Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Robert, I've
Speaker 1: got a burning question for you. All right, I would
Speaker 1: like to know if you have ever tasted huge food.
Speaker 1: Huge Food. I'm not sure I know what that is. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope that you're going to say now, because because well,
Speaker 1: it's non existent. Actually that's the first thing. Otherwise I
Speaker 1: would worry a little bit if you said, yes, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's actually a spoof product. And it was supposedly supposed
Speaker 1: to be a soy based food product designed to resemble
Speaker 1: human flesh and taste and texture. And so the website
Speaker 1: was up for about a year, made two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and it had all these great products that you just
Speaker 1: never could buy. So if you want to, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were really wanting a finger or an arm
Speaker 1: or something but didn't necessarily want to campbalize someone, you
Speaker 1: could in theory. So did they replicate and they replicated
Speaker 1: the taste or the form, the taste and the texture. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you really get logical about it, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure there's anything that weird about it, not compared
Speaker 1: to say, well, okay, you're vegetarian, right, yes, okay, do
Speaker 1: you ever have like soysage or like a soy dog,
Speaker 1: or you know, any kind of or whatever. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have like meat simulated products. We'll see like that seems like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not unlike that you you don't want
Speaker 1: to actually eat meat, but you're okay with something that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And yet there's a disconnect because sometimes when I pull
Speaker 1: out a piece of what's supposed to be bacon and
Speaker 1: I look at it and it's a little disconcerting. So
Speaker 1: I'm frying up the bacon, and yet I don't eat bacon,
Speaker 1: and I don't or they want bacon. But I do
Speaker 1: have to say, there is that that bacon taste that
Speaker 1: you can never really replicate. Yeah, well even if you're
Speaker 1: but I guess even if you're frying up some soy bacon,
Speaker 1: it is going to look like bacon and not say,
Speaker 1: like a pig's face. Like you can't get a soy
Speaker 1: pig face, right, Maybe you can. Maybe it's a it's
Speaker 1: going to be a small market market that may actually
Speaker 1: carry that. They do some pretty funky stuff with it.
Speaker 1: So this you know, and in discussing like why is
Speaker 1: this creepy and this not you know, uh with the
Speaker 1: with the HOOFU. I mean that really comes down to
Speaker 1: the basic question about cannibalism in in nature as a whole,
Speaker 1: because it's it's one of those things when you really
Speaker 1: look at it, there's kind of like the animal version
Speaker 1: and then well there's really only the animal version. But yes,
Speaker 1: well but but on top of the animal version. Um,
Speaker 1: And this is like, you know, as Kennels relates to
Speaker 1: just any kind of creature you might find might find
Speaker 1: that practices it, and a lot of animals practice it. Um.
Speaker 1: If you layer human culture and human society and our
Speaker 1: complex web of emotions and values on top of that,
Speaker 1: it just really complicates the matter and you get into
Speaker 1: this this area where cannibalism is really this I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's it's an outrageous thing. It's
Speaker 1: like it it raises outrage from people for us who
Speaker 1: would like to think that we have morals and uh,
Speaker 1: social values and we all cooperate with each other, we
Speaker 1: we try not to eat each other humans. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I found this great. To quote from Tom Sorel from
Speaker 1: the University of Birmingham and uh, he said. Quote in
Speaker 1: intellectual history, cannibals stand for alien and exotic human being,
Speaker 1: specimens of our species who realize its darkest possibilities, usually
Speaker 1: in places far removed from civilization. Cannibalism. Cannibalism both expresses
Speaker 1: natural law and and contravenes it. So right, so there
Speaker 1: that there's the rub, right, yeah, and it happens in
Speaker 1: nature and it's perfectly nut roll there, right, And yet
Speaker 1: we can't help but WinCE a little bit. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: hear that. You know, if you start hearing that, somebody's
Speaker 1: like certain, you know, grinding up corpses, you know, to
Speaker 1: serving the restaurant, people just get outraged. There's a great
Speaker 1: money python skit where it involves like grinding up corpses
Speaker 1: and and and feeding it to people, and it's like
Speaker 1: the they break the fourth wall and like the the
Speaker 1: audience just starts throwing things. You know. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: that outrageous a concept. You want to know where your
Speaker 1: meat pie came from. But it's very like I say,
Speaker 1: it's very widespread in the animal kingdom, and it is
Speaker 1: a major mortality factor in the biology of numerous species.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna sort of walk through the We're not
Speaker 1: really gonna go with pros and cons, but first of those,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at the case for cannibalism in nature
Speaker 1: and some of the ways that it's practiced, and there
Speaker 1: then we're gonna look at the case against and for
Speaker 1: the most part we're gonna avoid the whole question of
Speaker 1: cannibalism um within the larger human institution. But we do
Speaker 1: have an excellent article on the website by Josh Clark
Speaker 1: about that, so I highly recommend checking that out if
Speaker 1: you want to get more into the you know, the
Speaker 1: serial killer cannibal topics, right or endo cannibalism, all the
Speaker 1: different types of cannibalism that exists. All right, So, um,
Speaker 1: the big thing for me when I when I was
Speaker 1: researching this is it a lot of it really comes
Speaker 1: down to energy, right, because if you're an organism on
Speaker 1: this planet, unless you're a plant that's generating a lot
Speaker 1: of its energy from photo through photosynthus um, and even that,
Speaker 1: you're not not all the energies necessarily coming from the sun.
Speaker 1: But for the rest of us, we're having to consume
Speaker 1: other little bundles of energy to to keep our energy going.
