Lion Diet

[GreenEdge]

Here's an update on the young lady known as Ribeye Rach in 1st post of this thread:

 

[Hip]

The headline suggests that Morocco study is an exception to the norm:

If you look at the Amazonian Indians today, who are still practising hunter-gatherers (although they do some small scale farming too), they have an omnivore diet. The hunt animals, but also eat fruit and vegetables which grow in the Amazon. In hot and humid regions like the Amazon, fruit is in abundance.

 

[forestglip]

If you look at the Amazonian Indians today, who are still practising hunter-gatherers (although they do some small scale farming too), they have an omnivore diet. The hunt animals, but also eat fruit and vegetables which grow in the Amazon. In hot and humid regions like the Amazon, fruit is in abundance.

Humans didn't reach the Americas until about 15-20,000 years ago, so I don't think they're very representative. I don't know if any humans from the other continents have relied on such a high proportion of plants before agriculture.

Miki Ben-Dor, an author on the following paper and many other works related to paleolithic human diet, seems like he knows what he's talking about from a couple talks I've seen, though I haven't dug deep into his work. Note the potential COI that at least two authors on this paper, including Ben-Dor, eat a carnivore diet, I think.

Humans were apex predators for two million years, study finds (10.1002/ajpa.24247)

 

[Hip]

Humans didn't reach the Americas until about 15-20,000 years ago, so I don't think they're very representative. I don't know if any humans from the other continents have relied on such a high proportion of plants before agriculture.

If the plant food is readily available, like fruit hanging from trees or root vegetables, I imagine humans are going to eat that. The benefit of being an omnivore is that you have a wider selection of possible food sources, and hunter-gatherers I don't think would have ignored plant food sources that are easy to find.

I would think that in pre-neolithic Africa, there would have been plant foods available. It's only when you go to ice covered areas like Inuit territory that you have no plant foods, so people then only eat meat.

 

[forestglip]

If the plant food is readily available, like fruit hanging from trees or root vegetables, I imagine humans are going to eat that. The benefit of being an omnivore is that you have a wider selection of possible food sources, and hunter-gatherers I don't think would have ignored plant food sources that are easy to find.

I would think that in pre-neolithic Africa, there would have been plant foods available. It's only when you go to ice covered areas like Inuit territory that you have no plant foods, so people then only eat meat.

I don't disagree, though I imagine it's possible that if large prey was in very high abundance, they could kill a large animal and then have food for a while and not need to spend all day foraging, though they might have still eaten some plants if they were easy to get. I think I've read that hunting a large animal is a much more efficient source of calories than gathering.