Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

In all likelihood, the most significant of these is a heightened chance of acquiring harmful parasites or diseases from a conspecific. Both parasites and pathogens are often species-specific and many of them have evolved mechanisms to defeat their host’s immune defenses. As a result, predators that consume their own kind run a greater risk of picking up a disease or a parasite than do predators that feed solely on other species.

There is no definitive answer as to why cannibalism provides us with such stimulation, although what is clear, and what remains extremely disturbing for me, is our increasing desensitization to violence and gore - a trait that does not bode well for the future.

...the idea of cannibalism had become a handy symbol for unacceptable behavior practiced by "Others"--a broad and malleable category of evildoers that included enemies, followers of non-Christian religions, and any groups determined to retain their "uncivilized" customs.

An even more cringeworthy behavior is exhibited by banana slugs (genus Ariolimax), which become so entwined during sex that they sometimes chew off their partner’s corkscrew-shaped penis in an effort to disengage. During this process, which is known as apophallation, penises are slurped down spaghetti-style, occasionally by their owners. Although this usually puts an end to the festivities, the fact that the penises do not grow back presents fewer problems than one would expect. The hermaphroditic slugs simply carry on the remainder of their lives as females.

The opposite occurs in protandry, in which individuals begin life as males and transform into females. Examples include the clownfish (Amphiprion), whose behavior could have offered an intriguing alternative resolution to the animated film Finding Nemo.

Until relatively recently, and with a very few exceptions, cannibalism would have been regarded as anything but normal. As a result, until the last two decades of the 20th century, few scientists spent time studying a topic thought to have little, if any, biological significance. Basically, the party line was that cannibalism, when it did occur, was either the result of starvation to the stresses related to captive conditions. It was as simple as that. Or so we thought.

Stannard believes that by the end of the 16th century, the Spanish had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of between 60 and 80 million indigenous people in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Even if one were to discount the millions of deaths resulting from diseases, this would still make the Spanish conquest of the New World the greatest act of genocide in recorded history. These types of numbers, which are subject to considerable academic debate, are often overlooked during Columbus Day parades and related festivities.

Reality does not yield to wishful thinking and truth cannot be established by a political party (or any other organization for that matter).

T'ao Tsung-yi, a writer during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), wrote that "children's meat was the best food of all in taste" followed by women and then men.

But rather than the decrease in reports of cannibalism one might expect to find in modern times, the opposite turns out to be true. The greatest number of cannibalism-related deaths in China came as a direct result of Mao Zedong’s “The Great Leap Forward” (1958–1961), a disastrous attempt at utopian engineering.

Whether various acts of culturally sanctioned cannibalism existed or not (and it seems absurd to consider that they never did), the fact remains that for the vast majority of Westerners, our feelings regarding the practice have resulted (at least in part) from our exposure to a long list of influential writers beginning with the Ancient Greeks and extending into the 21st century.

In his masterpiece, The Histories, the man often referred to as the Father of History wrote that the Persian king Darius asked some Greeks what it would take for them to eat their dead fathers. “No price in the world,” they cried (presumably in unison). Next, Darius summoned several Callatians, who lived in India and “who eat their dead fathers.” Darius asked them what price would make them burn their dead fathers upon a pyre, the preferred funerary method of the Greeks. “Don’t mention such horrors!” they shouted. Herodotus (writing as Darius) then demonstrated a degree of understanding that would have made modern anthropologists proud. “These are matters of settled custom,” he wrote, before paraphrasing the lyric poet Pindar, “And custom is King of all.” In other words, society defines what is right and what is wrong.

Essentially, then, as European adventurers, missionaries, and colonists were condemning the indigenous people they encountered for practicing cannibalism, their own rulers and countrymen in Europe were consuming human body parts to a degree and at a rate that would have made Hannibal Lecter proud.

Later was it revealed that an American submarine had recovered one of the nine downed fliers, thus saving him from a similar fate at the hands of the starving Japanese. The lucky man’s name was Lt. George H. W. Bush.

Baby, baby, naughty baby, Hush you squalling thing, I say. Peace this moment, peace or maybe, Bonaparte will pass this way. And he’ll beat you, beat you, beat you, And he’ll beat you all to pap, And he’ll eat you, eat you, eat you, Every morsel snap, snap, snap. — The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes

These are matters of settled custom,” he wrote, before paraphrasing the lyric poet Pindar, “And custom is King of all.” In other words, society defines what is right and what is wrong.

In bony fishes that guard their own eggs, though, it’s usually the males who are involved, undertaking these chores at nests otherwise known as oviposition sites.

Cannibalism occurs in every class of vertebrates, from fish to mammals.

After their first molt and after the trophic eggs have been consumed, black lace-weaver spiderlings are too large for their mother to care for, though they are in dire need of additional food. In an extreme act of parental care, she calls the babies to her by drumming on their web and presses her body down into the gathering crowd. The ravenous spiderlings swarm over their mother’s body. Then they eat her alive, draining her bodily fluids and leaving behind a husklike corpse.

Here’s another example, unrelated to cannibalism. The reef-inhabiting bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma bifasciatum) is famous for its habit of removing parasites from much larger fish, even entering into their mouths. In this case, however, it’s the removal of a male wrasse from its harem of 30 to 50 females that alters their local environment. Rather than waiting for a new male to arrive, something extraordinary takes place in the harem. Within minutes, one of the females begins exhibiting male-typical behaviors. Relatively quickly, the former female transforms into a male, a form of phenotypic plasticity known in the trade as protogyny. The opposite occurs in protandry, in which individuals begin life as males and transform into females. Examples include the clownfish (Amphiprion), whose behavior could have offered an intriguing alternative resolution to the animated film Finding Nemo.

As a zoologist I was interested in determining what other mammals (besides white middle-class Americans) ate their own placentas and why they did it.

We are also, however, of a lineage that has diverged greatly during our long evolution—and the more recently added or modified sections of our genetic code have seen us evolve us away from the behavior of spiders, mantises, and fish (though less so from our fellow mammals). Part of that divergence is that humans are cultural creatures, and for some of us the very underpinnings of our Western culture, starting with our literature, dictate that unless we are placed into extreme circumstances, certain practices, like cannibalism, are forbidden. But what about cultures in which those Western taboos were never established? Would they enact similar prohibitions on such behavior?

Surprisingly—or perhaps not surprisingly given the subject matter—there is disagreement among anthropologists regarding ritual cannibalism. Some deny that it ever occurred, while others claim that the behavior did occur but was uncommon. Still others claim that cannibalism was practiced by many cultures throughout history and for a variety of reasons.

Mouthbrooding is a common form of behavior in cichlids. Typically, it refers to post-spawning behavior in which parents (usually females) hold their brood of fertilized eggs inside their mouths until they hatch and sometimes even after that. This provides the eggs and fry with a haven from predators, a point commonly portrayed in crowd-pleasing nature videos that depict young fish darting back into their parent’s mouth at the first sign of danger. Conspicuously missing from these lighthearted reports is the fact that parents holding a mouthful of eggs usually eat a considerable portion of them, and sometimes the entire brood. Also destined for the digital equivalent of the cutting room floor are shots showing male cichlids fertilizing the eggs in the females’ mouths, always a difficult topic to explain during family TV time. Mouthbrooders