Cannibal
From dKosopedia
A cannibal is an animal that eats others of its own species or genus.
Contents |
Frequency
Many species, including guppies and pigs, will eat their own young. Chimpanzees, the closest genetic species to homo sapiens sapiens, will kill and eat the unrelated young of other chimpanzees. The young of some species will also eat one another. Among the many natural horrors arguing against intelligent design (creationism lite) is the behavior of fetal nurse sharks. Female nurse sharks have two uteri and produce as many as 20 eggs in each. When the eggs harch the fetal nurse sharks begin feeding on one another and only one usually manages to emerge alive from the combat in each uterus.
Cannibalism can occur when a predator species population members is deprived of its normal prey. For example, research shows that polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska began to prey one another in 2005. Global warming is melting sea ice on which polar bears depend for hunting ringed seals, their primary prey species.
Eating members of a related species in the same genus is also considered cannibalism by some. When Homo Sapiens Sapiens killed and ate Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis, as is likely, that would be considered to be cannibalism by most experts, as they are both in Genus Homo.
Taboo
Some anthropologists believe that the primary reason for cannibalism being taboo in most contemporary human cultures is that it may spread disease. Ebola, for instance, can infect both chimpanzees and humans, so, eating chimps spreads that disease into humans. The taboo should thus apply to any species close enough to catch rare diseases. Still, people are the perfect protein food for people. Disease notwithstanding, humans contain exactly the right ingredients to feed other humans. That's why cannibalism continued to be practiced in the tropics into modern times. Cannibalism occurs frequently in accounts of some societies in sub-Saharan Africa, MesoAmerica, the Caribbean and Australasia. Cannibalism is also important in many traditional belief systems. For example, the martial tradition in Cambodia is for victors to cook and eat the liver of their defeated enemies.
The idea that cannibalism was endemic in the South Pacific before the arrival of Europeans is dismissed by some armchair anthropologists. In his 2005 book Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas Gannath Obeyesekere argues that the myth was the result of mis-comunication between Euuropean explorers and the island peoples they encountered.
Cannibalism is such an important taboo violation that it is unsurprising that it has been used in political propaganda. On June 13, 1940, for example, the SS weekly periodical Das Schwarze Korps accused French African troops fighting against the German invasion of France of cannibalism. By definition such people were not entitled to the rights of captured POWs under the Geneva Convention of 1929, and as may as 3000 French African troops were summarily executed after their capture.
In March 2007, 36 year old Papua New Guinean religious cult leader Steven Tari was arrested in Matepi, Papua New Guinea. Tari, who referred to himself as the "black Jesus" is believed to have raped, murdered and eated at least three women. Rather than a lone serial killer, the failed bible student has some six thousand followers as he travelled through mountain villages promising disciples gifts from heaven if they joined his congregation.
According to Gwendolyn Blue, Assistant Professor of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary, the image of the "cannibal creates such a reaction in us because it's a taboo and it's linked with a deep history of fears." So powerful is the emotional reaction that it may undermine research into the causes of "mad cow disease."
Links
- Barbarism
- Ritual Cannibalism
- Culinary Cannibalism
- Starvation Cannibalism
- Alferd Packer, Colorado Republican Cannibal
References
- Lawrence H. Keeley. 1996. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195119126.
- Gannath Obeyesekere. 2005 book Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. University of California Press. ISBN 0520243080.
- Natalie Angier. "Oh Mothers! One Thing They Aren't: Maternal." The New York Times. May 9, 2006. Pages D1, D4.
- "Die Garde der Zivilisation." Das Schwarze Korps 6, No. 23. June 6, 1940. p. 8.
- Raffael Scheck. 2006. Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521857996. Pp. 122-123.
- Dan Joling. "Polar Bears may be Turning to Cannibalism." Associated Press. June 12, 2006.
Extrnal Links
- Learning to Love Cannibals
- Easter Island: Your Flesh Is Stuck Between My Teeth
- Neanderthal Cannibals
- Suburban Cannibals
Cannibalism as Crime
- Peter Davidson. 2006. Death by Cannibal : Criminals with an Appetite for Murder. Berkeley. ISBN 0425207412.
Cannibalism in Popular Culture
- Herman Melville's Typee, a semi-factual account of Melville's voyage to the Pacific Island of Nuku Hiva, where he spent several weeks living among the island's cannibal inhabitants, after which he fled the island fearing to be eaten.
- In the 1936 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street a barber kills his patients for their money and turns them into meat pies. The film inspired a remake in 1982.
- Hannibal Lecter, a fictional character created by Thomas Harris in the 1983 novel Red Dragon, as well as Harris's 1992 The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. The character and his cannibalistic acts were made even more famous when adapted to film, though the original Red Dragon adaptation, Manhunter, never states or implies Lecter's cannibalism.
Cannibalism in Humor
- The Lifeboat Sketch from the Second Series of Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Nightmare Cafeteria, the third and final segment of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror V. To respond to the overwhelming number of students in detention, the teachers at Springfield Elementary School start to eat all the children. This was a parody of Soylent Green.
- Mo Yan's The Republic of Wine: A Novel describes a province in modern China were children are eaten.
Cannibalism in Science Fiction
- H. G. Wells's 1886 novel The Time Machine features cannibalism by the posthumanMorlocks.
- Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land non-human Martian eating their own dead friends is an act of great respect.
- In Soylent Green, a 1973 science fiction film starring conservative activits and mediocre actor Charlton Heston, Soylent Green is the processed remains of corpses rendered into small green crackers.
Cannibalism in Science Fiction
- Norman Spinrad. 1967, 1989 reprint. The Men in the Jungle. HarperCollins, ISBN 0586204202.