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: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas And
Speaker 1: if all goes according to plan, I will be in
Speaker 1: China with my wife's collecting our son and uh when
Speaker 1: this episode airs. So certainly, if you have any positive
Speaker 1: energy to spare, send it to me because I'll probably
Speaker 1: be on the on the on the edge during this trip.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it'll be a stressful time, but certainly a
Speaker 1: worthwhile experience. So during this time, we're going to air
Speaker 1: just a couple of reruns, but rewinds that we really
Speaker 1: think deserve a second listen, and so in this episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to replay our Cannibals episode. Now, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people ended up passing this one
Speaker 1: by because the original title was finding on Cannibals, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people my wife included, skipped over at
Speaker 1: it first because I thought we were going to talk
Speaker 1: about human cannibals, about nefarious individuals eating other individuals and
Speaker 1: praying on the week. And certainly that is an interesting topic,
Speaker 1: but a much darker topic because in this episode we
Speaker 1: focus almost exclusively on insects and arachnets. But I would
Speaker 1: say that I think actually the sexual cannibalism that goes
Speaker 1: on here, the ripping off of praying manta's head, is
Speaker 1: pretty dark stuff. But it's safer because well, we're talking
Speaker 1: about insects, right, and it comes down to just pure
Speaker 1: economy as we'll discussing this episode. Yeah, yeah, well we're
Speaker 1: talking about sibilicide and fantaside and some Dwight shrewdism going on.
Speaker 1: So we hope that you enjoy this. It is rife
Speaker 1: with some lovely and awful bits of cannibalism. Robert, I've
Speaker 1: got a burning question for you, alright, fire off. I
Speaker 1: would 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
Speaker 1: well it's non existent actually, but the first thing, otherwise
Speaker 1: I would worry a little bit off you said, yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually a spoof product. And it was supposedly
Speaker 1: supposed to be a soy based food product designed to
Speaker 1: resemble human flesh and taste and texture, and so the
Speaker 1: website was up for about a year. MEB two thousand five,
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and it had all these great
Speaker 1: products that you just never could buy. So if you wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were really wanting a finger or
Speaker 1: an arm or something but didn't necessarily want to cannibalize someone,
Speaker 1: you could In theory, do they replicate and they replicated
Speaker 1: the taste or the form, the taste and the texture. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you really get logical about it,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's anything that weird about it, not
Speaker 1: compared to say, well, okay, you're vegetarian, right, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: Do you ever have like soysage or like a soy dog,
Speaker 1: or you know, any kind of fir or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have like meat simulated products. We'll see. Like that
Speaker 1: seems like, I mean, it's not unlike that you don't
Speaker 1: want 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 because
Speaker 1: I'm frying up the bacon, and yet I don't eat bacon,
Speaker 1: and I don't necessarily want bacon, but I do have
Speaker 1: to say, there is that that bacon taste that you
Speaker 1: can never really replicate. Yeah, well even if you're but
Speaker 1: 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 it's going
Speaker 1: to be a small market that may actually carry that.
Speaker 1: They do some pretty funky stuff with it. So this,
Speaker 1: you know, in discussing like why is this creepy? And
Speaker 1: this not you know, uh with the with the HOOFU.
Speaker 1: I mean that really comes down to the basic question
Speaker 1: about cannibalism in in nature as a whole, because it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things when you really look at it,
Speaker 1: there's kind of like the animal version and then well
Speaker 1: there's really only the animal version. Yes, well, but but
Speaker 1: on top of the animal version, um, and this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, as cannibalism relates to just any kind of
Speaker 1: creature you might find might find that practices it, and
Speaker 1: a lot of animals practice it. Um. If you layer
Speaker 1: human culture and human society and our complex web of
Speaker 1: emotions and values on top of that, it just really
Speaker 1: complicates the matter and you get into this this area
Speaker 1: where cannibalism is really this. I mean, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's an outrageous thing. It's like it raises outrage
Speaker 1: from people for us to would like to think that
Speaker 1: we have morals and uh, social values and we all
Speaker 1: cooperate with each other, we try not to eat each
Speaker 1: other humans. Yeah. Yeah, I found this great quote from
Speaker 1: Tom Sorel from the University of Birmingham and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: in intellectual history, cannibals stand for alien and exotic human being,
Speaker 1: specimens of our species who realize it's the darkest possibilities,
Speaker 1: usually in places far removed from civilization cannibalism. Cannibalism both
Speaker 1: expresses natural law and and contravenes it. So right, so
Speaker 1: there that there's the rub right, yeah, and it happens
Speaker 1: in nature and it's perfectly natural. They're right, and yet
Speaker 1: we can't help but WinCE a little bit. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: here that you know, if you start hearing that somebody's
Speaker 1: like certain grinding up corpses, you know, to serving the restaurant,
Speaker 1: people just get outraged. There's a great money Python skit
Speaker 1: where it involves like grinding up corpses and and and
Speaker 1: feeding it to people, and it's like the they break
Speaker 1: the fourth wall and like the the audience just starts
Speaker 1: throwing things. You know. It's it's it's that outrageous a concept, right, right,
Speaker 1: you want to know where your meat pie came from? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very like say, it's very widespread in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: and it is a major mortality factor in the biology
Speaker 1: of numerous species. So we're going to sort of walk
Speaker 1: through the We're not really gonna go with pros and cons,
Speaker 1: but first of us, we're gonna look at the case
Speaker 1: for cannibalism in nature and some of the ways that
Speaker 1: it's practiced, and then then we're gonna look at the
Speaker 1: case against And for the most part, we're gonna avoid
Speaker 1: the whole question of cannibalism um within the larger human institution.
