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Human cannibalism

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"Cannibal" redirects here. For other uses, see Cannibal (disambiguation).
This article is about consuming one's own species. For usage about marketing and mechanical recycling, see Cannibalization.


Cannibalism in Brazil in 1557 as alleged by Hans Staden.

Cannibalism (from Spanish [caníbal] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), in connection with alleged cannibalism among the Caribs), also called anthropophagy (from Greek [[wiktionary:ἄνθρωπος|[anthropos] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)]] "man" and [[wiktionary:-phage|[phagein] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)]] "to consume") is the act or practice of humans consuming other humans. In zoology, the term cannibalism is extended to refer to any species consuming members of its own kind.

Care should be taken to distinguish among ritual cannibalism sanctioned by a cultural code, cannibalism by necessity occurring in extreme situations of famine, and cannibalism by mentally disturbed people.

Origin of the term

Oxford Dictionary of Etymology,[1] which constitutes a verbal confluence:

  • Columbus originally assumed the natives of Cuba were subjects of the Great Khan of China or 'Kannibals'.[citation needed] Prepared to meet the Great Khan, he had aboard Arabic and Hebrew speakers to translate.
  • Then thinking he heard Caniba or Canima, he thought that these were the dog-headed men (cane-bal) described in Mandeville. The Caribs called themselves Kalinago which, according to some scholars, meant 'valiant man'.[2]

Richard Hakluyt's Voyages introduced the word to English. Shakespeare transposed it, anagram-fashion, to name his monster servant in The Tempest 'Caliban'.

Cannibalism in Muscovy and Lithuania 1571

Overview

There is an innate disgust with the term cannibalism, which strikes at the heart of the most base of human activities. This social stigma has been used as an aspect of propaganda against an enemy by accusing them of acts of cannibalism to separate them from their humanity. New research points to the fact that early man practiced cannibalism. Genetic markers commonly found in modern humans all over the world could be evidence that our earliest ancestors were cannibals, according to new research. Scientists suggest that today some people carry a gene that evolved as protection against brain diseases that can be spread by consuming human flesh.[3]

The Carib tribe acquired a longstanding reputation as cannibals following the recording of their legends by Fr. Breton in the 17th century. Some controversy exists over the accuracy of these legends and the prevalence of actual cannibalism in the culture.

According to a decree by Queen Isabella of Castile and also later under British colonial rule, slavery was considered to be illegal unless the people involved were so depraved that their conditions as slaves would be better than as free men. Demonstrations of cannibalistic tendencies were considered evidence of such depravity, and hence reports of cannibalism became widespread.[4] This legal requirement might have led to conquerors exaggerating the extent of cannibalistic practices, or inventing them altogether.

The Korowai tribe of southeastern Papua could be one of the last surviving tribes in the world engaging in cannibalism.

Marvin Harris has analysed cannibalism and other food taboos. He argued that it was common when humans lived in small bands, but disappeared in the transition to states, the Aztecs being an exception.

A well known case of mortuary cannibalism is that of the Fore tribe in New Guinea which resulted in the spread of the disease Kuru. It is often believed to be well documented although no eye-witnesses have ever been at hand. Some scholars argue that although post-mortem dismemberment was the practice during funeral rites, cannibalism was not. Marvin Harris theorizes that it happened during a famine period coincident with the arrival of Europeans and was rationalized as a religious rite.

In pre-modern medicine, an explanation for cannibalism stated that it came about within a black acrimonious humour, which, being lodged in the linings of the ventricle, produced the voracity for human flesh.[5]

Historical accounts

Early history era

  • In Germany some experts like Emil Carthaus and Dr. Bruno Bernhard found 1,891 signs of cannibalism in the caves at the Hönne (BC 1000 - 700).
  • Cannibalism is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:25-30). Two women made a pact to eat their children, but after the first mother cooked her child, the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. Almost exactly the same story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70AD.
  • Cannibalism was documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years (AD 1064-1073).

