Termite eating and food sharing by male chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest, Uganda

Abstract

Food-sharing is an habitual, if infrequent, aspect of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes Blumenbach) life. Both animal and plant foods are shared; the extent to which they are seems to depend on their rarity, accessibility and divisibility. The majority of food sharing is by older individuals, usually mother to offspring. Sharing of food between adults is generally confined to the division of mammalian prey by males. Such food is preferentially shared with cycling females and other adult males. Termites are a resource which is difficult to obtain, requiring skilled tool use. In terms of food sharing, they are analogous to hard-shelled nuts: individually, effectively indivisible, but collectively they have the potentially to be shared. The consumption of both nuts and social insects is female biased. Shelled nuts are most often shared by mothers with their infants and the only reported instances of termite-sharing is likewise between mothers and offspring. Chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest have not previously been reported to prey on termites. This paper provided the first positive account of such behaviour, and in particular, describes an observation of food-sharing between adult males, with termites as the shared resource.