Speaker 1: But we do have an excellent article on the website
Speaker 1: by Josh Clark about that, so I highly recommend checking
Speaker 1: that out if you want to get more into the
Speaker 1: you know, the serial killer cannibal topics, right and no
Speaker 1: cannibalism all the 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 photo since this um
Speaker 1: and even that, you're not not all the energies necessarily
Speaker 1: coming from the Sun. But for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: we're having to consume other little bundles of energy to
Speaker 1: to keep our energy going. So we're having to eat
Speaker 1: other organisms. Now we might we might not eat um,
Speaker 1: you know, we might only eat plants, or we might
Speaker 1: only eat animals, but we're having to eat something. So
Speaker 1: it's this constant. This is huge pyramid you know of
Speaker 1: of predators preying on other forms of energy. And even bugs.
Speaker 1: Let's not discount bugs. Some people eat bugs and they
Speaker 1: like them quite a bit. Well, they're supposedly quite good.
Speaker 1: I've never had one. Have you had a bug? No? No,
Speaker 1: But it's I think it's a street food Vietnam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: suppose there was supposedly some in Thailand. I didn't get
Speaker 1: to try it when I was there. Ye supposed to
Speaker 1: be incredibly nutritious. Yeah, I tried if I if I
Speaker 1: had the chance, But it's never offered on you know,
Speaker 1: the local menus. No, you're Nelanta where the palm outa
Speaker 1: bug salads? I don't know, you'll have to start a
Speaker 1: food truck based on that. So, like we said, the
Speaker 1: it all comes down to energy, it comes down to predation,
Speaker 1: and cannibalism is basically a pet predator prey interaction within
Speaker 1: a species. So it's well a member of this species
Speaker 1: preying on a member of another of the same species. So,
Speaker 1: like you know, when you get into the discussions of
Speaker 1: odd did you know humans eat the handerthals and deniahnderthals
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. Okay, but like me eating you
Speaker 1: same species? Right, yeah, don't worry, but let's hope it
Speaker 1: doesn't come to that, right. So there are different types
Speaker 1: of cannibalism, right, So there's um something called sibilicide. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is the most commonly seen in the sand tiger
Speaker 1: shark um and this is a situation where the animal
Speaker 1: has to uteri and each one produces a number of eggs,
Speaker 1: and but each each litteral yields just two pups, one
Speaker 1: for each udreus. Okay, so there's some competitiveness there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these the little embryos have embryonic teeth. So you have
Speaker 1: all these little you know, unborn brothers and sisters in there,
Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it's kind of like a It's like
Speaker 1: each one is like a battle royale of you know,
Speaker 1: who's going to be the toughest. So it's slay just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, chopped down on each other. And
Speaker 1: the end of it, you have one shark pup left standing.
Speaker 1: Huh okay, and so they're hungry, they've got teeth. Um.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me of Dwight Shrewt from the Office. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever watch I do watch it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the quote. Yeah, he said that he
Speaker 1: actually absorbed his own twin brother, so he therefore had
Speaker 1: the strength of a man and a baby. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I guess it would be like the Dwight Shoots of
Speaker 1: the animal world. Yeah, yeah, you could. You could think
Speaker 1: of this as the shoot factor. So so the so
Speaker 1: these two uh stantire sharks end up emerging with the
Speaker 1: strength with it, with a very like veracity to help them,
Speaker 1: you know, ensure their survival. Yeah, approximately fourteen species are
Speaker 1: of shark or thought to practice some form of this cannibalism,
Speaker 1: but the santiger shark is the It's the one that
Speaker 1: we've studied the most and we have the most down on. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things to keep in mind
Speaker 1: about procreation in the animal kingdom is that, especially sexual reproduction,
Speaker 1: it's like a huge energy um uh waste, not necessarily waste,
Speaker 1: but let's say instant investment, a huge investment because just
Speaker 1: look at humans for instance, think of all the energy
Speaker 1: that goes into sexual selection, you know, whole products, you know,
Speaker 1: people especially. You know, how much time do teenagers waste
Speaker 1: on sexual selection? Enormous amount of time. They don't know
Speaker 1: how they get anything done, and how do they study?
