monkeys in the world are. But, despite their huge size, gorillas are peaceful creatures that feed exclusively on plant foods. Feeding in gorillas occurs mainly because their size does not allow these monkeys to wander through the fragile branches of trees in search of food. These great apes eat a lot, and their massive jaws can grind even the hardest food - wood, tree bark, roots and stems of plants. The lion's share of the time these monkeys while away at the meal, eating tree ferns and creepers. Mountain gorillas eat bamboo shoots and wild celery.

Other great apes are orangutans. This is one of two Asian genera of great apes (the second genus is gibbons). If we compare the orangutan with its African counterpart - the gorilla, the former's external monkey features are much more pronounced. Orangutans enjoy bananas, mangoes, plums, figs and other tropical fruits with great pleasure. Incredible strength and amazing dexterity allow these monkeys to conquer even the highest trees in search of food, since the fruits on them are much.

Monkeys are also omnivores, but they prefer fruits. They feed on anything they can find in the rainforests. Their diet includes seeds, roots, resin, insects, molluscs, fish, crustaceans, small reptiles (lizards), birds, small mammals (rodents). In other words, monkeys eat anything that is not poisonous, or whatever they can collect or catch.

Japanese short-tailed macaques feed exclusively on tree bark, while Javanese long-tailed macaques enjoy marine food, especially juicy crab meat. By the way, this monkey is sometimes called the crabeater monkey. The closest human relative, the chimpanzee, feeds on fruits, nuts, young and juicy leaves, and sometimes fresh meat.

In general, the diet of monkeys is based, for the most part, on ripe and sugary fruits, easily digested parts of plants, succulent shoots, palm hearts, flower buds, insects, nuts, and sometimes on meat food. The fact is that the stomach of some primates is not adapted to enzymatic digestion. That is why the constant consumption of food rich in plant fiber (leaves, grass) can cause poisoning in some monkeys. But there are also primates who have complete order with this, for example, colobuses have “pockets” in their stomach with bacteria that secrete the corresponding enzymes.

Monkeys are called representatives of the suborder of anthropoid primates. Animals of this species are ahead of the rest in the development of the part of the brain responsible for the ability to think.

Some common features

The very habitat of most monkey breeds is considered to be humid-warm tropics and subtropics on flat terrain near water bodies. But some species are well adapted to woodlands, and some individuals feel great even in places with a rather cool climate.

Absolutely all types of monkeys are perfectly adapted to climbing trees. The structure of their forelimbs (hands) is such that it allows them to rotate freely, and the thumbs are opposed to others, i.e. all limbs are prehensile.

In the crowns of the trees of the Amazon rainforests, well-known miniature representatives of the genus of monkeys, belonging to the family of marmosets, feel great. Their name comes from the Greek "callos", i.e. beautiful. And they fully justify it. Their coat of soft, long fur comes in a wide variety of colors - red, white, brown, smoky, golden. Despite their small size (the size of a small rat), they are equipped with a fairly strong one, with which they easily cling to branches. All marmosets easily climb trees, helping themselves with their claws. Like humans, marmosets have 32 teeth and 46 chromosomes. Their small eyes are distinguished by an unusual blue color for monkeys.

Gorilla

One of the most famous monkeys are huge gorillas, whose growth can reach up to 2 m, and weigh up to 250 kg. Despite their ferocious appearance and rather impressive size, gorillas have a very friendly character. They feed exclusively on plant foods - wood, tree foliage, and live in the tropical forests of Central Africa. Because of their huge size, gorillas cannot climb trees and move only on the ground.

Toque

In the rainforests and mountainous areas of Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Japan, macaques live - medium-sized primates with a rather muscular body, covered with thick brown-gray hair. The muzzle of some species is sometimes decorated with a kind of beard. Usually macaques keep in groups, and the number of females is 4-5 times greater than the number of males. Macaques are very sociable with each other and express their emotions with loud screams and screams, as well as scratching and grooming their fellows.