Speaker 1: So we're having to eat other organisms. Now we might
Speaker 1: we might not eat um, you know, we might only
Speaker 1: eat plants, or we might only eat animals, but we're
Speaker 1: having to eat something. So it's this constant. This is
Speaker 1: huge pyramid you know of of predators preying on other
Speaker 1: forms of energy, and even bugs. Let's not discount bugs.
Speaker 1: Some bugs and they like them quite a bit. Well,
Speaker 1: they're supposedly quite good. I've never had one. Have you
Speaker 1: had a bug? No? No, but it isn't I think
Speaker 1: it's a street food Vietnam. Yeah, suppose there was supposedly
Speaker 1: some in Thailand. I didn't get to try it when
Speaker 1: I was there. Yeah, it's supposed to be incredibly nutritious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I tried if I if I had the chance, But
Speaker 1: it's never offered on you know, the local menus. No,
Speaker 1: it's not your in Atlanta where the palmeta bug salads.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You'll have to start a food truck
Speaker 1: based on that. So, like we said, the it all
Speaker 1: comes down to energy, it comes down to predation, and
Speaker 1: cannibalism is basically a pet predator prey interaction within a species.
Speaker 1: So it's well a member of this species preying on
Speaker 1: a member of another of the same species. So like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you get into discussions of odd, uh,
Speaker 1: did you know humans eat neder nehnderthals and did neahnderthals
Speaker 1: eat humans? That's not really cannibalism. It's kind of creepy,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's it would be two different species
Speaker 1: eating each other or one. You know, that's that's a
Speaker 1: whole separate podcast there, but like me eating you same species. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry, but let's hope it doesn't come to that. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are different types of cannibalism, right, So there's
Speaker 1: um something called sybil side. Yes, this is the most
Speaker 1: commonly seen in the sand tiger shark um. And this
Speaker 1: is a situation where the animal has to uteri and
Speaker 1: each one produces a number of eggs, and but each
Speaker 1: each litter yields just two pups, one for each uterus. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's some competitiveness there. Yeah. These uh, the little
Speaker 1: embryos have embryonic teeth, So you have all these little
Speaker 1: you know, unborn brothers and sisters in there, and it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a it's like each one is
Speaker 1: like a battle royale of you know, who's going to
Speaker 1: be the toughest. So it's slay just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: chopped down on each other. And in the end of it,
Speaker 1: you have one shark pup left standing huh okay, and
Speaker 1: so they're hungry, they've got teeth. Um. It actually reminds
Speaker 1: me of Dwight Shrewt from the Office. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever watch I do watch it, I
Speaker 1: don't remember the quote. Yeah, he said that he actually
Speaker 1: absorbed his own twin brother, so he therefore had the
Speaker 1: strength of a man and a baby. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess it would be like the Dwight Shrewts of the
Speaker 1: animal world. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can think of
Speaker 1: this as the Shrewt factor. So so the so these
Speaker 1: two uh santiger sharks end up emerging with the strength
Speaker 1: with it with a very shrewd like veracity to help them,
Speaker 1: you know, ensure their survival. Yeah. Approximately fourteen species of
Speaker 1: sharker thought to practice some form of this cannibalism, but
Speaker 1: the santiger shark is the It's the one that we've
Speaker 1: studied the most and we have the most down on
Speaker 1: m Now, you know, one of the things to keep
Speaker 1: in mind about procreation in the animal kingdom. Is that
Speaker 1: especially sexual reproduction. It's like a huge energy um waste,
Speaker 1: not necessarily waste, but let's say incident investment, huge investment
Speaker 1: because just look at humans for instance, think of all
Speaker 1: the energy that goes into sexual selection, you know, whole products,
Speaker 1: you know, people especially you know, how much time do
Speaker 1: teenagers waste on sexual selection? Enormous amount of time And
Speaker 1: I don't know how they get anything done, and how
Speaker 1: do they study? I know, apparently they don't, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess they do. But anyway, energy UH
Speaker 1: for the sex act itself. Then there's then on the
Speaker 1: mother's part, there's the energy to bring the offspring to term,
Speaker 1: the energy to give birth, and then the energy to
Speaker 1: raise the child till I can find for itself. Because
Speaker 1: the genetic mission is basically create another UM, you know,
Speaker 1: another creature, replicate your DNA, replicate the DNA, keep that
Speaker 1: strain of DNA going, and then you know, put this
Speaker 1: new UH product on the market and let it, you know,
Speaker 1: carry on on its own, right, Right, It's all these
Speaker 1: niceties like playing it um you know, mose art in
Speaker 1: the uterus aren't necessarily their focus, right, Just get it
Speaker 1: out there get it going, but in a in a
Speaker 1: way it's like make sure it's like the best, you know,
Speaker 1: the best possible. Um and instead of eating of the
Speaker 1: sharks in the womb, is you know, potentially listening to Mozar, right,
Speaker 1: so um, I also like to think of think of
Speaker 1: this in terms of of like a business, like if
Speaker 1: if how stuff works for to launch like a like
Speaker 1: some sort of separate entity like I don't know, um
Speaker 1: how crabs work, or something like we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: site is just about crabs, and we're like, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be It's gonna be like how stuff works, except
Speaker 1: it's only gonna focus on crabs. It's wood would be
Speaker 1: kind of like the company's offspring, right, so be like
Speaker 1: all crabs all the time, crab fashions, crab recipes, crab science.