Speaker 1: I know, apparently they don't, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess they do. But anyway, energy for the sex act itself,
Speaker 1: then there's then on the mother's part, there's the energy
Speaker 1: to bring the offspring to term, the energy to give birth,
Speaker 1: and then the energy to raise the child till it
Speaker 1: can fend for itself. Because the genetic mission is basically
Speaker 1: create another, um, you know, another creature, replicate your DNA,
Speaker 1: replicate the DNA, keep that strand of DNA going, and
Speaker 1: then you know, put this new product on the market
Speaker 1: and let it, you know, carry on on its own, right, Right,
Speaker 1: It's all these niceties like playing it um, you know,
Speaker 1: mose art in the uterus aren't necessarily their focus, right,
Speaker 1: just get it out there, get it going. But you know,
Speaker 1: in a way it's like make sure it's like the best,
Speaker 1: you know, the best possible. Uh. And instead of eating
Speaker 1: of the sharks in the womb, is you know, potentially
Speaker 1: listening to Mozar, right yeah? So um, I also like
Speaker 1: to think of think of this in terms of of
Speaker 1: like a business, like if if how stuff works, sort
Speaker 1: of launch like a like some sort of separate entity
Speaker 1: like I don't know, um, how crabs work or something
Speaker 1: like we're gonna do a site is just about crabs,
Speaker 1: and we're like, this is gonna be it's gonna be
Speaker 1: like how stuff works, except it's only gonna focus on crabs.
Speaker 1: Is we would be kind of like the company's offspring, right,
Speaker 1: so be like all crabs all the time, crab fashions,
Speaker 1: crab recipes, crab science, but the but the but the
Speaker 1: existing business has a certain amount of energy already tied
Speaker 1: out into it. That's a number of employees, right, So
Speaker 1: let's say, well, okay, we're gonna have one one employee
Speaker 1: go out to be the editor of this new side,
Speaker 1: and another to be the writer, another to be the
Speaker 1: marketing guide, another to be the you know, the programmer, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All the things that can make it what it is
Speaker 1: and it has to and where it's like forming this
Speaker 1: new entity of itself. Right, So it's this this huge
Speaker 1: energy and h this huge energy investment, and if that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, then one of two things are going to 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 shrewded. 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 was able to like
Speaker 1: somebody snug Zeus away by putting a rock in there
Speaker 1: so that so that he would eat the rock instead
Speaker 1: of baby Zeus, of course, because Zeus was all about
Speaker 1: 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 expanded 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 air. Yes, I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew I couldn't just say masked booby, Yeah you've
Speaker 1: got you can run these Yeah, I've got to give
Speaker 1: you a hint there. But um, okay, So getting that aside,
Speaker 1: the masked booby is actually a bird and it's indigenous
Speaker 1: to the Galopico silence. And uh, that's a case where
Speaker 1: the parents it's a case of stib eating right there.
Speaker 1: There are two siblings, um, but that's a case where
Speaker 1: the parents actually step in and they encourage them to
Speaker 1: kill one of the other off. Yeah, and they actually
Speaker 1: that the odds are stacked, um in favor of their eldest.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like a kid to getting them
Speaker 1: into a match and seemed like a can 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 so
Speaker 1: anybody out there that is in kind of a blue
Speaker 1: family type situation where they feel like their mom and
Speaker 1: or dad are stirring competition, uh, just be glad that
Speaker 1: they're not encouraging you to kill and eat each other.
Speaker 1: Be glad that you're not a masked pooby. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: but just to give you an idea of how many
Speaker 1: different animals engage in this, and it's also you also
Speaker 1: see uh. For instance, sharks will practice um uh the eating.
Speaker 1: They'll end up eating eggs that haven't been fertilized. Um.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the eggs will be eating that have been fertilized.
Speaker 1: But you'll see you'll see this form of catabalism in protozoa,
Speaker 1: sly molds, sea slugs, insects, spiders, fish, reptiles. They've they've
Speaker 1: observed it in dinosaur fossils, um bats, seals, sea lions, otters,
Speaker 1: polar bears, even otters, Yes, the cute little otters. Imagine one,
Speaker 1: you know, cannibalizing another. It's we're eating it's young. It happens.
Speaker 1: It never shows up in the cute pictures. But tigers, chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: you know, amphibians, at least a hundred species of mammals
Speaker 1: and all, and of course hamsters well yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: most known for it. Don't tap on the glass, which
Speaker 1: leads us to the some of the reasons. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: why would a mother hamster suddenly decide that she needs
Speaker 1: to slay all her offspring and eat some of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe she had way too many and
Speaker 1: that's too much energy to expand on abroad that big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, if you, you know, to use
Speaker 1: the sort of clunky business analogy from earlier, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you suddenly created this enormous side project with way
Speaker 1: too many employees, You're like, WHOA, this is gonna fail.
