In many ways, a plant-based diet is a safe choice, and this is doubly true if you have to catch and butcher meals yourself. You won't be gored by a broccoli floret, and it’s impossible for a protective mother of a soybean to kick your head in. But for the primates who eat meat, these threats are an unfortunate reality.
Which primates, exactly, enjoy dining on flesh? Most of them, according to David Watts, an anthropologist at Yale University who analyzed over 400 studies of meat-eating among primates in a 2020 review paper. Watts noted that 12 of the current 16 families of primates featured meat-eaters, a total of 89 species. Rather than the exception, it’s the majority — even when meat comes with a potentially violent price.
Consider the safest meat to obtain — the embryo contained in a prey’s egg. Like plants, eggs can’t flee from predators. Still, they can be hazardous to acquire. If you’re not swooped up by defensive parents, you might be mobbed by an entire flock. Or in the case of capuchin monkeys in the Amazon, the eggs they covet aren’t those of a bird, but of a 20-foot-long, monkey-eating crocodilian, the black caiman. Similar to the dragon hoards of myth, capuchins must use their cunning to claim the treasure, and that they do: The monkeys stand on their hind legs and use sticks as shovels to pry the eggs from the nest.
