Chimpanzees: Their diet
The other Africanape, the Chimpanzee, has a very different diet - and temperament. Whereas a Gorilla may eat two dozen kinds of leaves and fruit, the Chimpanzee samples two hundred or so and in addition, termites, ants, honey, birds' eggs, birds and even small mammals like monkeys. To do this, it has to be both agile and inquisitive. Several groups of chimpanzees, living in the forests on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika, are being studied by a Japanese scientific team and are now so accustomed to the presence of human beings that you can sit among them for hours at a time. The size of their groups varies, but they are very much bigger than those of the Gorilla and may contain as many as fifty animals. Chimpanzees are adept climbers, sleeping and feeding in trees, but they habitually travel and rest on the ground, even in thick forest. There they move on all fours, their hands knuckle-down and their long stiffly-held arms keeping their shoulders high. Even when the group is settled and at ease on the ground, there is constant activity.
Food sharing by Chimpanzees