Speaker 1: This doesn't make it make sense. It's not gonna bring
Speaker 1: in enough money on its own to support that, So
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta bring some, if not all, of
Speaker 1: these employees back into the fold. Yeah. Yeah, and some
Speaker 1: of them too if they're if they're born with um
Speaker 1: a disease or they're not quite up to part Isn't
Speaker 1: that another reason that sort of call down the broad
Speaker 1: is to take out the ones that are the weakest
Speaker 1: and and use them for energy for everybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like a female rattlesnakes, for instance, will consume on average
Speaker 1: about of their postpartum math um. Mostly these are going
Speaker 1: to be still born or just non viable offspring. So again,
Speaker 1: it's like they have all these offspring, it's all about like,
Speaker 1: let's keep the species going, let's keep the DNA going.
Speaker 1: You're gonna want to invest in the ones that are
Speaker 1: the best candidates. I mean, you know, it's disgusting to us,
Speaker 1: but it really is practical if you think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you take the anthropomorphic nests out of it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's the basics, the basic mission,
Speaker 1: the genetic mission, and the the the energy logic tied
Speaker 1: to it. And you if you strip away all the
Speaker 1: layers that human culture has put on top of it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it makes perfect sense, you know, just
Speaker 1: as a as a side observation or question. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this, and I was thinking about mammals who
Speaker 1: eat their placentas after birth, and I'm wondering if they
Speaker 1: ever cannibalize they're young, if maybe eating carried well No,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if maybe the eating the placenta actually um
Speaker 1: serves the need of of eating some sort of protein
Speaker 1: and getting some energy source back, and and instead of
Speaker 1: eating their young, they eat I think would make it
Speaker 1: would make perfect sense. I don't know. I that's a question.
Speaker 1: If anybody knows the answer to that that I would
Speaker 1: love to know. Um. Another great example of this comes
Speaker 1: in innovasive cane toads in Australia. And these are just
Speaker 1: some These are some some crazy animals because you'll have
Speaker 1: a small and medium size but not large cane toads
Speaker 1: and they'll wave a long middle toe off their hindslet
Speaker 1: up and down in the water and they're doing this
Speaker 1: to to to catch other toads. And then the cane
Speaker 1: toad larvae will actively seek out toad eggs of the
Speaker 1: same species to eat. So there's just like a lot
Speaker 1: of cannibals and going on in cane totes in fact um.
Speaker 1: And again they're invasive and they're a huge problem in Australia.
Speaker 1: And uh they they found a two thousand tents study
Speaker 1: found that this was actually uh encouraging them to spread,
Speaker 1: because a mother toad would end up, you know, wanting
Speaker 1: to lay her eggs in a virgin um a pond
Speaker 1: or or a little stream or whatever just to encourage
Speaker 1: just just to protect it from other cane toads. So
Speaker 1: it's like you know, your it just ends up. You know,
Speaker 1: we gotta find new water, new water to uh for
Speaker 1: these eggs to developments so they're not eaten by all
Speaker 1: the other cane totes. But they think that that they
Speaker 1: might be able to to draw the chemical that the
Speaker 1: eggs shed, that that that attracts the other cane toads,
Speaker 1: and use that as some sort of a bait. It's
Speaker 1: like a pheromone or something. Yeah, yeah, it's similar to that.
Speaker 1: I just can't get over the image of like all
Speaker 1: these toes pointing over the water like super nice swimmers. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: that's happening. All right, We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, more cannibalism. See, we could
Speaker 1: keep going and just listing all sorts of weird and
Speaker 1: gross tesque examples of mothers eating their own young, but
Speaker 1: we should probably move on into another fascinating area of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Uh and definitely a sexier area of cannibalism, Sexual cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which sounds like a great, great name for
Speaker 1: a band if it is not used already. To drawback
Speaker 1: to a to an example that we brought up in
Speaker 1: a previous podcast or one about Ladies Night on Planet
Speaker 1: Earth about the role that the male has in any
Speaker 1: given species, we mentioned the uh, 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 hunts himself to death. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then he's his mouth. He's not another mouth to feed
Speaker 1: through the winter. Like the species can then just focus
Speaker 1: on the mother raising the young. All the men are dead,
Speaker 1: uh you know until next season. Yeah, I think maybe,
Speaker 1: so that he's that's sort of relegated to like being
Speaker 1: the pool boy for the female. So that being the case.
Speaker 1: Sexual cannibalism occurs when the female eats her mate daring
Speaker 1: or immediately after the sex act, which happens a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah apparently. And and again it's like if you look
Speaker 1: at the male as merely a mutation necessary for a
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction, he doesn't necessarily have a lot of use
Speaker 1: after that that sexual encounter. So again that's that's energy
Speaker 1: has just wasted. So it reminds me of like when
Speaker 1: a company brings on contract workers for a project that
Speaker 1: has a like a short term goal. Feel like, we
Speaker 1: need to get this project done, but we don't want
Speaker 1: to like hire six guys and then have to pay
Speaker 1: them or and gals and have to pay them benefits, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So let's just bring them on his contract workers and
Speaker 1: then in six months we're done. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the mail. In these cases, it's a contract worker
Speaker 1: and at the when they're not needed anymore, they're let
Speaker 1: go and they're they're submitting themselves to this process willingly
Speaker 1: because they want to make sure that their offspring survived.