Speaker 1: But the but the but the existing business has a
Speaker 1: certain amount of energy already tied out of it. Doo,
Speaker 1: a certain number of employees. Right, So let's say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have one one employee go out to be
Speaker 1: the editor of this new side, and another to be
Speaker 1: the writer, another to be the marketing guide, another to
Speaker 1: be the you know, the programmer, et cetera. All the
Speaker 1: things that that can make it what it is, and
Speaker 1: it has to in in where it's like forming this
Speaker 1: new entity of itself. Right, So it's this this huge
Speaker 1: energy in h this huge energy investment, and if that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, then one of two things are gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Either all those people are gonna lose their jobs or
Speaker 1: they're going to be absorbed back into the parent company,
Speaker 1: or at least that's my my understands, they're gonna be Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be shrewded. So that leads us to another
Speaker 1: type of cannibalism that's pretty calm, really very common, and
Speaker 1: that's the eating of one's own young, which again is
Speaker 1: one of these kind of like terrifying type of things.
Speaker 1: There's the classic image, is it Chronus the god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: eating his own son? I think so yeah, And then
Speaker 1: like then I'm I'm a little shaky in this particular
Speaker 1: story from mythology, but there's a famous painting of it,
Speaker 1: and there's I think Zeus like I was able to
Speaker 1: like somebody snug SEUs away by putting a rock in
Speaker 1: there so that so that he would eat the rock
Speaker 1: instead of baby Zeus. Of course, Yeah, Zeus was all
Speaker 1: about killing the young, his young. Yeah, so um so anyway,
Speaker 1: it's it's another sort of terrifying idea. You know that
Speaker 1: the oh my goodness, the mother is the lifebringer and
Speaker 1: then you know, and if you've ever had hamsters or
Speaker 1: or any other you know, kind of animal like that
Speaker 1: that ends up killing it's young and or eating them,
Speaker 1: it can be kind of a terrifying moment. But it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense from an energy standpoint, right,
Speaker 1: from a survival basic Yeah. There, you know, there's energy
Speaker 1: has been expended to create these uh these new creatures
Speaker 1: and their calories wrapped up in them, so you bring
Speaker 1: them back into the fold, right right, Okay, well I'm
Speaker 1: actually thinking too. Um sort of related to that, there's
Speaker 1: the masked booby, which is a bur Yes, I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew that. I couldn't just say masked booby. Yeah
Speaker 1: you've got you can run these by me and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I've got to give you a hint therapy.
Speaker 1: But um, okay, So getting that aside, the masked booby
Speaker 1: is actual way a bird and it's indigenous to the
Speaker 1: Galopico silence and uh that's a case where the parents
Speaker 1: it's a case of stib eating. Right there, there are
Speaker 1: two siblings. Um, but that's a case where the parents
Speaker 1: actually step in and they encourage them to kill one
Speaker 1: of the other off. Yeah, and they actually that the
Speaker 1: odds are stacked, um in favor of their eldest, so
Speaker 1: they it's sort of like a kid to getting them
Speaker 1: into a match and seeing like a chicken fight and
Speaker 1: seeing who's going to come out best. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is the very same, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: you want to put all your effort into the sibling
Speaker 1: that's going to survive and has the best chance of
Speaker 1: carrying on. It's I mean, it sounds harsh, but it
Speaker 1: comes back to that. So anybody out there that is
Speaker 1: in kind of a blue family type situation where they
Speaker 1: feel like their mom and or dad are stirring competition, uh,
Speaker 1: just be glad that they're not encouraging you to kill
Speaker 1: and eat each other. Be glad that you're not. I'm
Speaker 1: masked Bob, Yes, um. But just to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of how many different animals engage in this, and
Speaker 1: it's also uh you also see uh. For instance, sharks
Speaker 1: will practice um uh eating. They'll end up eating eggs
Speaker 1: that haven't been fertilized um, and sometimes the eggs will
Speaker 1: be eating that have been fertilized. But you'll see you'll
Speaker 1: see this form of catabalism in protozoa, slime, molds, sea slugs, insects, spiders, fish, reptiles.
Speaker 1: They they've observed it in dinosaur fossils, um, bats, seals,
Speaker 1: sea lions, otters, polar bears, even otters. Yes, they're cute.
Speaker 1: Imagine one, you know, cannibalizing another. It's we're eating it's young.
Speaker 1: It happens. It never shows up in the cute pictures.
Speaker 1: But tigers, chimpanzees, uh, you know, amphibians, at least a
Speaker 1: hundred species of mammals and all, and of course hamsters,
Speaker 1: well yeah, they're most known for it. Don't tap on
Speaker 1: the glass, which leads us to the some of the reasons. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, why would a mother hamster suddenly decide that
Speaker 1: she needs to slay all her offspring and eat some
Speaker 1: of them. I don't know. Maybe she had way too
Speaker 1: many and that's too much energy to expend on abroad.
Speaker 1: That big Yeah, it's kind of like if you you know,
Speaker 1: to use the sort of clunky business analogy from earlier,
Speaker 1: it's like if you suddenly created this enormous side project
Speaker 1: with way too many employees. You're like, WHOA, this is
Speaker 1: going to fail. This doesn't make it makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna bring in enough money on its own to
Speaker 1: support that. So we gotta we gotta bring some, if
Speaker 1: not all, of these employees back into the fold. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of them too if they're if they're born
Speaker 1: with um A disease or they're not quite up to
Speaker 1: par Isn't that another reason to sort of call down
Speaker 1: the broad is to take out the ones that are
Speaker 1: the weakest and and use them for energy for everybody
Speaker 1: else you have. Like a female rattlesnakes, for instance, will
Speaker 1: consume on average about of their postpartum mass um. Mostly
Speaker 1: these are going to be still born or just non
Speaker 1: viable offspring. So again it's like they have all these offspring.
