Is a chimpanzee herbivore or carnivore?

Answer 1

They are omnivores; chimpanzees eat plants and animals.

Answer 2

Some chimp tribes living in the depths of the African jungle do prey on smaller monkeys.

Up until a few years ago, it was thought that chimpanzees were herbivores, living on nuts, fruit, berries and leaves. However, the English naturalist David Attenborough made the horrifying discovery that they can kill and feed on smaller primates when he and his camera crew came across a community of chimps in West Africa in the process of viciously attacking a colony of rhesus monkeys, tearing them to shreds and devouring their flesh.

It does still seem that the majority of chimps are predominantly herbivores, but Attenborough's discovery shed new light upon them and showed that there are some chimp colonies who have turned to meat-eating.

Rob Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University, calls chimpanzees "partially lapsed vegetarians." He notes that less than 3% of the average chimp's diet is made up of meat. "On average," he writes, "nine days a year are meat days for chimps. But because chimps don't share perfectly, most chimps probably gets less than this."