Question

Large primates often subsist on low-quality food such as leaves; small primates specialize in high-quality foods such as fruit and insects. Why is body size associated with dietary quality in this way?

Answer 1

Follow-up investigations indicate as well that foods eaten by humans today, especially those consumed in industrially advanced nations, bear little resemblance to the plant-based diets anthropoids have favored since their emergence. Such findings lend support to the suspicion that many health problems common in technologically advanced nations may result, at least in part, from a mismatch between the diets we now eat and those to which our bodies became adapted over millions of years. Overall, I would say that the collected evidence justifiably casts the evolutionary history of primates in largely dietary terms.