• Risky food-finding strategy could be the

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Jan 13 21:30:36 2022
    Risky food-finding strategy could be the key to human success
    Creative free time may have come from big meals that could be shared


    Date:
    January 13, 2022
    Source:
    Duke University
    Summary:
    When it comes to feeding behavior, humans are the inefficient
    gas- guzzlers of the primate family, according to a new study of
    hunter- gatherer energy budgets. Unlike our herbivorous cousins who
    spend much of the day lounging while chewing their fibrous diets,
    early humans made high-risk, high-energy investments in finding
    big calories they could share with the group. And that in turn,
    likely led to free time and culture.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    It's a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon: would you rather be running after tasteless wild berries, or curled up on your couch with fuzzy socks and
    a good book?

    ==========================================================================
    You might not have had that choice if our ancestors had not taken a big
    gamble with their food.

    A new study published in Scienceon December 24 shows that early human
    foragers and farmers adopted an inefficient high-risk, high-reward
    strategy to find food. They spent more energy in pursuit of food than
    their great ape cousins, but brought home much more calorie-rich meals
    that could be shared with the rest of their group. This strategy allowed
    some to rest or tackle other tasks while food was being acquired.

    "Hunting and gathering is risky and inefficient, but the rate of return is enormous," said study co-leader, Herman Pontzer, an associate professor
    of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. "We can share our food,
    and because we got so many calories before noon, we can hang out around
    each other in this new space, a free-time space." Humans spend a lot more energy than great apes. We have big brains that eat up a lot of calories,
    we live a long time, we can have long pregnancies that produce big babies,
    and these babies rely on adults for a long time.

    To find out how humans obtained this extra energy, a group of researchers
    led by Thomas Kraft, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of
    California Santa Barbara, and Pontzer compared the energy budgets of
    wild gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans with that of populations of
    Tanzanian hunter- gatherers (Hadza) and Bolivian forager-horticulturalists (Tsimane).



    ========================================================================== Hunter-gatherers and forager-horticulturalists both gather food from
    wild plants and animals, but the Tsimane also produce small-scale crops.

    Energy budgets depend on how much food energy is absorbed, and how
    much time and energy are spent obtaining food. Humans were thought
    to maintain their energetically costly lifestyle in one of two ways:
    they could be super- efficient, spending little time and energy finding
    food -- in part due to the use of tools and technological advances, or
    they could spend a lot of energy to quickly bring home a lot of food, sacrificing energy efficiency.

    The researchers found that hunter-gatherers and forager-horticulturalists
    are inefficient, high-intensity foragers. Like a gas-guzzling pick-up
    truck bringing home a ton of donuts, they spend a lot more energy
    obtaining food than great apes, but they do it faster and the food they
    obtain is high in calories.

    Rather than minimizing their costs, they take a risk to maximize their
    rewards.

    Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, on the other hand, are like an
    electric car bringing home a head of lettuce and some apples. They
    are essentially herbivores and frugivores who eat very little, if any,
    meat. Their strategy is one of low risk, low rewards: their food is easy
    to find, but it's fibrous, low in energy, and it takes a lot of time to
    get enough of it.

    The Hadza hunter-gatherers and the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists
    both eat high-calorie foods that are harder to get. They spend a lot
    of energy hunting, gathering, planting and harvesting, but can quickly
    bring home a nutritious lunch. What's more, they bring enough to share.



    ========================================================================== Pontzer said sharing provides a safety net, enabling some group members
    to take risks, targeting big game and other high-risk, high-reward
    foods. If they come home empty-handed, which they often do, they know
    others will have something to share. The possibility of sharing food
    also means some group members can even stay at the camp on occasion,
    enjoying one of our most precious commodities: free time.

    "This slight shift in the way that we go about getting our food has fundamentally made everything else possible," Pontzer said. Free time
    allows group members to communicate about things other than food. It
    allows for experimentation, for learning, for creativity, for play,
    for culture.

    Being wired to finding and sharing energy bombs was, and still is, a
    winning strategy for hunter-gatherers and foragers-horticulturalists,
    Pontzer said. But it also can be treacherous for those of us with a
    pantry full of delicious highly caloric food.

    "We are built to try and get a lot of food," Pontzer said. "We are
    hugely ravenous and inefficient, and that's how we've evolved for 2
    million years." "That doesn't mean we can be careless with our energy
    today, and it doesn't mean that we have to say, 'well there's nothing
    we can do about it'," Pontzer said. "We have to be aware of ourselves
    and our evolutionary history." This research was Supported by the
    National Science Foundation (BCS0422690, BCS-0850815, BCS-1440867,
    BCS-1062879, BCS-1440841, BCS-1440671, BCS-0242455), NIH (R01AG024119, R56AG024119), the Leakey Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for
    Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of California, San Diego, and
    the American School of Prehistoric Research (Harvard University), as well
    as IAST funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EUR-0010 (Investissements
    d'Avenir program).

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Duke_University. Original written
    by Marie Claire Chelini. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Thomas S. Kraft, Vivek V. Venkataraman, Ian J. Wallace, Alyssa N.

    Crittenden, Nicholas B. Holowka, Jonathan Stieglitz, Jacob Harris,
    David A. Raichlen, Brian Wood, Michael Gurven, Herman Pontzer. The
    energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies. Science,
    2021; 374 (6575) DOI: 10.1126/science.abf0130 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220113194124.htm
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