Middle Ages

  • Cannibalism was practiced by the participants of the First Crusade. Due to lack of food some of the crusaders fed on the bodies of their dead opponents after the capture of the Arab town of Ma'arrat al-Numan. Amin Maalouf also discusses further cannibalism incidents on the march to Jerusalem, and to the efforts made to delete mention of these from western history. (Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes. Schocken, 1989, ISBN 0-8052-0898-4).
  • In Europe during the Great Famine of 1315–1317, at a time when Dante was writing one of the most significant pieces of literature in western history and the Renaissance was just beginning, there were widespread reports of cannibalism throughout Europe. However, many historians have since dismissed these reports as fanciful and ambiguous. The canto 33 of Dante's Inferno ambiguously refers to Ugolino della Gherardesca eating his own sons while starving in prison.
  • Cannibalism was reported in Mexico, the flower wars of the Aztec Empire being considered as the most massive manifestation of cannibalism, but the Aztec accounts, written after the conquest, reported that human flesh was considered by itself to be of no value, and usually thrown away and replaced with turkey. There are only two Aztec accounts on this subject: one comes from the Ramirez codex, and the most elaborated account on this subject comes from Juan Bautista de Pomar, the grandson of Netzahualcoyotl, tlatoani of Texcoco. The accounts differ little. Juan Bautista wrote that after the sacrifice, the Aztec warriors received the body of the victim, then they boiled it to separate the flesh from the bones, then they would cut the meat in very little pieces, and send them to important people, even from other towns; the recipient would rarely eat the meat, since they considered it an honour, but the meat had no value by itself. In exchange, the warrior would get jewels, decorated blankets, precious feathers and slaves; the purpose was to encourage successful warriors. There were only two ceremonies a year where war captives were sacrificed. Although the Aztec empire has been called "The Cannibal Kingdom", there is no evidence in support of it being a widespread custom.
  • Aztecs believed that there were man-eating tribes in the south of Mexico; the only illustration known showing an act of cannibalism shows an Aztec being eaten by a tribe from the south (Florentine Codex). In the siege of Tenochtitlan, there was a severe hunger in the city; people reportedly ate lizards, grass, insects, and mud from the lake, but there are no reports on cannibalism of the dead bodies.
  • The friar Diego de Landa reported about Yucatán instances, Yucatan before and after the Conquest, translated from Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, 1566 (New York: Dover Publications, 1978: 4), and there have been similar reports by Purchas from Popayán, Colombia, and from the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, where human flesh was called long-pig (Alanna King, ed., Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas, London: Luzac Paragon House, 1987: 45-50). It is recorded about the natives of the captaincy of Sergipe in Brazil, They eat human flesh when they can get it, and if a woman miscarries devour the abortive immediately. If she goes her time out, she herself cuts the navel-string with a shell, which she boils along with the secondine, and eats them both. (See E. Bowen, 1747: 532.)]]

Early modern era

  • When European slave-traders caught masses of Africans and deported them on their ships, Africans - having no knowledge of a slave-based economy - widely assumed that they did it for their mere greed for human flesh, and that people taken on the ships were going to be eaten in an oversea land.
  • Howard Zinn describes cannibalism by early Jamestown settlers in his book A People's History of the United States.
  • An event occurring in the western New York territory ("Seneca Country") U.S.A., during 1687 was later described in this letter sent to France: “On the 13th (of July) about four o’clock in the afternoon, having passed through two dangerous defiles (narrow gorges), we arrived at the third where we were vigorously attacked by 800 Senecas, 200 of whom fired, wishing to attack our rear whilst the remainder of their force would attack our front, but the resistance they met produced such a great consternation that they soon resolved to fly. All our troops were so overpowered by the extreme heat and the long journey we had made that we were obliged to bivouac (camp) on the field until the morrow. We witnessed the painful Sight of the usual cruelties of the savages who cut the dead into quarters, as in slaughter houses, in order to put them into the pot (dinner); the greater number were opened while still warm that their blood might be drank. our rascally outaouais (Ottawa Indians) distinguished themselves particularly by these barbarities and by their poltroonery (cowardice), for they withdrew from the combat;..." -- Canadian Governor, the Marquis de Denonville.
  • In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, a satirical pamphlet in which he proposed that poor Irish families sell their children to be eaten, thereby earning income for the family. It was written as an attack on the indifference of landlords to the state of their tenants and on the political economists with their calculations on the schemes to raise income.
  • Captain James Cook, the famous navigator, was killed in Hawai'i in 1779; it is strongly alleged that his body was ritually consumed by the local cannibals.
  • The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Medusa in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft.
  • The Acadian Recorder (a newspaper published out of Halifax in the early 1800s) published an article in its May 27, 1826, issue telling of the wreck of the ship 'Francis Mary', en route from New Brunswick to Liverpool, England, with a load of timber. The article describes how the survivors sustained themselves by eating those who perished.[6]
  • In the 1870s, in the U.S. state of Colorado, a man named Alferd Packer was accused of killing and eating his travelling companions. He was later released due to a legal technicality, and throughout his life maintained that he was innocent of the murders. However, modern forensic evidence, unavailable during Packer's lifetime, indicates that he did not murder and/or eat several of his companions. The story of Alferd Packer was satirically told in the Trey Parker comedy/horror/musical film, Cannibal! The Musical, released in 1996 by Troma Studios. The main food court at the University of Colorado at Boulder is named the Alferd Packer Grill.