Speaker 1: It's all about like, let's keep the species going, let's
Speaker 1: keep the DNA going. You're gonna want to invest in
Speaker 1: the ones that are the best candidates. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's disgusting to us, but it really is practical if
Speaker 1: you think about it. Yeah, if you take the anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: ness out of it. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the basic it's the basic mission, the genetic mission, and
Speaker 1: the the the energy logic tied to it, and you
Speaker 1: have you strip away all the layers that human cultures
Speaker 1: put on top of it. Then yeah, it's it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense, you know, just as a as a side
Speaker 1: observation or question. I was thinking about this, and I
Speaker 1: was thinking about mammals who eat their placentas after birth,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering if they ever cannibalize they're young, if
Speaker 1: maybe carry away well no, I'm wondering if maybe the
Speaker 1: eating the placenta actually um serves the need of eating
Speaker 1: some sort of protein and getting some energy source back,
Speaker 1: and and instead of eating their young they eat their
Speaker 1: pa I think would would make perfect sense. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have that's a question. If anybody knows the answer
Speaker 1: to that that I would love to know. Um. Another
Speaker 1: great example of this comes in invasive cane toads in Australia,
Speaker 1: and uh, these are just some These are some some
Speaker 1: crazy animals because you'll have a small and medium size
Speaker 1: but not large cane toes and they'll wave a long
Speaker 1: middle toe off their hind butt up and down in
Speaker 1: the water and they're doing this uh to to to
Speaker 1: catch other toads, and then the cane toe larva will
Speaker 1: actively seek out toad eggs of the same species to eat.
Speaker 1: So there's just like a lot of cannibals and going
Speaker 1: on in cane toes in fact um. And again they're
Speaker 1: invasive and they're a huge problem in Australia, and they
Speaker 1: they found a two thousand tents study found that this
Speaker 1: was actually uh encouraging them to spread, because a mother
Speaker 1: toad would end up um and wanting to lay her
Speaker 1: eggs in a virgin um pond or or a little
Speaker 1: stream or whatever just to encourage just just to protect
Speaker 1: it from other cane toes. Yeah, so it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're it just ends up, you know, oh, we've got
Speaker 1: to find new water, new water to uh for these
Speaker 1: eggs to developments so they're not eaten by all the
Speaker 1: other cane toes. But they think that that they might
Speaker 1: be able to to draw the chemical that the eggs shed,
Speaker 1: that that that attracts the other cane todes and use
Speaker 1: that as some sort of a bait, like a pheromone
Speaker 1: or something, yeah, similar to that. I just can't get
Speaker 1: over the image of like all these toes pointing out
Speaker 1: in the water like synchronized swimmers. Sure that's happening. This
Speaker 1: presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. See,
Speaker 1: we could keep going and just listing all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird and growth tesque examples of mothers eating their own young,
Speaker 1: but we should probably move on it and into another
Speaker 1: fascinating area of cannibalism. Uh, and definitely a sexier area
Speaker 1: of cannibalism. Sexual cannibalism. Oh yeah, which sounds like a great,
Speaker 1: great name for a band if it is not used already.
Speaker 1: To drawback to a to an example that we brought
Speaker 1: up in a previous podcast or one about Ladies Night
Speaker 1: on Planet Earth about the role that the male has
Speaker 1: in any given species. We mentioned the the brown and tecanus,
Speaker 1: which is also known as mclahy's marsupial mouse. And this
Speaker 1: is the male that mates for twelve hours at a
Speaker 1: time and eventually he humps himself to death. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then he's you know, his mouth, he's not another mouth
Speaker 1: to feed through the winter like. The species can then
Speaker 1: just focus on the mother raising the young. All the
Speaker 1: men are dead, uh, you know until next season. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think maybe I said that he was that sort
Speaker 1: of relegated to like being the pool boy for the female.
Speaker 1: So that being the case, sexual cannibalism occurs when the
Speaker 1: female eats her mate dearing or immediately after the sex act,
Speaker 1: which happens a lot. Yeah, apparently. And again it's like,
Speaker 1: if you look at the mail as merely a mutation
Speaker 1: necessary for a sexual reproduction, he doesn't necessarily have a
Speaker 1: lot of use after that that sexual encounter. So again
Speaker 1: that's that's energy that's just wasted. So it reminds me
Speaker 1: of like when a company brings on contract workers for
Speaker 1: a project that has a like a short term goal.
Speaker 1: They're like, we need to get this project done, but
Speaker 1: we don't want to like hire six guys and then
Speaker 1: have to pay them or and gals and have to
Speaker 1: pay them benefits, etcetera. So let's just bring them on
Speaker 1: his contract workers and then in six months we're done.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like the mail. In these cases,
Speaker 1: it's a contract worker, and at the when they're not
Speaker 1: needed anymore, they're like go, and they're they're submitting themselves
Speaker 1: to this process willingly because they want to make sure
Speaker 1: that their offspring survive. Is that the idea behind this
Speaker 1: with the mating. Yeah, that they would say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I will meet with you, knowing that you're going to say,
Speaker 1: you're praying mantis. You're going to rip my head off
Speaker 1: and then consume me as I'm meeting you. Well, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was reading some stuff about this, and uh, most
Speaker 1: in most cases, the male, I mean, the male is
Speaker 1: gonna mate. That's uh, I'm all right, ladies, that the
Speaker 1: male is that I mean, that's the male's mission. So
Speaker 1: he's he's going to engage in that. But you'll also see,
Speaker 1: like with praying manaces, the males will try and survive, uh,
Speaker 1: within you know, their limited ability to do so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also there's kind of it's kind of exaggerated
Speaker 1: in most praying manasis. I understand because a lot of
Speaker 1: the the early studies into this you had females in
Speaker 1: captivity who had not eaten as much as they want to.
