We’re fairly close to the apes physically. Is there any thing we can handle food-wise, and they can’t, or vice versa?
Well, let me contribute a useless but amusing factoid to this thread.
Zoo-grade monkey feed is not immediately toxic to humans.
If you mean “deadly”, I doubt it. If you mean something that would turn our stomaches, then probably. Gorillas, in particular, each some pretty course vegetable matter that gives new meaning to the term “fiber”. 
A nitpick: You mean “the other apes”, not just “the apes”. We are ourselves apes.
I agree with **John. ** Some foods might be unpalatable to our fellow apes and the other way around, but I can’t think of any that are poisoness. In fact, in general, most (mammalian) omnivores can eat *most * of what other Mammalian omnivores do.
It’s the dose, really.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5736/883
. As it was more than 500 years ago, it remains relevant to bear in mind the basic law of toxicity as defined by Paracelsus (1493-1541), the father of pharmacology: “All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dosage differentiates a poison and a remedy.” Even water, when consumed too quickly and in inordinate amounts, can be lethal.
Quite a bit of chocolate can be poison to a dog (which can fit either carnivore or omnivore models). However, enough chocolate would hurt a human, also. It’s just that it is very very unlikely for a human to be able to consume enough (unsweetened, it’d have to be) be have a chance of being killed, and a dog can & has done it, atlhough it isn’t easy.
Heres a cite on dogs & choco:
http://www.dogownersdigest.com/news/library/chocolate-dog-poisoning.shtml
It would take one whole pound to poison a 20# dog. Now, for a 180# human, that’d be 9 pounds. Can you eat 9 pounds of chocolate at a sitting? Can you eat even a couple pounds without getting sick? In fact, this is why chocolate doesn’t kill too many dogs- that’s quite a bit of choco for a dog to eat all at once. I have had one of my dogs get mighty damn sick, however, so don’t let them eat any.
This is a generalization, of course. No doubt someone can find some odd food that some mammalian omnivore can eat that will poison another in normal doses.
Offhand I can’t think of too many things that are poison to one mammal species that another can eat with impunity. Carrion is one, but even that depends. And thus, for one of our fellow apes, there is even less stuff.
Arsenic *appears to be * poison in smaller doses for our chimp cousins:
http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309063337/html/155.html
This article might be interesting, but the office doesn’t subscribe"Tastes of Chimpanzee Plant Foods
Author(s) Toshisada Nishida, Hajime Ohigashi, and Koichi Koshimizu
Identifiers Current Anthropology, volume 41 (2000), pages 431–438
"… Human taste sensitivity is influenced by cultural transmission … to screen the medicinal
plants used by chimpanzees. … food is poisonous, and poison and medicine … "
Here’s one:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/e231x48102766108/
*Abstract Detailed observations on the consumption ofVernonia amygdalina (Del.), a naturally occurring plant of known ethnomedicinal value, by an adult female chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) of M-group in the Mahale Mountains, Tanzania were made. Chewing the pith of several shoots, she sucked out and swallowed the astringent, bitter tasting juice; spitting out the fibrous remains. The female was followed during this period for 11 hr, over two consecutive days, and was recognized to be in irregular health at the time of consumption, exhibiting signs of lethargy, lack of appetite, and irregularity of bodily excretions. The low frequency and lack of seasonality in the usage of this plant suggest that it is sought after for reasons other than as a food source. These factors suggest that for chimpanzees, the consumption of this plant is primarily medicinal. The symptoms displayed by the female are the same as those experienced by people throughout tropical Africa who utilize this plant as a medicinal treatment for them. Interactions between the female and others suggest that they too were aware of her condition and coordinated their activities with the female and her infant. *
Humans vs Gorillas food choices:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110487468/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
"General Characteristics of the Mountain Gorilla Diet The composition and
diversity of … none of their foods were strongly distasteful to a human, however … " (not in the abstract, only in the search)
One more before your eyes glaze over:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/72816/ABSTRACT
We will discuss the taste abilities of nonhuman primates in terms of threshold and above-threshold responses to potential foods. As diets have evolved in species’ environments, tastes have responded adaptively in order to maximize energy intake. In turn, food plants have evolved nutrients and toxins in relation to the tasting abilities of consumers. These compounds can be beneficial or harmful in various environments and at different concentrations. This cost-benefit ratio concerns all primates, including Homo sapiens populations living at subsistence level, and must be taken into account, together with psychosensory and sociocultural factors, to understand food choices.
My Research did not turn up any study that mentioned a food that is poison to humans but not to chimps or gorillas or the other way around. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any, but it does mean that no one has written a recent study on it that shows up.
Other apes couldn’t go bobbing for apples. Does that count?
If I remember correctly dogs are 5x times more sensitive to theobromine than humans based on LD50’s (200-300mg/kg for dogs vs. about 1g/kg human), so it would have to be 45 lbs of chocolate for a 180 lbs human to be equivalent. In other words, baker’s chocolate contains about 6.5 grams of theobromine per kilogram. So a dog would have to eat about 1/32nd of its body weight in bakers chocolate to reach the LD50 and a human approximately 1/7th. This is all from the Wikipedia page on Theobromine except for the estimated human LD50 which I can’t find right now (but I remember being around 1g/kg). Human LD50s are generally hard to find simply because for some reason we feel it’s unethical to run toxicity experiments even with volunteers, but that’s GD territory. Human LD50s have to be based off medical records and toxicology reports.
Sure. But my point was that enough choco to poison a dog would be hard for a human to consume, *even if a human had the same LD50. * In other words, even here, with one of the best cases we know of a common food tasty to one omnivore mammal but poison to another, it’s just the dose, and even so the dose is pretty damn large. It’s not like it’d take 100# to kill a human and 1/10 OZ to kill a dog.
Do other apes peel bananas, or do they eat the peel?