Wild meat sharing among non-indigenous people in the southwestern Amazon

Abstract

Abstract: Food sharing is found in many traditional societies around the world. The uniqueness of pervasive sharing among humans, especially among non-related individuals, has been explained by a variety of social and ecological models. Here, we investigated whether the sharing of wild meat among hunters in an extractive reserve in a tropical forest is influenced by the kinship, social structure, and biomass of hunted species. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 59 households from 12 villages along the Liberdade River in the Amazon forest. The interviewees mentioned approximately 1.8 tons of hunted animals (25 species) during 177 incursions, and donated 890 kg of wild meat to other households. The meat-sharing was mainly mediated by the biomass hunted. The higher the biomass, the greater the sharing among households, either between related or non-related hunters. The inter-household sharing of wild meat was dominated by medium- and smaller-bodied species that are commonly hunted. When we look at hunters’ importance in the sharing network, the older hunters and those returning higher biomass were more prone to share in their villages. The overall meat-sharing pattern indicates that hunting activity is involved with social bonds, and it may ultimately favor food security in the studied villages. Significance statement: We found that Amazonian non-indigenous populations descended from rubber tapper colonists present an inter-household and within-village network of wild meat sharing that mostly depends on the biomass hunted by different households, rather than on the social structure, kinship, or prey species, which are relevant factors for food sharing in other indigenous or non-indigenous populations. In addition to hunted biomass, hunter age affects the importance of hunters’ contribution to the meat-sharing network within the villages. The sharing pattern, mainly driven by the hunted biomass, can collectively improve the cost-benefit balance of hunting and contributes to food security through social ties, strengthening the socio-ecological system of these non-indigenous populations in Amazonia.