Wild Chimpanzee Welfare: A Focus on Nutrition, Foraging and Health to Inform Great Ape Welfare in the Wild and in Captivity

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Adequate nutrition is a key factor in primate reproduction, longevity, and welfare. Thus, understanding the nutritional makeup of food choices is essential in health evaluations for wild and captive conspecifics alike. Here, we (1) highlight findings from the scientific literature on macro and micro nutritional content of foods consumed by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and (2) discuss aspects of their diet, foraging activity, and health pertaining to what chimpanzees need. Additionally, although there has yet to be a standardized approach that assesses or scores individual or group welfare in wild chimpanzees, we include information from multiple study sites across the species range that is relevant to nutrition and more broadly, physical welfare in wild chimpanzees. We call for researchers to standardize welfare measures for individuals in wild populations as well. Finally, this review may be useful to captive primate managers and those who frequently look to the behavioral ecology of wild chimpanzees to inform guidelines and standards for individuals in their care. ABSTRACT: Adequate nutrition is essential for individual well-being, survival and reproductive fitness. Yet, in wild animals, including great apes, scoring nutrition or health comes with many challenges. Here, we have two aims: first, broadly review the scientific literature regarding nutritional data on wild chimpanzee foods to get a better understanding what nutrients foods comprise of, and second, highlight important findings on wild chimpanzee nutrition and welfare pertaining to diet. We discuss variation in macro and micronutrients in food items consumed and their role in chimpanzee health across chimpanzee subspecies from multiple study sites. We found a lack of information pertaining to nutritional consumption rates of daily diets. Second, we call for a fresh, in-depth discussion on wild chimpanzee welfare issues is of foremost importance to inform conservation projects and particularly settings where humans and chimpanzees may interact, because such conversation can reveal how specific or general welfare measures can (a) inform our knowledge of an individual’s, group’s, and population’s welfare, (b) provide additional measures from the study of wild chimpanzee ecology that can guide the welfare of captive chimpanzees, and (c) can enable comparative study of welfare across wild populations. A summary of the current literature on approaches to measuring wild chimpanzee health and welfare status, to our knowledge, has yet to be done.