Modern era

  • A well-documented case occurred in Chichijima in 1945,[citation needed] when Japanese soldiers killed and ate eight downed American airmen. This case was investigated in 1947 in a war-crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, five (Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii and Dr. Teraki) were found guilty and hanged.
  • John F. Kennedy during his service in World War II believed that a boy from the Solomon Islands that was his servant bragged of eating a Japanese soldier. Native islanders also in their historical culture also practiced headhunting.[7]
  • The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which is said to be one of the origins of the defense of necessity in modern common law. The case dealt with four crewmembers of an English yacht which were cast away in a storm some 1600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days one of the crew fell unconscious due to a combination of the famine and drinking sea-water. The others (one objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. The fact that not everyone had agreed to draw lots contravened The Custom of the Sea and was held to be murder. At the trial was the first recorded use of the defense of necessity.
  • New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed by accident, and cooked and ate it. He reported that, "It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."[8]
  • References to cannibalizing the enemy has also been seen in poetry written when China was repressed in the Song Dynasty, though the cannibalizing sounds more like poetic symbolism to express the hatred towards the enemy. (See Man Jiang Hong) The Chinese hate-cannibalism was reported during WWII also. (Key Ray Chong:Cannibalism in China, 1990)
  • In his book Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, James Bradley details several instances of cannibalism of WWII Allied prisoners by their Japanese captors. The author claims that this included not only ritual cannibalization of the livers of freshly-killed prisoners, but also the cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh.
  • Cannibalism was reported by at least one reliable witness, the journalist Neil Davis during the South East Asian wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis reported that Khmer (Cambodian) troops ritually ate portions of the slain enemy, typically the liver. However he, and many refugees, also report that cannibalism was practised non-ritually when there was no food to be found. This usually occurred when towns and villages were under Khmer Rouge control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation. Any civilian caught participating in cannibalism would have been immediately executed.[9]
  • Cannibalism has been reported in several recent African conflicts, including the Second Congo War, and the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Typically, this is apparently done in desperation, as during peacetime cannibalism is much less frequent. Even so, it is sometimes directed at certain groups believed to be relatively helpless, such as Congo Pygmies. It is also reported by some that African traditional healers sometimes use the body parts of children in their medicine. In the 1970s the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was reputed to practise cannibalism, but the stories were never conclusively proved.[citation needed]
  • It has been reported by defectors and refugees that, at the height of the famine in the 1990s, cannibalism was sometimes practiced in North Korea.
  • Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity, supplied photographic and other documentary evidence of ritualised cannibal feasts among the participants in Liberia's internecine strife in the 1980s to representatives of Amnesty International who were on a fact-finding mission to the neighbouring state of Guinea. However, Amnesty International declined to publicise this material, the Secretary-General of the organization, Pierre Sane, stating at the time in an internal communication that "what they do with the bodies after human rights violations are committed is not part of our mandate or concern". The existence of cannibalism on a wide scale in Liberia and Sierra Leone was subsequently verified in video documentaries by Journeyman Pictures of London.
  • In September 2006, Australian television crews from 60 Minutes and Today Tonight attempted to rescue a 6-year-old boy who they believed would be ritually cannibalised by his tribe, the Korowai, from Papua, Indonesia.

Cannibalism by necessity

Cannibalism is also sometimes practiced as a last resort by people suffering from famine. In the US, it is known that the group of settlers known as the Donner party resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the mountains for the winter. The last survivors of Sir John Franklin's Expedition were found to have resorted to cannibalism in their final push across King William Island towards the Back River.[10] There are disputed claims that cannibalism was widespread during the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II,[11][12][13] and during the Chinese Civil War and the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China. Cannibalism was also practiced by Japanese troops as recently as WWII in the Pacific theater.[14] A more recent example is of leaked stories from North Korean refugees of cannibalism practiced during and after a famine that occurred sometime between 1995 and 1997.[15]

Lowell Thomas records the cannibalisation of some of the surviving crew members of the Dumaru after the ship exploded and sank during the First World War in his book, The Wreck of the Dumaru (1930).

