Sharing of Food

In nearly all human cultures, food sharing is a common practice, especially among families and friends and between potential mates. Food sharing occurs between healthy individuals and those that are infirm or elderly. In great apes, food sharing outside of the mother-infant dyad rarely occurs . After a hunt, male chimpanzees may share the meat from the kill with others who participated in the hunt. It has been suggested that ape males may also share food with females in exchange for sex (Gomes and Boesch 2009). Recently published work, however, reports that long term chimpanzee data indicates that such food-for-sex exchanges are quite rare and very different in nature from similar exchanges among humans (Gilby et al. 2010).