We are omnivores - able to eat both plants and animals. And I don't believe that we are natural hunters. If we were - we would have useful things like big sharp teeth, viscious claws, highly developed senses of smell and hearing and other things that predators tend to have.

Actually, what happened was that we evolved away from needing big sharp teeth, powerful muscles for pursuit and the like because our intelligence more than compensated for it. We can make tools. We can use tools to hunt. And as hunters we're the very best on this planet, bar none.

We do not digest meat very well. The remains of it tend to sit in our digestive tract and our bowels for some time after we have eaten it.

True enough, but that's because our diets have changed so dramatically over the past several thousand years, not because we aren't suited for it. The one greatest development in our history that changed the face of this planet is none other than agriculture. Farming forced nomadic tribes to either adapt or largely die off, and our new diet has caused any number of changes to the way our digestive systems process food.

So the reality is: we can consume and digest meat. We're not great at it, but omnivores aren't specialists anyway. We don't absolutely need meat, but I've almost always included it in my diet, albeit in fairly small amounts.

Disclaimer: I'm not an ecologist, but am an avid reader of ecological science.