Documentary and forensic evidence supports eyewitness accounts of cannibalism by Japanese troops during World War II. This practice was resorted to when food ran out, with Japanese soldiers killing and eating each other when enemy civilians were not available. In other cases, enemy soldiers were executed and then dissected. A well-documented case occurred in Chichi Jima in 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and ate eight downed American airmen. This case was investigated in 1947 in a war-crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, five (Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii and Dr. Teraki) were found guilty and hanged.

When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into the Andes on October 13, 1972, the survivors resorted to eating the deceased during their 72 days in the mountains. Their story was later recounted in the books Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors and Miracle in the Andes as well as the film Alive by Frank Marshall and the documentary Alive: 20 Years Later.

Cannibalism as cultural libel

See also: Blood libel

Unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism disproportionately relate cases of cannibalism among cultures that are already otherwise despised, feared, or are little known. In antiquity, Greek reports of anthropophagy were related to distant, non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in myth to the 'primitive' chthonic world that preceded the coming of the Olympian gods: see the explicit rejection of human sacrifice in the cannibal feast prepared for the Olympians by Tantalus of his son Pelops. In 1994, printed booklets reported that in a Yugoslavian concentration camp of Manjaca the Bosnian refugees were forced to eat each other's bodies. The reports were false.

William Arens, author of The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York : Oxford University Press, 1979; ISBN 0-19-502793-0), questions the credibility of reports of cannibalism and argues that the description by one group of people of another people as cannibals is a consistent and demonstrable ideological and rhetorical device to establish perceived cultural superiority. Arens bases his thesis on a detailed analysis of numerous "classic" cases of cultural cannibalism cited by explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists. His findings were that many were steeped in racism, unsubstantiated, or based on second-hand or hearsay evidence. In combing the literature he could not find a single credible eye-witness account. And, as he points out, the hallmark of ethnography is the observation of a practice prior to description. In the end he concluded that cannibalism was not the widespread prehistoric practice it was claimed to be; that anthropologists were too quick to pin the cannibal label on a group based not on responsible research but on our own culturally-determined pre-conceived notions, often motivated by a need to exoticize. He wrote:

"Anthropologists have made no serious attempt to disabuse the public of the widespread notion of the ubiquity of anthropophagists. … in the deft hands and fertile imaginations of anthropologists, former or contemporary anthropophagists have multiplied with the advance of civilization and fieldwork in formerly unstudied culture areas. …The existence of man-eating peoples just beyond the pale of civilization is a common ethnographic suggestion."

Aren's findings are controversial, and his argument is often mischaracterized as "cannibals don't and never did exist," when in the end the book is actually a call for a more responsible and reflexive approach to anthropological research. At any rate, the book ushered in an era of rigorous combing of the cannibalism literature. By Aren's later admission, some cannibalism claims came up short, others were reinforced.

Conversely, Michel de Montaigne's essay "Of cannibals" introduced a new multicultural note in European civilization. Montaigne wrote that "one calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to." By using a title like that and describing a fair indigean society, Montaigne may have wished to provoke a surprise in the reader of his Essays.

Similarly, Japanese scholars (e.g. Kuwabara Jitsuzo) branded the Chinese culture as cannibalistic in certain propagandistic works — which served as ideological justification for the assumed superiority of the Japanese during World War II.

Sexually motivated cannibalism

Main article: Vorarephilia

The wide use of the Internet has highlighted that thousands of people harbor sexualized cannibalistic fantasies. Discussion forums and user groups exist for the exchange of pictures and stories of such fantasies, a good example of which is provided by the works of Dolcett. Typically, people in such forums fantasize about eating or being eaten by members of their sexually preferred gender. The cannibalism fetish or paraphilia is one of the most extreme sexual fetishes. Very rarely do such fetishes leave the realm of fantasies, most being satisfied with pornographic stories, fetish art or photo modification (or completely computer generated images), with some enacting their fantasies in sexual roleplaying.

