(Image Credit: Agricultural Research Service)
This is bad on at least two counts: consumption of chimpanzees, baboons and other primates can lead to disease spread, due to similar genes and other considerations; and primates aren't necessarily distasteful to other animals.
It helps to taste awful.
John Skelhorn of the University of Glasgow and Candy Rowe of Newcastle University studied distastefulness as an antipredator defense strategy. In their paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior, they come to some very interesting conclusions. Their research supports that nontoxic, yucky-tasting natural compounds can protect individuals from predators, but only under certain circumstances.
For their research, the scientists focused on European starlings, a bird that eats insects known to either have distasteful chemicals, or not. For example, many spiders, millipedes, cockroaches, grasshoppers and beetles contain these chemicals—usually bitter— in their bodies. Ants taste so bad that birds will sometimes spit them out. Certain frogs and snakes also make predators wretch. Monarch butterflies are supposedly among the worst tasting of creatures. Generally bright coloration warns predators that the species in question tastes gross.
(European starling image: http://www.naturespicsonline.com/)
The scientists coated some mealworms with one of these chemicals, called Bitrex, and left other worms as is.
"When prey were encountered sequentially, birds attacked and consumed both the defended and undefended prey, and the presence of Bitrex did not deter them in any way," Skelhorn and Rowe determined. "Bitrex was only effective as a deterrent when defended prey were encountered alongside alternative undefended prey, and even then only when it was presented on the outside of the mealworms and its bitter taste was detectable."
They concluded, "Taken together, our results show that nontoxic distasteful chemicals can protect prey from predators but only when they are found alongside alternative palatable prey which predators prefer."
We modern humans have survived in large part due to our wits, but evidence shows our tastes-like-pork hominid ancestors didn't fare as well. Should you ever find yourself in front of a polar bear, lion or another strong animal that can take on a human, and you have no other defense, you could then try to coat yourself with a bad-tasting substance. But, based on the new study, it would help if something, or someone, tastier was nearby to divert the predator's attention and hunger away from you.
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