Capuchin

This detachment lives in the forests on the American continent. This very cautious monkey leads an active daytime lifestyle. In her daily routine there is time for mandatory rest, and at night she has the main dream, which the capuchin spends in secluded corners among the crowns of trees. Capuchins, not spoiled in food, eat almost everything - fruits, nuts, seeds, all kinds of insects, small vertebrates, mollusks, bird eggs.

And the capuchins got their name because of the color, reminiscent of the color of the clothes of the monks from the Order of the Capuchins. Their second name "organ grinder monkeys" came from the fact that they very often accompanied the performances of street organ grinders and itinerant artists. Today, capuchins are the most popular monkey breed for keeping at home.

Conversations that a vegetarian lifestyle is good for health have been going on for a very long time and are traditionally very popular. Today, in the media, you can easily find a lot of publications, according to which meat is almost a poison.

True, sometimes timid voices are still heard, declaring that a complete rejection of meat may not be as harmless to the human body as it seems. However, these voices are rather quiet, and they do not often insert their word.

Meanwhile, the whole idea of ​​vegetarianism is a rather strange idea. Vegetarians who are trying with all their might to preserve their precious health are going against nature itself. After all, nature has created man as an omnivore. It is an omnivore, not a herbivore.

The ability of a person to digest meat food is inherent in his genes and is inseparable from the very essence of a human being. Try feeding meat to a cow, or getting a tiger, or at least an ordinary domestic cat, to chew plant-based gum. Try it and see what happens. It is obvious that the unfortunate animals will simply die of starvation at such and such a feeding. True, the tiger, most likely, will not wait for starvation, but will simply bite you.

Carnivores are unable to digest large amounts of plant food and long without animal products, herbivores, on the contrary, are not able to absorb meat. Man is omnivorous. Why did it happen?

To answer this question, it is necessary to return to those distant times, when a reasonable person did not yet exist on Earth. At that time, several types of anthropoids lived on our planet. Each of these species could theoretically evolve into Homo sapiens. Everyone could, but only one evolved. How did our ancestors differ so much from all their countrymen that they were able to make such a bright evolutionary breakthrough when all the others simply died out?

According to modern ideas, our ancestors learned to eat meat. Apparently, the first meat food available to them was the leftovers from the meals of large predators. The anthropoid population, which switched to a mixed meat and vegetable diet, instantly gained a huge advantage over its vegetarian competitors. The brain, which received an additional amount of proteins, began to develop much faster. As a result, Homo Sapiens appeared on Earth.

The notion that meat-eating is a derivative of human civilization is absolutely wrong. It was the ability to eat animal products that was one of the key points that allowed our ancestors to become human. If you turn your eyes towards modern great apes, you will easily notice that they are all vegetarians. But they are not people, only monkeys.

Of course, if you refuse to eat meat, then you won’t turn back into a monkey, but you can cause serious damage to your own health. More on this in the next post.

Another way to get closer to the truth is to look at animals whose structure is similar to ours. These animals, which belong to the class of primates and are called great apes, are very similar to us. DNA analysis has shown that human genes are 98% identical to those of chimpanzees and gorillas. The anatomical structure and biochemical processes in our bodies almost completely coincide.
It is for this reason that researchers after experiments on mice and guinea pigs conduct the last test of new drugs on chimpanzees. If drugs act on them and do not harm them, it can be considered almost proven that they will act in the same way on a person.

Great apes live in tropical rainforests and eat whatever they can find. In tropical forests, there is no pronounced change of seasons. Plants can flower, bear fruit, produce seeds and germinate all year round.
However, in this climate, the dry season alternates with the rainy season, which means that there are periods of abundance and lack of food.
Great apes occupy a very vast territory. They move along it like nomads in search of food. Every evening they build a nest in the trees with bent and broken branches. Great apes are unclean creatures, leaving behind heaps of excrement and garbage. They, like the forest nomads, never had the need to keep a neat housekeeping.

