ABSTRACT
Insects, however, are important, forming a more complete and concentrated form of protein than plant material, and wherever baboons have been feeding one usually finds almost every stone turned over as they hunt for insects and other arthropods. Vervet monkeys are also primarily vegetarians, but they too eat insects, grasshoppers and termites having been recognized from their stomach contents. General accounts of human evolution, however, though devoting much discussion to the respective roles of hunting, gathering and scavenging, have tended to ignore insects. In a similar fashion Bodenheimer argues that the aversion to insect food that is so conspicuous in Western civilization is based on ‘custom and prejudice’, for there is no evidence at all that humans have an instinctive dislike of insects as food. Locusts and grasshoppers have been eaten by humans since time immemorial, and they are one of the few insects clearly recognized as food in the Mosaic dietary rules.