Speaker 1: They were voracious, yeah they were. Yeah, And so here's
Speaker 1: this um, this mantis, and you know, there he's done
Speaker 1: his part or is doing his part, and he can
Speaker 1: continue doing his part generally pretty well even with his
Speaker 1: head heat no off. So they just go for it.
Speaker 1: They say that typically uh, praying manus. Uh, cannibalistic mating
Speaker 1: process only occurs five of the time and uh, and
Speaker 1: it occurs most often if the female is hungry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so most most species are only going to cannibalize
Speaker 1: regularly in captivity. But there's one species, uh, the mantis
Speaker 1: religiosa um, which is which is really into and it's
Speaker 1: necessary that the head be removed for the mating process
Speaker 1: to to to take effect properly. So and in these cases,
Speaker 1: the female typically eats a third of her partners and
Speaker 1: that she eats even more in the lab if the
Speaker 1: male can't escape. But that's the thing. The male will
Speaker 1: try and escape. Uh, it's just you know, a third
Speaker 1: of the time he's uh, he doesn't have a chance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was the mantisys I was reading about that. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's some suggestion that they had evolved to sort of
Speaker 1: almost create a belt like effect in their abdomen regions
Speaker 1: so that they were drawing in all of their major
Speaker 1: organs as tightly inward as possible so that the things
Speaker 1: wouldn't get them very easily. So they can keep processes
Speaker 1: going at least two completely Yeah, yeah, exactly, so they
Speaker 1: can they can mate longer without dying. But it's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: I was actually thinking about this to Harvard biologists Stephen
Speaker 1: Jay Gould. He had thought that that it wasn't as
Speaker 1: widespread as it actually we know it is now. And
Speaker 1: his idea was that, are you saying sexual cannibalism or
Speaker 1: cannibalism in general? Sexual cannibal cannibalism. I think it was.
Speaker 1: It must have been very troubling to him because he
Speaker 1: sort of came up with all these different ideas about it,
Speaker 1: but the main crux of it was that maybe it
Speaker 1: wasn't as widespread as it actually is, and that the
Speaker 1: female had just mistaken her mate as prey, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really funny because I mean, moments before the
Speaker 1: pray Nantis was you know, filling his wings and showing
Speaker 1: his abs a six pack, and you know, then began
Speaker 1: mating with her, and the idea that she just sort
Speaker 1: of forgot what she was doing and turned around and
Speaker 1: went wow, wow. Maybe maybe he just said he had
Speaker 1: like a really horrible, you know girlfriend at some point
Speaker 1: and he was like like, wow, it's like somebody that
Speaker 1: just like snaps at the you know, and so he's
Speaker 1: like all women must be like this regardless of species.
Speaker 1: It's possible. There's just there's definitely some overreaching there. Now
Speaker 1: there's one. You'll you'll find a sexual cannibalism in a
Speaker 1: number of arachnids and insects, but it's particularly interesting in
Speaker 1: the red back spider. Yeah, this is a relative of
Speaker 1: the black widow. And the males, first of all, are
Speaker 1: really tiny. Like it's one of these cases where where
Speaker 1: the whole are you know, the whole case for males
Speaker 1: is just being a you know, a mutation necessary appropriation
Speaker 1: and not being the species itself. Really opposite, I mean, really,
Speaker 1: it's really obvious in this particular species because the male
Speaker 1: is just tiny, looks like an entirely different animal in
Speaker 1: the in the the female is enormous, and the male
Speaker 1: is a willing participant in the sexual cannibalism. Alright, So
Speaker 1: during copulation, this u the little male guy, he'll position
Speaker 1: himself above the female's jaws, all right, and uh and
Speaker 1: uh and and you know, basically like shove himself into
Speaker 1: her jaws so that she gets to eat him. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh. And they believe that it's uh, it's favored
Speaker 1: in sexual selection because the sexual the cannibalized spiders received
Speaker 1: two different advantages. First of all, cannibalized males copulate longer
Speaker 1: and fertilize more eggs than those that survive. And then
Speaker 1: also the females were more likely to reject subsequent suitors
Speaker 1: if they consumed mate. So this makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: they were talking about it as a sort of like
Speaker 1: a sperm plug. Yeah, yeah, I mean, not to get
Speaker 1: racy about it or anything, but basically that you know,
Speaker 1: they had made their deposit in that you know, any
Speaker 1: other males after that wouldn't necessarily be successful, right Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's interesting because like we're looking at
Speaker 1: these other cases of sexual cannibalism and the male really
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have any there's no argument for the male
Speaker 1: sticking around and being eaten for the you know, the
Speaker 1: advancement of the species and the and him passing on
Speaker 1: his d n A. But this is a case where
Speaker 1: there's a definite advantage if he gives himself up to
Speaker 1: you know, to the appetite of his mate. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I thought something that um was really dramatic that I
Speaker 1: read is that they want account so that they actually
Speaker 1: somersault onto the things, which is like take me, please
Speaker 1: eat me. And then the other thing that I read
Speaker 1: is that during the mating process that they pluck the
Speaker 1: strings on the female's web for like eight hours. And
Speaker 1: I know, and I thought that is kind of sweet.
Speaker 1: But then I kind of thought, well maybe she was
Speaker 1: like that is driving me crazy. I'm gonna eat you.
