Animals

Feed on a wide variety of foodstuffs (over 80 different items have been catalogued) with the largest proportion consisting of fruit and young leaves. In long dry seasons, buds and blossoms, soft pitch, stems, galls, honey, bark and resin, seeds and nuts are also eaten. Animal prey makes up as much as five percent of the diet, with social insects, such as ants and termites, providing the largest amounts. On rare occasions small game (monkeys, pigs, and antelope) is hunted. Feeding is essentially an individual activity, but after a cooperative hunt may share morsels in response to begging by others. There seem to be "cultural" differences between groups of chimpanzees in the variety of food taken and the techniques for processing it. (West African chimps use wood and stone tools as hammers to open nuts.)