Its the only forest where mountain gorillas and chimps both live,” he said. “We e trying to understand the ecological relationship—do they compete for food, for nesting sites?
The key difference between chimps and gorillas ecologically is that chimps eat meat and gorillas don’t. A total herbivore is able to coexist with an omnivore because they have significantly different diets. “From there we can extrapolate back to what two species of early humans may have done vis-à-vis each other two or three million years ago,” Stanford said. Better Fat Processors When humans switched to meat-eating, they triggered a genetic change that enabled better processing of fats, said Stanford, who has worked extensively with gerontologist Caleb Finch of USC. “We have an obsession today with fat and cholesterol because we can go to the market and stuff ourselves with it,” Stanford said. “But as a species we are relatively immune to the harmful effects of fat and cholesterol. Compared to the great apes, we can handle a diet that’s high in fat and cholesterol, and the great apes cannot. “Even though we have all these problems in terms of heart disease as we get older, if you give
