Overview
- The study published on August 26, 2026 draws on more than 5,000 hours of field observation at Fazenda Boa Vista in Piauí, Brazil, collected between 2006 and 2010, and it recorded hundreds of vertebrate-eating events in two capuchin groups.
- Reports place the number of recorded feeding events between about 281 and 446, with most prey items being lizards and rodents and first-time records of opossum, iguana, and bird nestlings in this population.
- The monkeys usually ate brains and internal organs first, indicating a deliberate selection for fat- and nutrient-rich tissues when they consumed small vertebrates.
- Hunting was concentrated in adult males more than females or infants, and males targeted riskier prey such as snakes, showing that age and sex shape who hunts and what is taken.
- A group that received supplemental food hunted less often, supporting the view that reduced plant food availability drives vertebrate predation and prompting authors to call for fossil reanalysis and wider field comparisons before drawing strong links to human evolution.