Katherine R Amato, Óscar M Chaves, Elizabeth K Mallott, Timothy M Eppley, Filipa Abreu, Andrea L Baden, Adrian A Barnett, Julio Cesar Bicca-Marques, Sarah A Boyle, Christina J Campbell, Colin A Chapman, María Fernanda De la Fuente, Pengfei Fan, Peter J Fashing, Annika Felton, Barbara Fruth, Vanessa B Fortes, Cyril C Grueter, Gottfried Hohmann, Mitchell Irwin, Jaya K Matthews, Addisu Mekonnen, Amanda D Melin, David B Morgan, Julia Ostner, Nga Nguyen, Alex K Piel, Braulio Pinacho-Guendulain, Erika Patricia Quintino-Arêdes, Patrick Tojotanjona Razanaparany, Nicola Schiel, Crickette M Sanz, Oliver Schülke, Sam Shanee, Antonio Souto, João Pedro Souza-Alves, Fiona Stewart, Kathrine M Stewart, Anita Stone, Binghua Sun, Stacey Tecot, Kim Valenta, Erin R Vogel, Serge Wich, Yan Zeng
OBJECTIVES: Although fermented food use is ubiquitous in humans, the ecological and evolutionary factors contributing to its emergence are unclear. Here we investigated the ecological contexts surrounding the consumption of fruits in the late stages of fermentation by wild primates to provide insight into its adaptive function. We hypothesized that climate, socioecological traits, and habitat patch size would influence the occurrence of this behavior due to effects on the environmental prevalence of late-stage fermented foods, the ability of primates to detect them, and potential nutritional benefits...
July 2021: American Journal of Physical Anthropology