Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians
The most widely cited comparison of the guts of chimps, humans, gorillas and orangutans has sample sizes of one individual for both chimps and orangutans, so just how much larger the large intestines of chimps or orangutans are relative to ours is not yet known. Our relatively short large intestines might be an adaptation to our special diet, but might also be the consequence of a tradeoff between investing in big brains and big intestines. Or some mix thereof. Along these lines, it has been suggested that our shift to eating more meat historically might have allowed investment in bigger brains which might, in turn, have required us to eat more meat so as to feed the bigger brain and simultaneously made our large intestines and their fermentation less necessary. This idea is interesting and many-layered and comes with a number of untested but testable predictions.
Read More:
[blogs.scientificamerican.com]
How Humans Became Meat Eaters
Even dedicated herbivores such as deer or cows will sometimes try meat if they chance upon it. There are records of cows devouring live chicks and munching dead rabbits, of deer eating birds, and of the duiker, a tiny African antelope, hunting frogs. (If you want to see a few of these carnivorous herbivores caught on camera, check out YouTube.) So it comes hardly as a surprise that our ancestors, who might have already been supplementing their diets with the meat of an occasional small monkey, saw the new abundance of savanna grazers as a way to get a few additional calories. The hominins were already omnivorous and opportunistic. If something was edible and it was there, they ate it. By 2.6 million years ago, there was a lot of meat around. Just as Purgatoriustook advantage of the climate change and a new wealth of fruits, their descendants, early Homo, successfully adapted their diets to the changes in their environment. But this time, it meant going after meat.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Chimps, most etc will relish meat, although they do not organized to hunt it.
AnneWimsey
Level 9
July 10, 2018
1
Most of our cousins are more of herbivorous nature. You are right Chimps were as opportunistic as us. But they consume mostly a specific kind of monkeys most of the time.
According to this article [allaboutwildlife.com]
Unlike other apes such as gorillas and orangutans which are almost entirely herbivorous (plant-eating), chimps are classified as omnivores. This means that, like humans, they eat a variety of plant and animal foods.
@CoastRiderBill Seriously!! I had no idea! Thankx!
I've always wondered, if we are meant to eat meat, why do we have to cook it first?
Does your cat or dog need a steak cooked medium to well done? Nope.
David1955
Level 8
July 9, 2018
3
We do not "have" to cook meats, but cooking does kill bacteria that develops quickly on warm (just-killed) meat, plus IMO it just tastes better, and can tenderize it....but you could live off uncooked meat, being very mindful of how fresh it is......
@AnneWimsey I suspect eating raw meat would make us very sick. Raw chicken? I don't think so.
@David1955 supermarket chicken, oh heck no, but chicken from your free-range backyard probably just fine.
@David1955 freshly killed meat/fish is not only delicious raw, but packed with nutrients that are killed by cooking. Sushi or steak tartare, anyone?
@AnneWimsey @CoastRiderBill. Yes, well, what little meat I eat, white only, I'll cook thanks. Remember that Ape in 2001 A Space Oddessy, tearing into that raw flesh.....er, no thanks. 
@David1955 chicken, like any other meat, can be eaten raw if it is not factory-farmed, & very, very fresh.
What is your point? We became human by killing, cooking and eating animal fat and protein.
Mitch07102
Level 8
July 9, 2018
0
It's my opinion that we became murderous humans then ...
@Mitch07102 May be you should read in detail from the link. The point is not giving a conclusive statement, rather what science and investigation currently tell about the eating habit of our ancestors and the evolution of our omnivorous nature.
@evergreen it's not that simple
"We became human by killing, cooking and eating animal fat and protein."
That makes me not a human then.
@Donotbelieve Joking aside, recognisable humans appeared around a million years before the earliest evidence of fire-usage, so "cooking" in the above quote is questionable, at least. Also, correlation is not causation, but we can probably agree that the historical supplement to our diet that meat provided influenced the type of animal we have become. That may be either a good or a bad thing - we will likely never know. What I was poking fun at was the implication that without meat-consuming ability we would be a lesser species than we currently are.
@Donotbelieve Sometimes I'm too intelligent to even say intelligent things.
@Donotbelieve I think that first paragraph is highly speculative, though I have already agreed that meat-eating influenced the form of our development - perhaps one key along with control of fire, hunting with dogs, tool-making, language, social structure, agriculture etc. As a thought-experiment you could imagine what would happen to humanity if we became vegetarian for a million years. Would our guts grow at the expense of our brains?
@AnandaKhan Very little is simple. But fact is some of the largest , most powerful animals on earth eat no flesh (ordinarily) - elephants, gorillas, orangutans, manatees, horses etc. Protein is easily obtained from plants, and more easily digested.
@evergreen I second that.
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