| dc.description.abstract | Humans form social groups that are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than those of any other vertebrate taxa, which begs the question of how this level of social organization emerged. Food sharing is often considered to be a component of this large-scale cooperation and is hypothesized to have played a crucial role throughout our evolutionary history. To understand the function of food sharing among our early hominin ancestors, we can turn to our nonhuman primate relatives for insight. In this dissertation, I examined the function of food sharing within the Fongoli chimpanzee community, a population of western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in southeastern Sénégal. I tested four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that have been used to explain patterns of food sharing: kin selection, generalized reciprocity, sharing-under-pressure, and food-for-sex. I analyzed meat sharing events (n=484) resulting from hunts, along with data on estrous swellings, copulations, prey size, rank, age-sex class, and kinship to determine which variables predict the likelihood of meat sharing during this study period (2006-2019). When I tested the predictions of each hypothesis independently, I found support for kin selection, generalized reciprocity, and food-for-sex. However, when I examined the effects of all variables combined, I found that reciprocity was the strongest predictor of whether or not an individual shared meat. I discuss the significance of these findings among a savanna-dwelling chimpanzee population that systematically hunts vertebrate prey with tools. | |