There have however been extreme cases of real life sexualized cannibalism, such as those of the serial killers Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Sascha Spesiwtsew, Armin Meiwes, Fritz Haarmann ("the Butcher of Hanover"), and Nicolas Claux.

Another well-known case involved a Japanese student of English literature, Issei Sagawa, who grew fond of Renée Hartevelt, a 25-year-old Dutch woman he met while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1981. He eventually murdered and ate her, writing a graphic yet poignant description of the act. Declared unfit to stand trial in France, his wealthy father had him extradited back to Japan where he eventually regained his freedom. The way he reveled in what he did made him a national celebrity, and he has written several bestselling novels and continues to write a nationally syndicated column. The story inspired the 1981 Stranglers song "La Folie" and the 1983 Rolling Stones song "Too Much Blood".

In December 2002, a highly unusual case was uncovered in the town of Rotenburg in Hesse, Germany. In 2001 Armin Meiwes, a 41-year-old computer administrator, had posted messages like his more recent ones (see messages) in Internet newsgroups on the subject of cannibalism, repeatedly looking for "a young Boy, between 18 and 25 y/o" to butcher. At least one of his requests was successful: Jürgen Brandes, another computer administrator, offered himself to be slaughtered. The two men agreed on a meeting. Jürgen Brandes was, with his consent, killed and partially eaten by Meiwes, who, as a result, was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail for manslaughter (Totschlag, second-degree murder). In April 2005, the German Federal Court of Justice ordered a retrial upon appeal of the prosecution, and in May 2006 Meiwes was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The band Rammstein took up this case in the song Mein Teil.

This was not the first consensual killing mediated through the Internet (see Sharon Lopatka), but it is the first such known case of consensual cannibalism.

Cannibal themes in mythology and religion

File:Goya-Saturnus.png
"Saturn devouring his children", Francisco de Goya.

Cannibalism features prominently in many mythologies; cannibal ogresses appear in folklore around the world, the witch in Hansel and Gretel being a popular example.

A number of stories in Greek mythology involve cannibalism, in particular cannibalism of close family members, for example the stories of Thyestes, Tereus and especially Cronus, who was Saturn in the Roman pantheon. The story of Tantalus also parallels this. These mythologies inspired Shakespeare's cannibalism scene in Titus Andronicus.

The opening of Hell is a mouth. According to Catholic dogma, bread and wine are transubstantiated into the real flesh and blood of Jesus (the eucharist), which are then distributed by the priest to the faithful. The accusations of cannibalism made against ancient Christians may reflect earlier versions of such beliefs but should also be understood as a form of libel (see above), expressing anxiety and concern about a new and somewhat secretive religious group. Christians in turn accused their opponents, such as the Gnostic sect of the Borborites, of cannibalism and ritual abuse.

In the Qur'an Backbiters are stigmatized as those who eat the flesh of the dead body of the person they backbited.

In Hindu mythology, cannibals are usually forest-dwellers that refuse to join society and are known as Raksasa. However, there have also been Raksasas such as Ravana, said to be shape-shifting creatures.

Cannibalism as sympathetic magic

Cannibalism as "sympathetic magic" is a subset of the general idea of eating a totem to absorb its distinctive power, much as a tiger penis might be eaten to promote virility. By eating our enemy, we take his power into ourselves. Some also consider this idea to be at the root of the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation: to acquire divinity (immortality, sinlessnes) by absorption, by eating the flesh of God. (However, the more likely Biblical theological and historical roots of this are pertaining to the sacrificial offering of Christ and its reference to the representations in the Jewish Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was being celebrated during the Last Supper.)

Non-cannibalistic consumption of human-derived substances

It is interesting to note that currently the cheapest source of material from which food grade L-cysteine may be purified in high yield is human hair. Its use in food products is widespread worldwide.

Few people identify the compulsion to gnaw and bite nails or pieces of skin from fingers as cannibalism, because it is not the intentional harvest of a food item. Similarly, intentionally consuming one's own flesh or body parts, such as sucking blood from wounds, is generally not seen to be cannibalism; ingesting one's own blood from an unintentional lesion such as a nose-bleed or an ulcer is clearly not intentional harvesting and consequently not cannibalistic.

Likewise it has to be questioned whether the practice of some South American peoples to consume the bone ashes of their deceased relatives can be considered cannibalistic.

