The chimpanzees each have their own unique food preferences. We’ve talked a lot about how Jody will eat a huge assortment of vegetation she finds on Young’s Hill. Foxie on the other hand, has more of a sweet tooth, so she will opt out of many types of greens, in favor of things like sweet potatoes and fruit. A lot of the chimps will eat produce that we humans would think of being really intensely flavorful, in much greater quantities than most humans would ever dream of eating.
I personally could not imagine eating a whole raw onion, but the chimps eat them without thinking twice.
Missy:
And pine tree is not on most humans’ dinner menus.
Jody:
We’ve tasted the wild prickly lettuce that Negra loves so much, and it is tongue twistingly bitter.
The one funny thing we have noticed is that the chimps don’t seem to like a lot of spices in their meals. We don’t cook things for them all that often (instead they usually eat a lot of raw produce), but when we do get a little adventurous with a cooked meal, the chimps are often skeptical, picking through their meals for anything suspect. They have no use for things like basil, oregano and cinnamon, so we generally leave things pretty simple.
Burrito eating all the parts of a lime this morning:
