Considerations on Field Methods Used to Assess Non-human Primate Feeding Behaviour and Human Food Intake in Terms of Nutritional Requirements

Measuring food intake has been a major issue in our multidisciplinary research team, where anthropologists and primatologists worked together aiming at the objective of a better understanding of food preferences and choices in various contexts, especially in environmental settings where indigenous, spontaneous, species can cover most of the nutritional requirements. The idea of merging primatological studies with an anthropological approach resulted from the search of methods to differentiate what part of the feeding behaviour is exclusively determined by biological factors and what is shaped by the sociocultural context including symbolic aspects, which can become a major force determining food choices in human groups. This important anthropological basis of human feeding behaviour was the major concern of Igor de Garine, who conducted field studies, mostly in Africa, during the second half of the 20th century (Garine, 1972; 1993). When I met Igor De Garine at the end of the seventies, and when we decided to construct a research team together, I had conducted fieldwork on several wild primate species, with the aim of understanding the origin and the evolution of feeding behaviour (Hladik, 1988). Of course, the differences in our approaches have never been excessively different, since non-human primates share with humans several traits that are now considered as ‘cultural’ (see, for instance, the review by Jolly, 1999), whereas some human cultural traits have been understood as biologically adaptive (Pasquet et al., 1993).