Speaker 1: Is that the idea behind this what the mating? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they would say, okay, yeah, I will meet with you,
Speaker 1: knowing that you're going to say you're praying mantis. You're
Speaker 1: going to rip my head off and then consume me
Speaker 1: as I'm mating you. Well, it's interesting. I was reading
Speaker 1: some stuff about this and h most in most cases,
Speaker 1: the mail, I mean, the male is gonna mate. That's uh.
Speaker 1: I'm all right, ladies, that the mail is that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the mail's mission. So he's he's going to engage
Speaker 1: in that. But you'll also see, like with praying manaces,
Speaker 1: the mails will try and survive, uh, within you know,
Speaker 1: their limited ability to do so. Uh. And it's also
Speaker 1: there's kind of it's kind of exaggerated in most praying manasis.
Speaker 1: I understand because a lot of the the early studies
Speaker 1: into this, you had females in captivity who had not
Speaker 1: eaten as much as they want to. Yeah, they were veriou. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so here's this this mantis, and you know there
Speaker 1: he's done his part or is doing his part, and
Speaker 1: he can continue doing his part generally pretty well, even
Speaker 1: with his head eating off. So they just go for it.
Speaker 1: They say that typically praying manis uh cannibalistic mating process
Speaker 1: only occurs five of the time and uh, and it
Speaker 1: occurs most often if the female is hungry. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so most most species are only going to cannibalize regularly
Speaker 1: in captivity. But there's a one species, uh, the mantis
Speaker 1: religiosa um, which is which is really into it. It's
Speaker 1: necessary they had to 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: she eats even more in the lab if the male
Speaker 1: can't escape. But that's the thing. The male will try
Speaker 1: and escape, it's just a third of the time he's uh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a chance. Yeah, I think it was
Speaker 1: the mantal syce I was reading about that. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was 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 very easily. So they can keep processes going
Speaker 1: at least two completely. Yeah, yeah, exactly, so they can
Speaker 1: they can mate longer without dying. But it's interesting, um.
Speaker 1: I was actually thinking about this to Harvard biologists Stephen J. Gould.
Speaker 1: He had thought that that it wasn't as widespread as
Speaker 1: it actually we know it is now. And his idea
Speaker 1: was that, are you saying sexual cannibalism or cannibalism in general?
Speaker 1: Sexual cannibal cannibalism. I think it was. It must have
Speaker 1: been very troubling to him because he came up with
Speaker 1: all these different ideas about it. But the main crux
Speaker 1: of it was that maybe it wasn't as widespread as
Speaker 1: it actually is, and that the female had just mistaken
Speaker 1: her mate as prey, which I thought was really funny because,
Speaker 1: I mean, moments before the praying mantis was you know,
Speaker 1: filling his wings and showing his abs the six pack,
Speaker 1: and you know, then began mating with her, and the
Speaker 1: idea that she just sort of forgot what she was
Speaker 1: doing and turned around and went wow, pray wow. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe he just said he had like a really horrible,
Speaker 1: you know girlfriend at some point, and he was like like, wow,
Speaker 1: like somebody they just like snaps at the you know,
Speaker 1: and so he's like, all women must be like this,
Speaker 1: regardless of species. It's possible. There's there's definitely some overreaching there.
Speaker 1: Now there's one. You'll You'll find a sexual cannibalism in
Speaker 1: a number of arachnids and insects, but it's particularly interesting
Speaker 1: in the red back spider. Yeah. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: relative of the black widow, and the males, first of all,
Speaker 1: are really tiny. Like it's one of these cases where
Speaker 1: where the whole are you know, the whole case for
Speaker 1: males is just being a you know, a mutation necessary
Speaker 1: appropriation and not being the species itself. Really opposite, I
Speaker 1: mean really, it's really obvious in this particular species because
Speaker 1: the male is just tiny, looks like an entirely different
Speaker 1: animal in the in the the female is enormous, and
Speaker 1: the male is a willing participant in the sexual cannibalism. Alright,
Speaker 1: So during copulation, this uh, the little male guy, he'll
Speaker 1: position himself above the female's jaws, all right, and uh
Speaker 1: and uh and and you know, basically like shove himself
Speaker 1: into her jaws so that she gets to eat him.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. And they believe that it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: favored in sexual selection because the sexual the cannibalized spiders
Speaker 1: received two different advantages. First of all, cannibalized males copulate
Speaker 1: longer and fertile i more eggs than those that survive.
Speaker 1: And then also the females were more likely to reject
Speaker 1: subsequent suitors if they consumed a mate, So this makes sense.
Speaker 1: I think they were talking about it as a sort
Speaker 1: of like a sperm plug. Yeah, yeah, I mean, not
Speaker 1: to get racy about it or anything, but basically that
Speaker 1: you know, they had made their deposit in that you know,
Speaker 1: any 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 him passing on his DNA.
