People tend to think of cannibalism as something rare and
weird and horrible. In fact, it’s pretty common. Pretty much every part of the
animal world has cannibal species in it. We all know about the praying mantis female
eating her mate, but lots of insects, spiders, fish, amphibians, and even
mammals dine on either their spouse or their children. Sometimes the children
eat the parents. Those mouth breeding fish? The ones where the male holds the
brood of babies in their mouth while they mature? Yeah. Sometimes they get
hungry and have a little snack. Mice eat their young in overcrowded conditions.
Higher on the family tree, chimps and polar bears do it. Some sharks eat their
siblings while they are still in the womb. Some creatures eat each other when
there is food scarcity. Some creatures only eat parts of each other- there is
one species that eats the lining of the mother’s uterus while still inside.
But it’s not just critters. Humans perform cannibalism, too,
and it’s not just the Donner party and Hannibal Lector. Sometimes it is a
matter of survival, like the Donner party and the survivors of the airplane
crash in the Andes. The people are already dead; they aren’t killing them for
food; they are just taking advantage of what is there so they can survive. That’s
not the only time humans eat each other, though. Sometimes it’s done to honor
the beloved dead- sort of grokking their loved ones. Most often, though, people
eat only parts of each other. In the past in Europe, there were many ‘cures’
that involved things like powdered skulls and the blood from a hanged man being
ingested. These days, some women eat their own placenta after giving birth.
Most don’t tend to think of these cast off bits of humanity as being parts of people,
but they are.
Then there is the issue of false accusations of cannibalism.
It seems like an awful lot of indigenous people have been accused of this habit
when they are inconvenient for conquerors. Want the tribe’s land? Just call
them cannibals and it’s okay to kill them off; you’re just saving yourself from
danger! It happened all over in the tropical American areas when the Spanish
first came into the area.
Biologist Schutt takes a fairly light hearted look at
cannibalism. He deals in both data and anecdote; the prose is a fast and easy
read. His style of dealing with taboo subject matter reminded me of Mary Roach
(“Stiff” and others); a very readable overview of something with big squick
value.
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents.
I received this book free in return for an unbiased review from the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.
Neither of these things influenced my review.
