盡管它們從未學會使用火,，但黑猩猩,、大猩猩和猩猩也會享受烹飪的樂趣,。
據(jù)美國《科學》雜志在線新聞報道,，如果可以選擇的話，這些靈長類動物更喜歡煮牛肉和煮胡蘿卜,，而非未加工的版本,。這一發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，人類的祖先最初學會用火可能并不僅僅為了光明,、溫暖以及提供保護，同時還可能為了滿足天生對于經(jīng)過燒烤的食物的渴望。烹飪同時能夠提供大量的生物學優(yōu)勢,，例如使食物更容易咀嚼和消化,，甚至能夠擴充大腦。研究人員在最近出版的愛思唯爾期刊《人類進化雜志》（Journal of Human Evolution）上報告了這一研究成果,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原始出處：
Journal of Human Evolution,，Volume 55, Issue 2, August 2008, Pages 340-348，Victoria Wobber, Richard Wrangham
Great apes prefer cooked food
Victoria Wobber, Brian Hare, and Richard Wrangham
Abstract
The cooking hypothesis proposes that a diet of cooked food was responsible for diverse morphological and behavioral changes in human evolution. However, it does not predict whether a preference for cooked food evolved before or after the control of fire. This question is important because the greater the preference shown by a raw-food-eating hominid for the properties present in cooked food, the more easily cooking should have been adopted following the control of fire. Here we use great apes to model food preferences by Paleolithic hominids. We conducted preference tests with various plant and animal foods to determine whether great apes prefer food items raw or cooked. We found that several populations of captive apes tended to prefer their food cooked, though with important exceptions. These results suggest that Paleolithic hominids would likewise have spontaneously preferred cooked food to raw, exapting a pre-existing preference for high-quality, easily chewed foods onto these cooked items. The results, therefore, challenge the hypothesis that the control of fire preceded cooking by a significant period.
