Year: 1996
Type: article
Abstract: Two chimpanzees stalk, isolate, and kill a red colobus monkey. An attendant primatologist notes that parts of the prey are relinquished selectively to onlooking scroungers (Fig. 1). A human forager returns to camp mid-afternoon with a freshly killed, medium-sized ungulate. Later in the day, an ethnographer observes that shared portions of the animal have found their way into the cooking pots of most or all of those in the small band. Examining a prehistoric scatter of food residues, an ethnoarcheologist wonders when early hominids began to scrounge or share food, and with what consequences for our evolution. All of these settings represent one problem: the analysis of intragroup resource transfers among social foragers. New studies in the behavioral ecology of transfers show them to be more commonplace in nature, more complicated and variable, and more subject to comparative analysis than has been appreciated.
Author: Bruce Winterhalder
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Language: English
Topic: Primate Behavior and Ecology
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1998618006