Speaker 1: But this is a case where there's a definite advantage
Speaker 1: if he gives himself up to you know, to the
Speaker 1: appetite of his mate. Yeah, and I thought something that
Speaker 1: um was really dramatic that I read is that they
Speaker 1: one accounts so that they actually somersault onto the things.
Speaker 1: We just like, take me, me, eat me. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing that I read is that during the
Speaker 1: mating process that they pluck the strings on the female's
Speaker 1: web for like eight hours. And I know, and I
Speaker 1: thought that is kind of sweet. But then I kind
Speaker 1: of thought, well, maybe she was like that is driving
Speaker 1: me crazy and might eat you. Are these these guys
Speaker 1: are so nice? And then the lady spiders are so
Speaker 1: hard on him. It's just a it's it's a rough life.
Speaker 1: And then there's the orb we weaving spider or weaving
Speaker 1: um in which the male sexual organ gets stuck in
Speaker 1: the female And this is by design. Again, it's the
Speaker 1: same idea of this sort of a sperm plug. So
Speaker 1: although she can polish him off and you know, snack
Speaker 1: on him, she's stuck with him, so to speak, and
Speaker 1: that just make sure that she can't meet with someone
Speaker 1: else afterwards. So there's definitely design behind this. I don't
Speaker 1: think that they're just being masochistic here. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: the situation where the insect world is just like you know,
Speaker 1: evil or anything, and it all makes makes sense the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things now. Um, moving away from from
Speaker 1: sexual cannibalism, you will also find plenty of animals that
Speaker 1: just seem to be kind of jerks, like kind of
Speaker 1: any social jerks, And if they encounter anything, they're probably
Speaker 1: you know, they're either going to run from it or
Speaker 1: try and kill it. And if it's one of their own,
Speaker 1: they're probably going to try and either mate with it
Speaker 1: or kill it, or mate with it and kill it.
Speaker 1: So the score. Like various scorpions are great examples of this.
Speaker 1: Like scorpions tend to live very solitary lives, and if
Speaker 1: they encounter another scorpion of the same variety, then there's
Speaker 1: a very good chance that they'll that one will eat
Speaker 1: the other one. And if they're opposite sex and uh
Speaker 1: you know, and it's uh you know, and they see
Speaker 1: it as a good time to mate, then they may
Speaker 1: mate and then one will eat the other. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: Komodo dragon is of course another great example of of
Speaker 1: just being a animal just for the heck of it,
Speaker 1: because the young, uh, the commodo dragon young are just
Speaker 1: considered prey um, you know, up until they're certain size,
Speaker 1: primarily raised for prey one not primarily raised for prey.
Speaker 1: But they're they're just the parents have no role in
Speaker 1: rearing them after they've been born, so they just have
Speaker 1: to climb the trees to escape parents. Escape their parents.
Speaker 1: Other parents will eat them. They're like, oh, look at
Speaker 1: those guys, they look tasty. I'm hungry. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, the one thing they can do to besides
Speaker 1: hiding in the treetops is that they smear themselves an excrement.
Speaker 1: Then then that will keep the the their parents from
Speaker 1: potentially eating them. That does actually work to Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: come out with dragons too. I remember something with Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone's husband some years back. Oh, I forgot about that,
Speaker 1: didn't Didn't They dine on her husband's foot? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they went like a behind the scenes or something,
Speaker 1: and he went to go pett it. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: like a bad idea. Yeah, I understand. It really scarred him.
Speaker 1: He's been uh I mean emotionally to the point where
Speaker 1: he always keeps himself smeared in Komoto experiment, especially on vacation.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why their relationship didn't work. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: of course you'll find plenty of cases where um animals
Speaker 1: of a various form will be more than willing to
Speaker 1: eat their own dead after they be killed by another
Speaker 1: you know species. You know, alligator, crocodile comes across the dead, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, creature of the same species. It's food, they'll
Speaker 1: eat it. A number of scavengers like vultures, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They see the food, they'll eat it. And even you know,
Speaker 1: humans UM. Throughout throughout history, you have situations where humans
Speaker 1: have eaten their own dead in cases of survival cannibalism. UM.
Speaker 1: Some of those cases are a little controversial, like I've
Speaker 1: I've read cases for and against the the Donner Party
Speaker 1: cannibalism thing actually happening, right because there were no actual witnesses.
