When people eat, they shouldn’t gulp down their food hastily because it increases the burden on the stomach, leading to indigestion and impacting health. However, in zoos, when we observe monkeys eating, they seem to swallow a lot of food in one go without chewing, yet we never hear of them getting sick because of this.
Why can monkeys gulp down their food like this? Actually, monkeys don’t swallow food in one go. If you observe closely, although they stuff food into their mouths eagerly, they never actually swallow it down into their stomachs. Monkeys have pouches on each side of their mouths called “cheek pouches”. These cheek pouches are primarily used to store food. When we see monkeys grabbing food, they aren’t actually swallowing it immediately; instead, they temporarily store the food they grab into their cheek pouches, and then slowly chew it before swallowing it into their stomach.
Interestingly, humans also have cheek pouches, but ours have degenerated over time. Monkeys, however, still have well-developed cheek pouches because their food sources are not as secure as humans’, and they need to store food for later use when opportunities for feeding arise. This habit has led to the further development of their cheek pouches.