Risky food hunting might be key to human success: Study - ANI News

They spent more energy in pursuit of food than their great ape cousins but brought home much more calorie-rich meals that could be shared with the rest of their group.

To find out how humans obtained this extra energy, a group of researchers led by Thomas Kraft, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Pontzer compared the energy budgets of wild gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans with that of populations of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers (Hadza) and Bolivian forager-horticulturalists (Tsimane).

Energy budgets depended on how much food energy is absorbed, and how much time and energy are spent obtaining food.

Humans were thought to maintain their energetically costly lifestyle in one of two ways: they could be super-efficient, spending little time and energy finding food -- in part due to the use of tools and technological advances, or they could spend a lot of energy to quickly bring home a lot of food, sacrificing energy efficiency.

Like a gas-guzzling pick-up truck bringing home a ton of doughnuts, they spend a lot more energy obtaining food than great apes, but they do it faster and the food they obtain is high in calories.

Their strategy is one of low risk, low rewards: their food is easy to find, but it's fibrous, low in energy, and it takes a lot of time to get enough of it.

Pontzer said sharing provided a safety net, enabling some group members to take risks, targeting big game and other high-risk, high-reward foods.

The possibility of sharing food also means some group members can even stay at the camp on occasion, enjoying one of our most precious commodities: free time.

Free time allowed group members to communicate about things other than food.

Being wired to finding and sharing energy bombs was, and still is, a winning strategy for hunter-gatherers and foragers-horticulturalists, Pontzer said.