"Rudy Canoza" > wrote in message ...
> In the early 1960s, when the british primatologist
> Jane Goodall first observed wild chimpanzees hunting
> and eating meat in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, it
> was widely believed that these animals were strict
> vegetarians. Skeptics suggested that the diet of the
> Gombe chimpanzees was aberrant.

Gombe National Park is a limited and highly populated area.

'..The park is made up of narrow mountain strip of land about
16 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide on the shore of Lake
Tanganyika. From the lake shore steep slopes rises up to form the
Rift Valley's escapement, which is covered by the dense forest.
...
The dominating vegetation in this park include the open
deciduous woodland on the upper slopes, gallery forests on
the valleys and lower slopes. This type of vegetation is unique in
Tanzania and has been supporting a large number of Chimpanzee,
Baboons, and a large number of bird species. Other species seen
here are colobus, blue and red tail monkeys.
...'
http://www.utalii.com/gombe%20national%20park.htm

> Others suggested that
> the quantity of meat the chimpanzees ate was trivial.
> After more than 30 years of research, however, it is
> now clear that meat is a natural part of the
> chimpanzees' diet. Indeed, hunting has been observed at
> most of the other sites where chimpanzees are studied
> across central Africa. And, it turns out, a chimpanzee
> community may eat several hundred kilograms of meat in
> a single year.
>
> To many anthropologists this is a surprising
> development. Of all the higher primates, only human
> beings and chimpanzees hunt and eat meat on a regular
> basis.

Chimpanzees' habitat been increasingly encroached upon,
destroyed, and fragmented by human activites. This has
undeniably caused an increase in population in remaining
habitat, and thus increased competition for the available
resources. This is why the earlier studies more reliably
reflect primates' natural dietary preferences and habits.

> The similarities pose an intriguing prospect:
> Might the close evolutionary relationship between
> chimpanzees and human beings provide some clues to the
> evolution of our own behavior? We do know that the
> earliest bipedal hominids, the australopithecines,
> evolved in Africa about 5 million years ago and that
> they shared a common ancestor with modern chimpanzees
> shortly before that time. Unfortunately, the evidence
> for the occurrence of meat-eating among the early
> australopithecines is spotty at best. Primitive stone
> tools that were made 2.5 million years ago suggest that
> early hominids had the means to carve the flesh from
> large carcasses, but we know very little about their
> diets before that time. Were they hunters or perhaps,
> as many anthropologists now argue, scavengers? The
> behavior of chimpanzees may provide a window through
> which we can see much that has been lost in the fossil
> record.
>
> http://www.americanscientist.org/tem...true&print=yes