Speaker 1: But and then you'll also have the case of the
Speaker 1: soccer team and Alive UM and the and the actual
Speaker 1: events that that movie and book were based on, where
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're in a horrible situation. The these
Speaker 1: there are these dead bodies, and really, on a very
Speaker 1: logical level, those bodies are energy and in a situation
Speaker 1: where it's life or death, you're going to consume that energy, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the important thing to think about,
Speaker 1: is that it really is an extreme conditions right in
Speaker 1: with humans as it has happened. And in nature, I mean,
Speaker 1: food is scarce um, but you know, you can always
Speaker 1: look over at someone and say it would be a
Speaker 1: good protein source. Yeah, And in nature it tends to
Speaker 1: be a lot. It's a lot more life and death obviously,
Speaker 1: especially these cases we're looking at in the ocean where
Speaker 1: where competition is tremendous. And you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of our our fascination with cannibalism is that it
Speaker 1: is we we largely a lot of us anyway, live
Speaker 1: in a time where it's really hard to imagine such
Speaker 1: a desperate situation, and it's and that would necessitate this
Speaker 1: kind of return to our primal roots and our basic programming. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Ted Turner, who not too long ago warned
Speaker 1: everybody that we become cannibalists if if we didn't address
Speaker 1: the global warming situation, missed that. Yeah, Yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course it drew outrage that it was
Speaker 1: certainly a way to get people to pay attention to
Speaker 1: the problem. Oh yeah, I actually, um yeah, I actually
Speaker 1: heard that they the Ted's Montana grills. They actually had
Speaker 1: these these statues of people that they were going to
Speaker 1: start rolling out in place of the buffalo of the
Speaker 1: cannibals and things, because you know, I mean, Ted's a
Speaker 1: savvy businesses. So cannibalism becomes a new thing, then Ted's
Speaker 1: Montana Girl is gonna pick up on it. Of course
Speaker 1: that's a brilliant idea. Um. But what about primates. I
Speaker 1: mean that to me, primates and cannibalism is um, that's
Speaker 1: one of those things I can't help but anthropomorphosize because
Speaker 1: I think that we look at them and see so
Speaker 1: much of ourselves in them, and they do cannibalize one
Speaker 1: another from time to time. It's um. Especially um with primates,
Speaker 1: you see some very disturbing acts, you know, and they're
Speaker 1: more disturbing because they resemble us more. And you know,
Speaker 1: you'll see you know, see you'll see chimpanzees, even gorillas
Speaker 1: and o ring attains their cases where they're you know,
Speaker 1: suspected of eating their own young. Um. You know, and
Speaker 1: we've seen plenty of cases of where chimpanzees have have
Speaker 1: have demonstrated their capacity for quote unquote cruelty towards other chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: But will they I know that sometimes when they're fighting
Speaker 1: that they'll kill each other, but when they're fighting, don't
Speaker 1: don't necessarily 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 the body, Okay.
Speaker 1: And I remember this too, that they might eat the
Speaker 1: infant to um force the chimpanzee into astrous so that
Speaker 1: they can go ahead and propagate again. Is that right?
Speaker 1: I believe so? Yeah, So the infant may not have
Speaker 1: been their infant, but they want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: mate and get the process rolling right now. It's it's
Speaker 1: interesting when you start looking at especially at at primates
Speaker 1: eating one another in different cases, you know, throughout history,
Speaker 1: and they're confidantly studies arguing for and against the um
Speaker 1: just how much cannibalism was going on with prehistor with
Speaker 1: prehistoric humans, but anthropologist William Ron's suggests it's simply bad
Speaker 1: strategy as far as evolution goes. Though, like since the
Speaker 1: under evolutionary theory, we're fueled by that, and you know,
Speaker 1: and they desire to see our jeans survived, you know,
Speaker 1: eating another one of your you know, your tribe and
Speaker 1: your species. That doesn't probably make sense, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just going it's working against our our basic programming. And
Speaker 1: and and another interesting thing to keep in mind is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you may think, well, why don't humans just
Speaker 1: raise you know, why why don't humans raise humans for food? Right?
Speaker 1: Or how how come you don't have you know, cases
Speaker 1: where um cannibalism becomes a stapable staple of any species
Speaker 1: diet um, though it is worth pointing out that cannibalism
Speaker 1: can play a huge role in the diet. I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back to the scorpions here for a second.
Speaker 1: There's a study of desert scorpions, and they found the
Speaker 1: cannibals and provided only the fourth most common meal for
Speaker 1: a scorpion. But but as far as body mask goes,
Speaker 1: it was the number one, representing more than of its
Speaker 1: total food intake. So so yeah, So in in the
Speaker 1: case of the scorpion, yes, cannibalism can, for i'd a
Speaker 1: large part of its diet. But in humans you see
Speaker 1: a different situation. Yeah, and humans nature does not necessarily
Speaker 1: like for us to practice cannibalism. And I think that
Speaker 1: you can see that pretty well illustrated in the four tribe,
Speaker 1: Is that right with the curu? 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 pretty dramatic stuff. Um. And so this
Speaker 1: is this came on because the tribe was basically practicing
Speaker 1: endocannibalism right with the funeral rights. They were consuming the body,
Speaker 1: which you know isn't because they were looking for a
Speaker 1: source of protein, but because they was a way to
Speaker 1: respect the deceased, to literally absorb them, right, And it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting. This is a case where if you if
Speaker 1: you start thinking about cannibalism in a very logical you know,
Speaker 1: energy sort of uh, you know a thing, then eating
Speaker 1: one's ancestors does kind of make it makes sense. It's
Speaker 1: like a way to honor them. It's like I'm inviting
Speaker 1: their energy back into me. And uh and that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty much how Sally would be great. Yes, symbolically it's great. Um,
Speaker 1: And on a basic interview 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 creative fed as Jacob's disease felt, Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: goods uh. And this is a human variant of bad
Speaker 1: 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, right,
Speaker 1: like literally overnight. Yeah, they got them to to eradicate
Speaker 1: this from tribe. Even basically it's like, hey, guys, you
Speaker 1: know when you're your family members go start graving mad
Speaker 1: and are laughing at nothing and then die. Well, that
Speaker 1: comes from the cannibalism. So let's cut that out pretty
Speaker 1: What they're like, well, you know, we weren't two, 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 nature
Speaker 1: a little bit of a concern for primates too, because
Speaker 1: they sometimes will consume a body as a group, spreading
Speaker 1: potentially a disease something like hepatitis um. And I did
Speaker 1: want to add a side note about bnobo's um, which
Speaker 1: is an ape and uh, they're sometimes called the hippie
Speaker 1: ape because they are fun loving and they love to
Speaker 1: mate without discretion. It's like the Key parties in the seventies.
