The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham Author(s): elisabeth townsend Source: Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 29-37 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2005.5.1.29 . Accessed: 10/04/2013 19:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 132.206.27.24 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:43:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions interview | elisabeth townsend The Cooking Ape An Interview with Richard Wrangham Primatologist richard wrangham might be best organization has evolved, especially female social relation- known for the 1996 book he coauthored with writer Dale ships and aggressive male behavior. Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Though Wrangham has made his reputation explaining Violence, where he used his research on intergroup aggres- the similarities and differences across species in primate sion in chimpanzees to reflect on combative male behavior. social organizations, he expects that his work on cooking Wrangham’s twenty-five years of research have always been will have the broadest impact because cooking affects many based on a deep interest in human evolution and behavior, human behaviors—such as those associated with food choice, and recently he’s shifted his focus to the evolution of cook- familial relationships, and food production that can satisfy a ing in humans. huge world population. His favorite part of the day is when An anthropology professor at Harvard University, he can steal an hour from teaching to analyze chimp data or Wrangham, fifty-six, was first mesmerized by Africa when to work on his new book, The Cooking Ape. But Wrangham he spent a year working in Kafue National Park in western is happiest at his Ugandan research site, enjoying those Zambia before going to college. There he assisted a quiet moments alone with the chimps, watching their rela- research biologist in studying the behavior and ecology of tionships and catching up on the social gossip. He hasn’t the waterbuck, falling “in love with the excitement of eaten a mammal since 1976 because of his profound empa- finding out about African habitats and species.” He’s been thy for the ones he has enjoyed and spent so much time back to Africa every year since then, with only one excep- with in the wild. Occasionally, his vegetarianism makes life tion—the year when his first son was born. a bit harder, as when a host offers him meat, but he’ll never That first year in Kafue determined Wrangham’s course turn down seconds on a chocolate roulade. Wrangham of study at Oxford University and in his life. After Oxford spoke from his home in Weston, Massachusetts. when his plans to study Ugandan mongooses fell through, his advisor suggested he contact Jane Goodall about working with her and the chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in ET: What prompted your research into how cooking affected Tanzania. As her research assistant, he spent a year record- human evolution? ing the behavior of eight siblings, choosing one each day to observe. Later Wrangham returned to Gombe to do his RW: As a primatologist, I am often asked to think about WINTER 2005 doctoral research on the behavioral ecology of chimpanzees, human evolution. I sat one evening in my living room 29 and he has continued to collaborate with Goodall. preparing a lecture for the next day, thinking about the stan- Eventually, using money from a MacArthur Foundation dard story that involved hunting being important around Fellowship, he launched his own chimpanzee study in two million years ago. As I was staring at the fire, I had Kibale, Uganda, where it took six years to get the chimpanzees an almost ghostly experience where I just allowed my eyes habituated enough to get good observations. At Kibale, spend- to be drawn deep into the fire. I could feel around me the GASTRONOMICA ing from two to seven months a year with his six Ugandan presence of hominids, from up to one million years ago, field assistants and several graduate students, he has focused sitting in the African bush. on both chimpanzee behavior and the way their behavior I started thinking about the fact that fire is something has been affected by the exploitation of the environment— that has been on the Earth ever since there’s been plant from finding food and escaping from predators to forming vegetation and how when I’m in the bush there is no way social relationships. He has also analyzed how their social that I’m going to spend a night without sitting next to a gastronomica: the journal of food and culture, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 29–37, issn 1529-3262. © 2005 by the regents of the university of california. all rights reserved. please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press’s rights and permissions website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. This content downloaded from 132.206.27.24 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:43:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions fire. I was thinking about the impact of fire on the “cooka- cooking without it affecting us very much, which would be bility” of food. very mysterious, or it happened so early that cooking had Then I thought, “Well, would there really have been a already been adopted by a million years ago. fire for our early ancestors—a million years ago, say?” I realized I didn’t know the answer to the question. ET: What’s an example of how changes in the food supply But I also realized that it was extremely difficult to imagine affected primates and how that led you to think cooking had that they did not have cooking, because even as long as a significant impact on humans? 1,500,000 years ago humans looked incredibly similar from WINTER 2005 the neck down to humans living today. Even our heads are RW: If you compare chimpanzees to gorillas, they eat very 30 very similar—though we have larger brains and we don’t similar things. They both like to eat fruits when fruits are have quite as big a mouth or teeth as they did. So surely, if available. They both eat more leaves and stems when there those million-year-old ancestors were generally like us in aren’t many fruits available. But there’s one relatively small the size and shape of their bodies, they should have been difference: when there’s a shortage of fruit, gorillas will switch eating cooked food. After all, cooking has this huge impact. entirely to eating leaves and stems, whereas chimpanzees It changes so much about how we relate to the natural absolutely insist on finding their daily ration of fruits before GASTRONOMICA environment: it changes the ease with which we digest the they go bulk up on leaves and stems. That’s why gorillas can food; it changes the availability of calories; and it changes live entirely without fruit—in the mountains of Uganda, for the distribution of food. instance—whereas we don’t know of any place where chim- If cooking has such a big evolutionary impact, in other panzees can live entirely without access to fruit. words, and we haven’t changed much, then there are only That small difference in food supply between chimps two possibilities. Either we somehow managed to adopt and gorillas can account for the fact that the gorillas are photograph of richard wrangham by jim harrison © This content downloaded from 132.206.27.24 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:43:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions three to four times the body size of chimpanzees and that put into traveling. Chimpanzees are quite long-distance they live in more-stable groups. Therefore, gorillas have an travelers at 2.5, 3, 4, 5 kilometers a day, but humans, males entirely different set of sexual relationships, with males in particular, are traveling 9, 10, 15, 20 kilometers a day—a being enormously bigger than females, and so on. This is lot more than chimps. just one example where a relatively small difference in the This extra energy probably comes from the fact that, as food supply creates a big difference in the way that two a result of cooking, we’re able to eat a relatively compact species look and behave. And to shift from eating raw food food that is full of calories. And then at the same time, of to eating cooked food is a much bigger change! course, the food has become softer, and that enables us to have smaller teeth and smaller jaws, a flatter face, and less ET: How did cooking change calorie intake and thus the prognathous jaws. At the same time we, in fact, have smaller human species? guts and a shift in the arrangement of our guts that reflects the fact that we’re eating food that is relatively highly digestible.