Active participation in group-hunts earns wild chimpanzees meat access

The gains from cooperative hunting and meat sharing are seen as fundamental drivers in the evolution and the life history traits of the human species. Group hunting, however, also occurs amongst non-human animals. The extent to which these group-hunts are cooperative, in that participation is beneficial, remains elusive. Wild chimpanzees of the Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, hunt in groups to catch monkeys. By observing group-hunts and meat sharing, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that chimpanzee hunting behavior is a cooperative act that earns participants a fair share of the prey.