It is possible for some mothers to gain possession of their afterbirth or placenta once their child is born. Some people eat this placenta material as a delicacy. See placentophagy.

There are many accounts of drinking urine and coprophagia. These may be toward fetishistic, allegedly homeopathic, or survival-based ends. Aboard space flights and the International Space Station, urine is regularly filtered for drinking water.

Non-human cannibalism

Main article: Cannibalism (zoology)
File:Mormon cricket cannibals.jpg
Three Mormon crickets eating a fourth Mormon cricket

Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded for more than 1500 species (this estimate is from 1981, and likely a gross underestimation). In sexual cannibalism as recorded for example for the female red-back spider, black widow spider, praying mantis, and scorpion the female eats the male after mating (though the frequency of this is often overstated).

The more common form of cannibalism is size structured cannibalism, in which large individuals consume smaller ones. In such size-structured populations, cannibalism can be responsible for 8% (Belding Ground Squirrel) to 95% (dragonfly larvae) of the total mortality, making it a significant and important factor for population and community dynamics. Such size structured cannibalism has commonly been observed in the wild for a variety of taxa, including octopus, bats, toads, fish, monitor lizards, red-backed salamanders and several stream salamanders, crocodiles, spiders, crustaceans, birds (crows, barred owls), mammals, and a vast number of insects, such as dragonflies, diving beetles, back swimmers, water striders, flour beetles, caddisflies and many more. Unlike previously believed, cannibalism is not just a result of extreme food shortage or artificial conditions, but commonly occurs under natural conditions in a variety of species. In fact, scientists have acknowledged that it is ubiquitous in natural communities. Cannibalism seems to be especially prevalent in aquatic communities, in which up to ~90% of the organisms engage in cannibalism at some point of the life cycle. Cannibalism is also not restricted to carnivorous species, but is commonly found in herbivores and detritivores. Another common form of cannibalism is infanticide. Classical examples include the chimpanzees where groups of adult males have been observed to attack and consume their infants, and lions, where adult males commonly kill infants when they take over a new harem after replacing the previous dominant males. Also, gerbils, pigs raised for meat and hamsters eat their young if they are stillborn, or if the mothers are especially stressed.

In the agricultural industry, savaging is the aggressive or cannibalistic behavior of mother livestock towards newborn young. This is especially prevalent in pigs.

In the mid-1980s a book entitled "To Serve Man: a Cookbook for Humans" was sold at various science-fiction conventions. It had recipes for such delicacies as Long Pig.

Main article: Cannibalism in popular culture

Cannibalism is a recurring theme in literature and film. Well-known examples include:

