Eating Apes
California Studies in Food and Culture, 6
Chapter One
Laughter
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage.
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Apes are distinguished as being among the very few items on the menu capable (before
preparation) of laughter as an expression of mirth.
* * *
I first heard an ape laugh while walking in the great Taļ Forest of Cote d'Ivoire, in West Africa.
Primate researcher Christophe Boesch and I followed a group of wild chimpanzees as they
moved on their daily circuit, a complex progression from food to food to food, from obscure
fruits to tender herbs to hard nuts.
The chimpanzees in this part of West Africa possess a stone and wood technology, striking
hammers against anvils to crack otherwise uncrackable nuts. The hammers can be artificially
rounded, quite heavy stones; the anvils may be flat stones with deeply worn pockets.
Alternatively, the hammers and anvils may, as they did in this case, consi ... read full excerpt from Eating Apes ebook
