What Do Chimpanzees Eat? Inside the Diet of Our Closest Relatives

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. From using forest herbs as medicine to creating and using tools, these intelligent primates forage and even hunt to fuel their active lives. But what exactly are chimpanzees, and what do they eat that makes them so resourceful?

All About Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are native to the forests and savannas of central and western Africa. These creatures are our closest living relatives and share approximately 98.8% of our DNA. Similar to humans, they are highly social animals and typically live in large, flexible communities. These communities often exhibit complex hierarchies, with an alpha male at the top. These primates use gestures, vocalizations, facial expressions, body language, and even sign language to communicate. Depending on their region, their diet, behavior, and tool use can vary. Chimpanzees have made interesting use of their biology, especially their brains, which is what sets them apart.

What Makes Chimpanzees So Intelligent

Chimps display incredible hallmarks of intelligence, including problem-solving, having emotional depth, and using tools. In addition, they plan, cooperate with one another (and sometimes deceive), show empathy, and even express grief. Like little scientists, young chimps learn through observation. Quickly, they can pick up behaviors such as cracking nuts, making tools, or fishing for termites. As seasons change and different plants grow and develop, chimps display their advanced memory and ecological knowledge by remembering where food sources are located.

What Do Chimps Eat?

Primarily, chimps are frugivores. This means they rely heavily on fruit. In fact, fruit makes up about 80% of their diet. The preferred fruits include figs, bananas, oil palm, and wild berries. They are also known to eat leaves, bark, pith, seeds, flowers, and sap, but that is mostly when fruit is scarce. On occasion, chimps consume insects, meat, and clay for additional nutrition. To obtain these foods, chimps can travel long distances daily in search of the right food. Utilizing their stellar spatial memory, they can track the specific location and fruiting cycles of trees. They make it a group affair by splitting up into foraging parties to improve their success and reduce competition. When it comes to insects, however, accessing them often requires tools and ingenuity.

Chimp Ingenuity

Chimpanzees use tools such as sticks or blades of grass to “fish” termites and ants out of their nests. To ensure these tools are useful, they often modify them by stripping leaves or fraying tips. This behavior, which is often taught socially, shows their craftsmanship as primates. Insects provide chimps with protein and fat, helping them maintain energy when fruit is scarce. Additionally, their ability to hunt larger game further demonstrates their advanced survival skills.

Hunter Gatherers

Though it is not a main part of their diet, chimps participate in cooperative hunting parties where they eat animals, including monkeys, bush babies, and small antelopes. Chimpanzees work together to corner or ambush their prey and then share the meat within the group. During these hunting parties, males band together and build alliances, highlighting their fascinating cooperative skills.

Odd (But Important) Eating Habits

Drinking from streams, puddles, and leaf reservoirs is another part of a chimp’s diet. Sometimes chimps even use chewed leaves as a natural sponge. These natural sponges are used in ways that underline how innovative they are in consuming water from hard-to-reach sources. Chimpanzees also engage in geophagy, which involves eating soil or clay to neutralize toxins in plants and boost mineral intake. Showcasing their intelligence yet again, some chimps consume bitter medicinal plants when they are sick. These eating habits reveal a level of awareness and instinctual health care that makes them some of the most interesting primates around.

How Do Eating Habits Relate To Intelligence?

The use of tools, cooperation among one another, long-term memory, and the ability to adapt show complex cognition. Foraging reflects problem-solving and planning, which is more than instinct. In these diets, there is insight into how intelligence can affect community life. The traditions of these social communities enable chimps to learn from one another. Passing this pertinent information down to the next generation ensures their ultimate goal: survival.

An Endangered Primate

In spite of their intelligence and adaptability, chimpanzees are currently listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Due to a combination of factors, including habitat loss, poaching, disease, and illegal pet trade, their populations have declined drastically. When forests are cleared for agriculture, logging, and mining, chimpanzees end up losing critical feeding and nesting grounds. In some regions, they are even hunted for bushmeat, which is meat derived from wild animals. The pressures of these factors have fragmented wild chimpanzee populations, making survival even more difficult for primates as resourceful as chimps.

Chimpanzees have a culture around food, just like humans do. The fuel that sustains a chimpanzee goes far beyond fruit; it is also rooted in their sense of community. The combination of tool making, alternating diets, and innate intelligence makes them one of the most fascinating eaters in the animal kingdom.