  • The Doctor Who story The Two Doctors features a gourmet cannibal named Shockeye.
  • In the Torchwood episode "Countrycide" it is discovered that a whole village of cannibals kill and eat travellers every ten years as part of a "harvest".
  • Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus
  • The film Soylent Green, a 1973 Charlton Heston movie is about overpopulation, starvation, and one obvious solution for both problems.
  • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series, which features the monstrous killer Leatherface and his cannibalistic family.
  • The film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover by Peter Greenaway has a scene featuring cannibalism.
  • Hannibal Lecter, a fictional character created by Thomas Harris in the 1981 novel Red Dragon who also appeared in Harris's 1988 The Silence of the Lambs, 1999 Hannibal and 2006 Hannibal Rising
  • The play and musical Sweeney Todd features a revengeful barber and his associate who grind up the barber's victims and serve them in tasty meat pies.
  • The musical Cannibal! The Musical, is a light-hearted take on the true story of Alferd Packer.
  • In Futurama, there is a planet called Cannibalon which is home to cannibals.
  • The Simpsons has several references, the most significant being in the episode Treehouse of Horror V, where cannibalism takes place at Springfield Elementary School when Lunchlady Doris makes school lunches out of the students.
  • In an episode of The Young Ones the cast decide to eat their least popular member (Neil) when they are trapped in their house, submerged in a flood.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, there is a reference to 'long pork' along with a tribe of cannibals on the island of the Pelegostos.
  • In an episode of "South Park" Scott Tenorman is tricked by Eric Cartman into eating his recently murdered parents in a bowl of chili.
  • In the "Stephen King" short story "Survivor Type" a man is stranded on an island and is forced to eat his legs, arms, earlobes, and other body parts.
  • In the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" King Arthur and the other Knights of the Round Table are forced at one point in their journey to eat Sir Robin's ministrels (with much rejoicing afterwards)
  • The song Mein Teil by the German band Rammstein, makes reference to the case of Armin Meiwes. A notorious German Cannibal.
  • In the 1989 horror movie Parents, a seemingly normal 1950s suburban family regularly engages in cannibalism.
  • The Jack Ketchum novels Off Season and Offspring, both deal with cannibalistic people living in the United States who hunt their prey.
  • The 2003 horror film Wrong Turn, starring Eliza Dushku, was also about a group of cannibalistic "mountain men" living in the woods of West Virginia who murder those who venture too deep into the wilderness.
  • In one of the stories told in the film Sin City (film), a serial killer is featured who murders women and eats parts of their bodies.
  • The crime-thriller Feed (film), has a prologue story which features a man eating the body part of another man who willingly allowed him to do so.
  • A film entitled Ravenous, is about a group of men who become stranded in the wilds of 1840's California and must resort to cannibalism to survive.
  • Alive (1993 film) was based on the true story of a group of people whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains, and in order to survive, resorted to eating their deceased companions.
  • In "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", in the scene where most of the characters are eating dinner, a sheet is pulled off the table revealing a dismembered corpse of the character "Eddie" displayed under a sheet of glass and the characters are shown to have possibly eaten parts of his body
  • In American Psycho, serial killer Patrick Bateman, eats some of his victim's body parts, most notably the brain.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Death Eater Fenrir Greyback, enjoys cannibalizing his victims, (especially children) even out of his werewolf form.
  • Rapper Brotha Lynch Hung, a crip rapper notorious for his gruesome lyrics, has mentioned eating human meat in many of his songs, most vividly in Return of The Baby Killa. Lynch has also released a film called Now Eat, where Lynch goes on a bloody rampage, killing and eating many people.
  • Zombies are popularly depicted as cannibalistic in many works of fiction.
  • Suddenly Last Summer a 1950's early film based on the play of Tennesse Williams of the same name,portrays the mysterious killing of a character Sebastien by a group of Cannibals.
  • Death Metal act Cannibal Corpse is well-known for their extreme use of lyrics appealing to cannibalism, as well as many other subjects such as murder, rape, mutilation, body dismembership, etc.
  • In a popular Death Metal song "Eaten" by Bloodbath the protagonist tells about his desire to be cannibalized.
  • American movie " Eating Raoul"(1982)the main characters eat the locksmith Raoul.
  • Kevin from Frank Miller's Sin City is another notable cannibalistic character.
  • In the arthouse video-art movie "Drawing Restraint 9" by Matthew Barney featuring his partner Bjork there is a climatic scene where the couple inact a ritualistic transformation into whales while cutting each other's limbs and taste a small piece of flesh from each other which is peculiarly reminiscent of Japanese Sashimi.

See also

The film 'Silence of the lambs' there is a running theme of cannibalism through, hence the character name 'Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter', played by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

In the 1974 Film - 'The Hills Have Eyes', and the subsequent 2006 remake, a mutated outcast family who live in caves in a mountain range systematically slaughter and eat anyone they can catch on a nearby highway.

References

  1. ^ http://www.etymonline.com
  2. ^ Raymond Breton, 1647, Relations on the Caribs of Dominica and Guadalupe; Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, Volume XIV, 1905: 451.
  3. ^ ""Cannibalism Normal?"". "National Geographic". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  4. ^ Brief history of cannibal controversies; David F. Salisbury, August 15, 2001
  5. ^ Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) Anthropophagy.
  6. ^ The Acadian Recorder, Saturday, May 27, 1826
  7. ^ PT 109 by Donovan (book)
  8. ^ William Bueller Seabrook. Jungle Ways London, Bombay, Sydney: George G. Harrap and Company, 1931
  9. ^ Tim Bowden. One Crowded Hour. ISBN 0-00-217496-0
  10. ^ Beattie, Owen and Geiger, John (2004). Frozen in Time. ISBN 1-55365-060-3.
  11. ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,605454,00.html
  12. ^ http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/aeer13_2/Dickenson.html
  13. ^ http://www.sovietarmy.com/books/leningrad.html
  14. ^ Tanaka, Toshiyuki, and Tanaka, Yuki (1996). Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. ISBN 0-8133-2717-2.
  15. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41966-2003Oct3?language=printer
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