Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History(3)
Conversely, I weighed the possibility that the revulsion most people have at the very mention of cannibalism might stem solely from our culture. Of course, this led to even more questions. What are the cultural roots of the cannibalism taboo and how has it become so widespread? I also wondered why, as disgusted as we are at the very thought of cannibalism, we’re so utterly fascinated by it? Might cannibalism have been more common in our ancestors, before societal rules turned it into something abhorrent? I looked for evidence in the fossil record and elsewhere.
Finally, I considered what it would take to break down the biological or cultural constraints that prevent us from eating each other on a regular basis. Could there come a time, in our not-so-distant future, when human cannibalism becomes commonplace? And for that matter, was it already becoming a more frequent occurrence? The answers to these questions are far from certain but, then again, there is much about the topic of cannibalism that cannot be neatly divided into black and white. Likely or not, though, the circumstances that might lead to outbreaks of widespread cannibalism in the 21st century are grounded in science, not science fiction.
My aim was to stay away from the clichéd ideas about cannibalism that are already ingrained in our collective psyche and, with such a wealth of relevant material to explore, I quickly realized that this wouldn’t be difficult. Even the most famous cannibal stories, it turned out, had factual gaps that are only now being filled. In the case of the Donner Party, for example, I joined researchers whose scientific approach to the most infamous cannibalism-related event in American history had shed new light on this 19th-century tale of stranded pioneers.
I’ve tried to approach each example from a scientific viewpoint, delving into what I considered the most intriguing aspects of anthropology, evolution, and biology to provide the broadest yet most engaging natural history of this behavior. What happens to our bodies and minds under starvation conditions? Why are women better equipped to survive starvation than men? And what physiological extremes would compel someone to consume the body of a friend or even a family member?
With regard to criminal cannibalism (Jeffrey Dahmer and his ilk), I was less interested in the overhashed and gory details of the crimes than the reasons for our enthrallment with the overhashed and gory details. This is not a book that explores the minds of our so-called cannibal killers, though it does seem that instances of cannibalism-related crime may be on the uptick. I’ve also taken a hard line on sensationalism by highlighting and differentiating between physical evidence, ethno-history, unfounded information, and horse feathers.
In the pages ahead, you will encounter everything from cannibalism in utero to placenta-munching mothers who carry on a remarkably rich tradition of medicinal cannibalism. Yes, the ick factor is high, but I hope you’ll find this journey as fascinating and unusual as I have—a journey whose goal is to allow us to better understand the complexity of our natural world and the long and often blood-spattered history of our species.
With this in mind, why not grab a glass of red wine, and let’s get started.3
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1 In the 1940s and 1950s Fanny Farmer was the largest producer of candy in the U.S.
2 When Psycho opened on June 16, 1960, it was an instant hit, with long lines outside theaters and broken box office records all over the world. More than 50 years later the film is remembered best for its famous shower scene, one which reportedly caused many of our Greatest Generation to develop some degree of ablutophobia, the fear of bathing (from the Latin abluere, “to wash off”). Few theatergoers realized that the “blood” in Psycho was actually the popular chocolate syrup, Bosco (a fact the company somehow neglected to mention in their ads and TV commercials).
3 For suitable background music, for starters I suggest “Timothy”, the catchy one-hit-wonder by The Buoys. The song, written by Rupert Holmes (“The Pi?a Colada Song”), tells the tale of three trapped miners, two of whom survive by eating the title character. In 1971 “Timothy” reached number 17 on the Billboard Top 100, even though many major radio stations refused to play it. In an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the ban, executives at Scepter Records began circulating a rumor that Timothy was actually a mule.
1: Animal the Cannibal
Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
—Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, Holiday, 1963
I was knee-deep in a temporary pond that seemed to be composed of equal parts rainwater and cow shit when the cannibals began nibbling on my leg hair.
“If you stand still for long enough, they’ll definitely nip you,” came a voice from the shore.
The “they” were cannibalistic spadefoot toad larvae (commonly known as tadpoles) and the warning had come from Dr. David Pfennig, a biology professor at the University of North Carolina who had been studying these toads in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains for more than 20 years.
At Pfennig’s invitation, I had arrived at the American Museum of Natural History’s Southwestern Research Station in mid-July—just after the early-summer monsoons had turned cattle wallows into nursery ponds and newly hatched tadpoles into cannibals. But the real reason I had come to the ancestral land of Cochise and the Chiricahua Apaches wasn’t because the tadpoles were eating each other. It was because some of them weren’t eating each other. In fact, when this particular brood had hatched about a week earlier, they were all omnivores, feeding on plankton and the suspended organic matter referred to in higher-class journals as “detritus.” Then, two or three days later, something peculiar took place. Some of the tiny amphibians experienced dramatic growth spurts, their bodies ballooning in size overnight. Now, as I waded, scoop-net in hand, through Sky Ranch Pond (a slimy-bottomed mud hole with delusions of grandeur), the pumped-up proto-toads were four or five times larger than their poop-nibbling brethren.