promiscuous chimps
We know that the social structure of chimpanzees is similar to ours. They have family quarrels, power struggles, intrigues, associations, cunning, but also loyalty and devotion.
Studying chimpanzees in their natural habitat has revealed what they eat. Chimpanzees live in the rainforests of Africa and still spend most of their lives in trees. They feed on what they find in the trees. That is, fruits (mainly), plants, flowers, resin, nuts and berries. They indiscriminately eat whatever they find: bird eggs, larvae, termites and other insects. Chimpanzees are amazing creatures, they are ready to try almost everything, but at the same time they are very picky. They carefully inspect any food, removing everything that may turn out to be inedible, and only then eat it.
Occasionally, chimpanzees prey on small mammals, such as baby monkeys. They hunt collectively: they surround their prey, and then kill it, tearing it apart. Unlike true carnivores, chimpanzees (like humans) lack nature's natural killing tools, such as sharp teeth and claws.
But chimpanzees rarely resort to hunting, and for the first time this was observed only in the 1960s. It has been observed that they hunt strictly at certain times of the year and, apparently, this is due to a demonstration of male power in order to attract females. At this time, the proportion of meat in the diet increases to 30-40%. At other times of the year, meat consumption may be completely absent. An estimated 90% of a chimpanzee's average annual diet consists of plant foods, most of which are fruits.
In search of food, chimpanzees comb vast territories. They move up and down the mountain slopes to find plants from different altitude zones. To do this, they make a lot of effort, as if they know that in one place it is impossible to find all the necessary nutrients.

Phlegmatic gorillas
Gorillas are strict vegetarians. Despite the fact that an adult is 180 kg of bones and muscles, the gorilla feeds exclusively on fruits and plants that grow in tropical rainforests. A gorilla will not eat bird eggs, even if they are at arm's length.

For ease of comparison, all values ​​are recalculated for a person weighing 70 kg. But even in this case, it follows from the table that a person should consume 4.5 kg of food per day. Humans are not gorillas, and no one is saying that we should slavishly follow their diet. But nevertheless, people can and do eat in this way, and for strict vegetarians, this table can give a new impetus. They should replace pasta, bread, potatoes and cereals with plant foods rich in trace elements.
All micronutrients gorillas get from food, mainly from plants that we would call green leafy vegetables and salads. Their diet also includes nuts, flowers, mature leaves, shoots and gums. Protein enters their body exclusively from plants; calories come from carbohydrates found in fruits and plants; they receive vitamins and minerals (including calcium and iron) in ideal proportions for health.
Take a look at the table. This is the typical daily diet of a captive gorilla. Such a menu was chosen on the basis that all these products are also suitable for human consumption. And so it is possible to make a direct comparison with what an average person could consume per day. In fact, even in captivity, the gorilla eats a wide variety of plant foods throughout the year, including gums, flowers, twigs, and shoots.
Under natural conditions, a gorilla will not eat raisins, sweet potatoes, or corn. Zookeepers have definitely never heard of Natural Nutrition. It should be said in their defense that non-primate food is only a small fraction of total consumption.
Gorillas do not travel long distances like chimpanzees. They are not so fastidious in food and, rather, look like a clumsy plant for processing vegetation. The gorilla needs a huge amount of food, and she is forced to fill her stomach with everything that comes to hand!
An adult male gorilla, although a vegan, is made up of 180 kg of bones and muscles!
Summary of Great Ape Diet
The main feature of the diet of great apes is a large volume, low calorie content, a large amount of trace elements and fiber, and a small amount of fat. It does not include: grains and dairy products, fish and starch. Meat is practically non-existent. Doesn't this remind you of anything?
Great apes spend quite a lot of time on food - up to 30% of the entire wakefulness period, and gorillas even more. Their diet is that in the late morning they go in search of food, and then at regular intervals they "intercept" something. In other words, they eat little but often. It will be useful to repeat once again that they are supported by low-calorie foods. The proof of this is at least the fact that they almost do not drink. The food they eat is more than 80% water. Therefore, the great ape is able to maintain a positive water balance without consuming water.