When we consider that we may be frugivorous and not omnivorous our apparent lack of killing and hunting instincts makes a lot more sense. In fact, most of our instincts and daily habits in many areas of life make an awful lot more sense when we consider the hypothesis that we are an elite specialist fruit eater and not a generalised omnivore.
When it comes to food we are taught the notion that man was at some point a hunter gatherer that then started farming and became fully domesticated. A classic meat-eater thought is that this relatively short period of domestication led to us losing our killer instincts and we would regain those instincts if we went back to living in the cold, brutal reality of nature. Often this sort of sketchy theory is the basis of fad diets such as the Paleo diet but it does not take into account our anatomy, instincts and the real science regarding what foods we were consuming during the paleolithic period. For me our instincts are all still alive and well even in our intensely domesticated setting and the evidence of those frugivorous instincts is all around us.
When it comes to hunting, this has remained the same thing now as it always has been; a sport and nothing more. Hunting is a completely unreliable way for us to get sufficient quantities of food because we are so laughably bad at it. We have no natural flair, skill or desire to hunt, and we really don't have the patience for it. Also, regardless of how much the family cat gets fed and housed, it continues to go out to hunt everyday, it follows its inborn instinct and surely we should too if we are truly designed to hunt?
Lets look to our own habits. Personally, I think over the course of my whole life I have maybe killed 1 or 2 fishes from a few fishing trip experiences when I was younger and maybe some insects and I don't think I was particularly happy about these events at the time. It is an inarguable fact that the vast majority of the population are in the same boat: the animal kill-count of the average human being, in terms of actual killing at their own hands, would be extremely low and ridiculously disproportionate to the number of animals they have been responsible for the death of.
Generally most people I know "gather" their food. The food generally requires no killing and is judged upon appearance, colour, smell and texture from an up close perspective and receiving the food is usually a pretty peaceful and non- violent event (Glasgow takeaways on a Saturday night excepted). We clean or avoid food with any dirt on it, and often receive that food in colourful packaging that keeps it clean and free from dirt or insects. We either eat the food straight away, especially if it is sweet or we collect enough to last a number of days and bring it back to our living space to store. All of these fall in the line with how we would acquire fruit in nature, in fact it is quite an "AHA!" moment when we start to think about it.
What I believe to be our most impressive ability is something that we never consider as being special and yet it takes an amazing mental capacity to do this. If I were to meet you at your house, your workplace, a local gym or another place you visit regularly and asked you to take me to a location to get food it is likely that without looking at a map you could take me on foot to numerous locations. In fact if we both had the energy, in that one day we could probably visit perhaps hundreds of locations if not more that you are aware of covering a distance of many miles. We have the ability to hold in our memory a huge and complex map of likely locations where we can get food, picture what type of food is there, and predict when is the best time to go. When we move to new locations we rapidly create this map in our head, and I know personally I still have mental maps of various cities and neighborhoods that I may not have been to in years.
In a short conversation with Anne Osborne, a fruitarian pioneer originally from Leicester in England, she explained how the leaf eating apes do not need to develop great intelligence as their diet is abundant everywhere in the tropics all year long but the frugivorous apes must have the mental capacity to store in their memory where the fruit is, when it will be ripe and how long it takes to get there. I have heard that the Orangutans arrive at fruiting trees at exactly the time when the fruit is ripe and it is completely necessary for their survival that they can do this. My friend Dr Robert Lockhart often mentions in lectures that during the breast feeding stage a female Orangutan must consume the tropical fruit Durian otherwise the baby's brain will not be able to develop the ability to memorise the mental map of the forest.
When we consider the size of forest that apes inhabit this is a truly an awesome skill which we generally take for granted. Of course it is a symbiosis in which the trees have provided us with the sweetest and best fuel with which to power our advanced brains and feed their evolution. We would probably find ourselves very capable of replicating the same skill that the Orangtuans show for ripe fruit punctuality, perhaps over even longer distances, if we returned to our Eden like natural environment. It makes having a sharp sense of smell seem fairly one dimensional in comparison...
As ever, these words have come to you from a brain powered by an abundance of fruit sugars,
Take care and remember what John Lennon said "Health is what happens to you while your busy eating other fruits"
Ronstervore
Youtube: Fruity Ronster
Instagram: fruityronster
Facebook: Fruitful Scots
Meetup: www.meetup.com/Glasgow-Fruitluck
*ps come to think of it Fruitarians can smell Durian from 1000s of miles away... or is that my imagination ;)
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