Cooking involves applying heat to food to change its properties, making it more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe. Humans regularly engage in this practice, transforming raw ingredients into prepared meals. Do any other animals cook their food?
Why Humans Cook
Cooking offers profound evolutionary advantages for humans, making food significantly more digestible and unlocking more nutrients. Heat breaks down tough connective tissues in meat and complex carbohydrates in plants, reducing the effort and time required for chewing and digestion. For example, cooked eggs are about 180% more digestible than raw eggs, and cooking carrots can increase beta-carotene absorption over six-fold.
This enhanced digestibility and nutrient absorption provide a greater caloric return, contributing to human energy efficiency. The surplus energy from cooked food is thought to have fueled the development of larger brains and proportionally smaller digestive tracts in human ancestors. Anthropologist Richard Wrangham proposes that harnessing fire and cooking was a pivotal factor in our species’ success, leading to anatomical adaptations like smaller teeth and jaws.
Beyond nutritional benefits, cooking also plays a crucial role in food safety. Heat neutralizes natural toxins and effectively kills harmful bacteria and parasites, such as those found in raw meat, making food safer to consume. This detoxification broadened the range of edible foods available to early humans.
The controlled use of fire is unique to humans and forms the foundation of cooking. This skill requires sophisticated cognitive abilities to gather fuel, ignite flames, and manage heat for various food types. Unlike instinctive food behaviors, cooking is a learned cultural practice, passed down through generations, profoundly shaping human societies and daily life.
How Animals Prepare Food
No non-human animal cooks its food, as cooking is defined by the deliberate application of external heat to chemically alter food properties. Many species exhibit sophisticated behaviors to process their food before consumption. These actions, though remarkable, differ fundamentally from true cooking.
Many animals employ tools to prepare food, enhancing nutrient access. Chimpanzees use stones to crack nuts and sticks to extract termites or ants. Sea otters use stones as anvils to break shellfish, while New Caledonian crows fashion tools from twigs and leaves to probe for grubs.
Some animals engage in behaviors that might appear similar to washing or cleaning their food. Raccoons dunk food in water, manipulating it with sensitive paws. Research suggests this is for tactile exploration, as moistening enhances their sensory perception. Japanese macaques on Koshima Island developed a tradition of washing sweet potatoes in seawater, which cleans them and adds a salty flavor.
Food storage, or caching, is a common preparation strategy across the animal kingdom, allowing for future sustenance. Squirrels bury nuts and seeds in multiple locations for later retrieval, especially before colder months. Shrikes, or “butcher birds,” impale prey on thorns or barbed wire fences, creating a “larder.” This can allow toxins in certain prey, like amphibians, to break down, rendering them safe to eat. These non-thermal methods highlight the ingenuity animals display in maximizing food utility.