Elizabeth says...
2) How much do they eat in a day?
This is probably as difficult to reliably answer in chimps as
it is in humans. What would you say if an alien said to you
"How much does a human eat in a day?" While I'm sure
average figures exist, there is huge variation among individuals
and from day to day. The total gut volume of a chimp could probably
be answered by a comparative anatomy expert, but I couldn't
find anything about it in a quick web search. What I can tell
you is that they eat for about 6 to 8 hours of each day, are
omnivorous, and allocate their feeding time in the following
way:
A breakdown by feeding time for the chimps of Gombe showed their
intake of foods to be (very roughly) 60% of feeding time for
fruit, 20% for leaves, with the other items in the diet varying
greatly on a seasonal basis depending on availability. Seasonal
highs could range as high as (approx.) 17% of feeding time for
blossoms, 22-30% for seeds, 10-17% for insects, 2-6% for meat,
with other miscellaneous items coming in at perhaps 4% through
most months of the year.
Miscellaneous items eaten by chimps include eggs and honey that chimps
rob from beehives (as well as the embedded bees themselves). Soil is
also occasionally eaten, either for the mineral content or to ingest
clay (which absorbs toxins).
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