Warm meal for apes?

18juni2008
Source: vroegevogels.vara.nl
According to the British journal New Scientist, studies with chimps, gorillas and orangutans show that these apes prefer cooked food. During the experiments, the apes preferred the cooked meat, ...
potatoes and carrots over the raw counterparts. According to the researchers, our ancestors shared this predilection for cooked food. This would show that man started cooking food as soon as it was able to build a fire. It learned how to cook by accident, for example because food fell into the fire. Anthropologists of the American university of Harvard conducted the research and started cooking for apes. According to the researchers, the decision to start cooking played a crucial role in the evolution of mankind. Cooked food is easier to digest and the nutrients are easier to take in. This could have led to the anatomical changes that took place about 1,8 million years ago in the homo erectus, when the brain got bigger and the teeth smaller.