On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:01:28 -0400, "Laurie" > wrote:

>
>"Richard" > wrote in message
...
>> I'm a newbie so does anyone know of a good vegan book?
> Try a knife and your local fruit and vegetable market; the chimps do not
>need a book, neither do we.
>
> Laurie

Why didn't you suggest eating some ants and grubs too?
And maybe some monkeys as well:
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[...]
In the American Scientist article, Stanford describes witnessing the largest massacre
ever documented at Gombe. Two hunting parties with a total of 33 chimps - two of
them swollen females - converged on a group of 25 colobus monkeys. The male chimps
chased and shook the monkeys from trees, eventually killing seven. Before Stanford's
eyes, a large male chimp plucked a baby monkey from a branch and "dispatched it with
a bite to the skull." The chimp then approached a swollen female with the carcass,
dangling it just out of her reach until she presented her swelling. Only after copulation
did the male share his food.

"An important issue today in human male-female relationships is control," Stanford said.
"What we're seeing is the evolutionary roots of this kind of mutual attempt to manipulate
and control. Male chimps are using meat to control female behavior and female chimps
are making use of their reproductive system to get meat."
[...]
http://www.usc.edu/ext-relations/new...tml/chimp.html
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[...]
We might look toward the social aspects of chimpanzee societies to understand their hunting
patterns. One clue to the significance of meat in a chimpanzee society comes from the observation
that males do most of the hunting. During the past decade, adult and adolescent males made over 90
percent of the kills at Gombe. Although females occasionally hunt, they more often receive a share of
meat from the male who captured the prey.

This state of affairs sets up an interesting dynamic between males and females. Sometimes a begging
female does not receive any meat until after the male copulates with her (even while clutching the
freshly killed carcass). Some other observations are also telling. Not only does the size of a hunting
party increase in proportion to the number of estrous females present, but the presence of an estrous
female independently increases the likelihood that there will be a hunt. Such observations suggest that
male chimpanzees use meat as a tool to gain access to sexually receptive females. But females appear
to be getting reproductive benefits as well: William McGrew of Miami University in Ohio showed that
female chimpanzees at Gombe that receive generous shares of meat produce more offspring that
survive.

The distribution of the kill to other male chimpanzees also hints at another social role for meat. The
Japanese primatologist Toshisada Nishida and his colleagues in the Mahale Mountains showed that
the alpha male Ntilogi distributes meat to his allies but consistently withholds it from his rivals. Such
behavior, they suggest, reveals that meat can be used as a political tool in chimpanzee society.
Further studies should tell us whether such actions have consequences for alliances between males.
[...]
http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/article...ford-full.html
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