Speaker 1: These these these guys are so nice. And then the
Speaker 1: lady spiders are so hard on him. It's just a
Speaker 1: it's just a rough life. And then there's the orb
Speaker 1: weight weaving spider or weaving um in which the male
Speaker 1: sexual organ gets stuck in the female. And this is
Speaker 1: by design. Again, it's the same idea of this sort
Speaker 1: of a sperm plug. So although she can polish him
Speaker 1: off and you know, snack on him, she's stuck with him,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and that just make sure that she
Speaker 1: can't mate with someone else afterwards. So there's definite design
Speaker 1: behind this. I don't think that they're just being masochistic here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the situation where the insect world is just
Speaker 1: like you know, evil or anything. It all makes makes
Speaker 1: sense the grand scheme of things now. Um, moving away
Speaker 1: from from sexual cannibalism, you will also find plenty of
Speaker 1: animals that just seem to be kind of jerks, like
Speaker 1: kind of an any social jerks, and if they encounter anything,
Speaker 1: they're probably you know, they're either going to run from
Speaker 1: it or try and kill it. And if it's one
Speaker 1: of their own, they're probably going to try and either
Speaker 1: mate with it or kill it, or mate with it
Speaker 1: and kill it. So um the score. Like various scorpions
Speaker 1: are great examples of it. Like scorpions tend to live
Speaker 1: very solitary lives, and if they encounter another scorpion of
Speaker 1: the same variety, then there's a very good chance that
Speaker 1: they'll that one will eat the other one. And if
Speaker 1: they're opposite sex and uh you know, and it's uh
Speaker 1: you know, and they see it as a good time
Speaker 1: to mate, then they may mate and then one will
Speaker 1: eat the other. Yeah. Uh. The Komodo dragon is of course,
Speaker 1: another great example of of just being a cannibal just
Speaker 1: for the heck of it, because the the young, uh,
Speaker 1: the komodo dragon young are just considered prey, um you know,
Speaker 1: up until they're certain size, primarily raised for prey one
Speaker 1: or not primarily raised for prey. But they're they're just
Speaker 1: the parents have no role in rearing them after they've
Speaker 1: been born, so they just have to climb the trees
Speaker 1: to escape, to escape their parents otherose, some parents will
Speaker 1: eat them. They're like, oh, look at those guys, they
Speaker 1: look tasty. I'm hungry. Let's do this. Interestingly enough, the
Speaker 1: one thing they can do to besides hiding in the
Speaker 1: treetops is that they smear themselves an excrement. Then then
Speaker 1: that will keep the the their parents from potentially eating them.
Speaker 1: That does actually work too. Yeah, okay, um come out
Speaker 1: with dragons too. I remember something with Sharon Stone's husband
Speaker 1: some years back. Oh, I forgot about that, didn't Didn't
Speaker 1: they dine on her husband's foot? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they went like a behind the scenes or
Speaker 1: something and he went to go pett it. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: just seems like a bad idea. Yeah, I understand it
Speaker 1: really scarred him. He's been uh I mean emotionally to
Speaker 1: the point where he always keeps himself smeared in Komoto experiment,
Speaker 1: especially on vacation. I guess that's why their relationship didn't work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course you'll find plenty of cases where um
Speaker 1: animals of a various form will be more than willing
Speaker 1: to eat their own dead after they've been killed by
Speaker 1: another you know species. You know, alligator, crocodile comes across
Speaker 1: the dead, um, you know, creature of the same species.
Speaker 1: It's food, they'll eat it. Number of gavengers, vultures, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They see the food, they'll eat it. And even you
Speaker 1: know humans, UM. Throughout throughout history, you have a situations
Speaker 1: where humans have eaten their own dead in cases of
Speaker 1: survival cannibalism. UM. Some of those cases are a little controversial,
Speaker 1: like I've I've read cases for and against the the
Speaker 1: Donner Party cannibalism thing actually happening, right because there were
Speaker 1: no actual witnesses. Yeah, but then you also have the
Speaker 1: case of the soccer team and Alive UM, and the
Speaker 1: then the actual events that that movie and book were
Speaker 1: based on, where you know, they're they're in a horrible situation.
Speaker 1: The the these they are these dead bodies, and really,
Speaker 1: on a very logical level, those bodies are energy and
Speaker 1: you're in a situation where it's life or death, You're
Speaker 1: going to consume that energy, right, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the important thing to think about, is that it really
Speaker 1: is an extreme conditions right in with humans as it
Speaker 1: has happened. And in nature, I mean, food is scared, um,
Speaker 1: but you know you can always look over at someone
Speaker 1: and say, hmm, it would be a good protein source. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in nature it tends to be a lot. It's
Speaker 1: a lot more life and death obviously, especially these cases
Speaker 1: we're looking at in the ocean, where where competition is tremendous.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think a lot of our our
Speaker 1: fascination with cannibalism is that it is we we largely
Speaker 1: a lot of us anyway, live in a time where
Speaker 1: it's really hard to imagine such a desperate situation, and
Speaker 1: it's and that would necessitate this kind of return to
Speaker 1: our primal roots and our basic programming. Yeah, actually, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Ted Turner, who not too long ago warned everybody that
Speaker 1: we become cannibalists if if we didn't address the global
Speaker 1: warming situations. That Yeah, yeah, there was. I mean, of
Speaker 1: course it drew outrage, but it was certainly a way
Speaker 1: to get people to pay attention to the problem. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually, um, yeah, I actually heard that they the
Speaker 1: Ted's Montana grills. They actually had these these statues of
Speaker 1: people that they were going to start rolling out in
Speaker 1: place of the buffalo. You have that cannibalism things because
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, Ted's the savvy businesses. So cannibalism
Speaker 1: becomes a new thing, then Ted's montana grill is gonna
Speaker 1: pick up on it. Of course that's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 1: But what about primates. I mean, that's to me, primates
Speaker 1: and cannibalism is um, that's one of those things I
Speaker 1: can't help but anthropomorphisize because I think that we look
Speaker 1: at them and see so much of ourselves in them,
Speaker 1: and they do cannibalize one another from time to time.