Speaker 1: They are the binobo along with the humans and the dolphins,
Speaker 1: only animals that actually enjoy sex. Right yeah, yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: hence called the hippie ape. I don't know, um, do
Speaker 1: hippie apes enjoy sex? One other I don't know, but uh,
Speaker 1: something that was pretty disconcerting is that they were observed
Speaker 1: pretty recently in the wild to have consumed one of
Speaker 1: their own. And again, this is the anthropomorphic thing where
Speaker 1: we look at them when we sell but there's just
Speaker 1: peace loving and they just love to have sex with
Speaker 1: each other. Why are they eating each other? Um? But
Speaker 1: they would be a good example of primates um taking
Speaker 1: the body and eating it, and they actually ate that
Speaker 1: body for more than seven hours, um, which is a
Speaker 1: lot longer than they would take on any other body.
Speaker 1: And some of the people in the group or the
Speaker 1: individuals I guess would think, 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, Um, it's an odd occurrence for Banobo'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 we just don't know what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But it's also a good example of how that disease
Speaker 1: could be transmitted through the group right now. And it's
Speaker 1: easy to go 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 horrors cannibalism and that you know,
Speaker 1: cannibalism of this nature of this, you know, communical communal
Speaker 1: cannibalism is just poison um And and you know maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you know, you could still make that case. But
Speaker 1: I was looking at 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, the only two cases they found were
Speaker 1: the Priyon transmission in humans that we mentioned earlier and
Speaker 1: a a kind of protozoa based illness in lizards. And
Speaker 1: if do you think this is because most cannialism is
Speaker 1: one on one as opposed to a group situation like that,
Speaker 1: the group cannibalism is more an outlier, um yeah. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: And also I think it's it also comes down to
Speaker 1: like cannibalism, like, you know, a disease is gonna needs
Speaker 1: to spread. It's got the same genetic mission as as
Speaker 1: as any organism, so it needs it needs a road
Speaker 1: it can count on. Right, So, the the idea of
Speaker 1: some sort of disease depending exclusively on cannibalism, it largely
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. This is not not an economic way
Speaker 1: of going about it. So like so you know, for instance,
Speaker 1: in the study, in other cases of cannibalistic disease transmission, uh,
Speaker 1: and there were others alternate disease transmission modes existed. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's like the you know, hepatitis or something happititize
Speaker 1: isn't depending exclusively on group animalism to spread. But if
Speaker 1: that door's open, it'll gladly, gladly take it. Not to
Speaker 1: personify the illness too much, so I guess that the
Speaker 1: talking about not trying to anthromorphosize. Ultimately, you can't get
Speaker 1: back around to this question. Aren't we sort of all
Speaker 1: cannibals on some level or another? Yeah, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: you look at things like anything from a blood transfusion
Speaker 1: to you know, organ transplant. I mean it's it again
Speaker 1: kind of comes down to the the energy uh situation.
Speaker 1: It's like we're we're taking energy out and storing it.
Speaker 1: We're harvesting energy that it can that is otherwise going
Speaker 1: to be wasted in bringing it back into ourselves. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a few interesting cases in the in the
Speaker 1: traditional Chinese medicine where you have what they call tibo
Speaker 1: let's p A I B A. Oh. Nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the martial arts exercise. You can to do with that.
Speaker 1: But but this is a particular medicine that involves something
Speaker 1: uh also referred to as a boardist because it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's harvested from from vitas um. And this is according
Speaker 1: to Mary Roach in her book. Still she goes into
Speaker 1: this a little and explorers this whole chapter on cannibalism
Speaker 1: uh in the use of materials from corpses in medicine
Speaker 1: in that book. So highly recommend checking that out. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. Fine, Young cannibals find Young animal Cannibals.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed it. It's an older episode, but
Speaker 1: again the information is certainly all good. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: So does this change the way that you look at
Speaker 1: praying mantis is now? Do you think of them as
Speaker 1: being these end like creatures or just horrific sexual antics? Yeah?
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