ANIMALS: PRIMATE DIETS. The daily food quest is generally the single most important activity for any animal. For this reason, natural selection should strongly favor any feature that enhances an animal's success at food acquisition. In essence, it has been suggested that different animal species can be viewed as "natural experiments" aimed at securing some portion of the always limited dietary resources available on the planet at any one time.

Humans are members of the Primate order and are placed in the suborder Anthropoidea, along with monkeys and apes. (When speaking of Primates as an order, the word is capitalized; when speaking of primates generally, the word is lowercased.) Because of our close relationship to other anthropoids, particularly the great apes (Pongidae), the dietary behavior of wild primates is of strong interest because it can provide clues about the types of dietary problems humans may have faced and...