Speaker 1: It's um. Especially um with primates, you see some very
Speaker 1: disturbing acts, you know, and and they're more disturbing because
Speaker 1: they resemble us more. And um, you know, you'll see
Speaker 1: you know, see you'll see chimpanzees, even gorillas and orangutans.
Speaker 1: There are cases where they're you know, suspected of eating
Speaker 1: their own young. Um. You know, and we've seen plenty
Speaker 1: of cases of where chimpanzees have have have demonstrated their
Speaker 1: capacity for quote unquote cruelty towards other chimpanzees. But will
Speaker 1: they I know that sometimes when they're fighting that they'll
Speaker 1: kill each other. But when they're fighting them, don't necessarily
Speaker 1: eat the body afterward, is that right? Right? Or yeah,
Speaker 1: not necessarily will they eat it? So it's it's more, um,
Speaker 1: I guess if they come along a deceased chimpanzee or
Speaker 1: other type of ape and they actually just eat it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In chimpanzees, typically the males will kill and eat the
Speaker 1: infant of another female, usually in their own group, but
Speaker 1: occasionally in another. And when chimps kill adults from other
Speaker 1: groups in a fight, they don't eat they okay, And
Speaker 1: I remember this too, that they might eat the infant
Speaker 1: to um force the chimpanzee into estrus so that they
Speaker 1: can go ahead and propagate again. Is that right? So
Speaker 1: the infant may not have been their infant, but they
Speaker 1: want to go ahead and mate and get the process
Speaker 1: rolling right. Um. Now, it's uh, it's interesting when you
Speaker 1: start looking at especially at at primates eating one another
Speaker 1: in different cases, you know, throughout history, and that they're
Speaker 1: confidantly studies arguing for and against the um. You know
Speaker 1: just how much cannibalism was going on with prehistory, with
Speaker 1: you know, prehistoric humans. But anthropologist William R. N's suggest
Speaker 1: it's simply bad strategy as far as evolution goes, though,
Speaker 1: like since the under evolutionary theory, we're fuel fueled by
Speaker 1: that you know, innate desire to see our gene survived,
Speaker 1: you know, eating another one of your you know, your
Speaker 1: tribe and your species. That doesn't really make sense, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just going it's working against our our basic programming.
Speaker 1: And uh and and another interesting thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is, uh you know, you may think, well, why
Speaker 1: don't humans just raise you know, why why don't humans
Speaker 1: raise humans for food? Right? Or or how how come
Speaker 1: you don't have you know, cases where um cannibalism becomes
Speaker 1: a stapable staple of any species diet um. Though, it
Speaker 1: is worth pointing out that cannibalism can play a huge
Speaker 1: role in the diet. I think I'm gonna go back
Speaker 1: to the scorpions here for a second. There's a nineteen
Speaker 1: eight study of desert scorpions and they found that cannibals
Speaker 1: and provided only the fourth most common meal for a scorpion.
Speaker 1: But in but as far as body mask goes, it
Speaker 1: was the number one, representing more than of its total
Speaker 1: food intake. Okay, so so yeah, so in in the
Speaker 1: case of the scorpion, yes, cannibalism can provide a large
Speaker 1: part of its diet. But in humans you see a
Speaker 1: different situation. Yeah, and humans nature does not necessarily like
Speaker 1: for us to practice cannibalism. And I think that you
Speaker 1: can see that pretty well illustrated in the four Tribe,
Speaker 1: is that right with the carew Yes, Curu is a
Speaker 1: it's a rare breed of disorder caused by what are
Speaker 1: called prions, and these are abnormal proteins which induce irregular
Speaker 1: protein folding in brain cells, and this leads to flawed
Speaker 1: brain tissue which results in progressive, incurable brain damage. The
Speaker 1: word itself, curu means laughing disease in its name because
Speaker 1: the scientists observed fits of hysterical laughing in those affected.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty uh, pretty traumatic stuff. Um. And so
Speaker 1: this is this came on because the tribe was basically
Speaker 1: practicing endocannibalism right with the funeral rights. They were consuming
Speaker 1: the body, which you know isn't because they were looking
Speaker 1: for a source of protein, but because they there was
Speaker 1: a way to respect the deceased, to literally absorb them, right.
Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting this is a case where if
Speaker 1: you if you start thinking about cannibalism in a very
Speaker 1: logical you know, energy sort of uh, you know a thing.
Speaker 1: Then eating one's ancestors does kind of make it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's like a way to honor them. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: inviting their energy back into me. And uh and that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty much how would be great? Yes, symbolically it's great. Um,
Speaker 1: And on a basic energy level, it's it's not bad either.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, it's kind of it really opens
Speaker 1: the door for the passage of disease. Right, And so
Speaker 1: this is sort of like the mad cow equivalent, is
Speaker 1: that right? Yes? Yeah, mad cow is a similar disorder
Speaker 1: as is I'm going to just take a shot at this,
Speaker 1: uh crewtive fed as Jacob's disease felt Yeah, that sounds good,
Speaker 1: I did, uh. And this is a human variant of
Speaker 1: bad cow disease. And they basically, like with the four A,
Speaker 1: they were basically able to to to wipe out the
Speaker 1: disease by simply getting them to stop practicing this communal cannibalism,
Speaker 1: right like literally overnight. Yeah, they got them to to
Speaker 1: eradicate this from tried. Yeah. Basically it's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're your family members go stark, raving
Speaker 1: mad and are laughing at nothing and then die. Well,
Speaker 1: that comes from the cannibalism, so let's cut that out.
Speaker 1: What they're like, Well, you know, we weren't too, We
Speaker 1: weren't that crazy about the cannibalism. We can we can
Speaker 1: set that aside. Well, I guess it's also in Nate.
Speaker 1: You're a little bit of a concern for primates too,
Speaker 1: because they sometimes will consume a body as a group,
Speaker 1: spreading potentially a disease, something like hepatitis um. And I
Speaker 1: did want to add a side note about Bnobo's um,
Speaker 1: which is an ape, and uh, they're sometimes called the
Speaker 1: hippie ape because they um are fun loving and they
Speaker 1: love to mate without discretion. It's like the Key parties
Speaker 1: in the seventies. They are the venobo along with the
Speaker 1: humans and the dolphins, only animals that actually enjoy sex. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um, hence called the hippie ape. I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: do hippie apes enjoy sex one other? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but uh, something that was pretty disconcerting is that they
Speaker 1: were observed pretty recently in the wild to have consumed
Speaker 1: one of their own. And again, this is the anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: thing where we look at them when we sell. But
Speaker 1: they're just peace loving and they just love to have
Speaker 1: sex with each other. Why are they eating each other? Um?
Speaker 1: But they would be a good example of primates um
Speaker 1: taking the body and eating it, and they actually ate
Speaker 1: that body for more than seven hours, um, which is
Speaker 1: a lot longer than they would take on any other body.
Speaker 1: And some of the people in the group or the individuals,
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, people, we're actually playing with
Speaker 1: the food. So um, it's a it's an interesting side
Speaker 1: note in that, uh, it's an odd occurrence for Bonobo's
Speaker 1: to be doing that and in the way that they did.
Speaker 1: And of course you could extrapolate that it was some
Speaker 1: sort of uh funeral, right, but then that wouldn't really
Speaker 1: be correct because if we just don't know what they
Speaker 1: were doing. But it's also a good example of how
Speaker 1: that disease could be transmitted through the group. Now, and
Speaker 1: it's easy to to fall into the trap of saying, well,
Speaker 1: then this is a great case of where you know,
Speaker 1: you know, nature of whore's cannibalism and you know cannibalism
Speaker 1: of this nature of this you know, community communal cannibalism
Speaker 1: is just poison um and and you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you know, you could still make that case. But I
Speaker 1: was looking at a two thousand and six University of
Speaker 1: Virginia study and they found that cannibalism UH is actually
Speaker 1: only documented as the predominant transmission mode of a disease
Speaker 1: in very few species. Um yeah, even even through you know,
Speaker 1: specific instances of cannibalistic transmission UM that have been noted
Speaker 1: um Like, basically it The only two cases they found
Speaker 1: were the prion transmission in humans that we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: and a a kind of protozoa based illness in lizards.
Speaker 1: And if do you think this is because most cannibalism
Speaker 1: is one on one as opposed to a group situation
Speaker 1: like that, the group cannibalism is more an outlier. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, And also I think it's it also comes
Speaker 1: down to like cannibalism, like, you know, a disease is
Speaker 1: gonna needs to spread. It's got the same genetic mission
Speaker 1: as as as any organism, so it needs it needs
Speaker 1: a road it can count on. Right, So the the
Speaker 1: idea of some sort of disease depending exclusively on cannibalism,
Speaker 1: it it largely doesn't make sense. It's just not not
Speaker 1: an economic way of going about it. So like so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, in the study, in other cases
Speaker 1: of cannibalistic disease transmission, uh, and there were others alternate
Speaker 1: disease transmission modes existed. Um. So it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: hepatitis or something hapitize isn't depending exclusively on group cannibalism
Speaker 1: to spread. But if that door's open, it'll gladly, gladly
Speaker 1: take it. Not to personify the illness too much, So
Speaker 1: I guess that the talking about not trying to anthropomorphosize. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you can't get back around to this question. Aren't we
Speaker 1: sort of all cannibals on some level or another? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you know you look at things like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, anything from a blood transfusion to you know,
Speaker 1: organ transplant. I mean it's it again kind of comes
Speaker 1: down to, uh, the the energy uh situation. It's like
Speaker 1: we're we're taking energy out and storing it. We're harvesting
Speaker 1: energy that it can that is otherwise going to be
Speaker 1: wasted and bringing it back into ourselves. Um. There are
Speaker 1: a few interesting cases in the in the traditional Chinese
Speaker 1: medicine where you have what they call tibo. Let's t
Speaker 1: A I b A. Oh, nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: martial arts exercise, nothing to do with that. But but
Speaker 1: this is a particular medicine that involves something UH also
Speaker 1: referred to as a bortist because it's uh it's harvested
Speaker 1: from from fetuses. Um. And this is according to UH
Speaker 1: Mary Roach in her book Stiff, She goes into this
Speaker 1: a little and explores this whole chapter on cannibalism UH
Speaker 1: in the use of materials from corpses in medicine in
Speaker 1: that book. So highly recommend checking that out. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's regenerative medicine to basically taking tissue to grow new tissue, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't know chew on that. I suppose yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: so hey, if you want to uh to learn more
Speaker 1: about this again, check out Josh Clark's article how Cannibalism Works.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's a multi page feast and you'll want
Speaker 1: to eat up every page of it and uh it.
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Speaker 1: check out that Facebook page and click the like button.
Speaker 1: UH you'll make us very happy. Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 1: And if you've got thoughts on cannibalism, you can also
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