Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History(2)
Is it really a surprise, though, that our greatest cinematic villain is a man-eating psychiatrist while the mild-mannered runner-up is based on a real-life cannibal killer? Perhaps not, if one considers that many cultures share the belief that consuming another human is the worst (or close to the worst) behavior that a person can undertake. As a result, real-life cannibalistic psychopaths like Jeffrey Dahmer (another Wisconsin native) and his Russian counterpart, Andrei Chikatilo, have attained something akin to mythical status in the annals of history’s most notorious murderers. Whether through a filter of fictionalization, where man-eating deviants are transformed into powerful antiheroes, or through tabloids sensationalizing the crimes of real-life cannibals, these tales feed our obsession with all things gruesome—an obsession that is now an acceptable facet of our society.
A different attitude was taken toward “primitive” social or ethnic groups whose members might not have shared the Western take on cannibalism taboos. At best, these “savages” were pegged as souls to be saved, but only if they met certain requirements. In the first half of the 20th century, for example, explorers and the missionaries who followed them ventured into the foreboding New Guinea highlands and quickly imposed one hard-and-fast rule for the locals: Cannibalism in any form was strictly forbidden.
But far worse instances of cultural intrusion occurred elsewhere and throughout history, as those accused of consuming other humans, for any reason, were brutalized, enslaved, and murdered. The most infamous example of this practice began during the last years of the 15th century when millions of indigenous people living in the Caribbean and Mexico were summarily reclassified as cannibals for reasons that had little to do with people-eating. Instead, it paved the way for them to be robbed, beaten, conquered, and slain, all at the whim of their new Spanish masters.
Similar atrocities were carried out on a massive scale by a succession of flag-planting European powers who (if one believes their accounts) wrested South America, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific away from man-eating savages, whose behavior placed them beyond the pale of anything that could remotely be described as human.
So were European fears about cannibalism simply an invention used to justify conquest, or were there cultures, including those encountered by the Spaniards, where the consumption of humans was regarded as normal behavior? Although defining someone as a cannibal became an effective way to dehumanize them, there is also evidence that ritual cannibalism, as embodied in various customs related to funerary rites and warfare, occurred throughout history.
As I began studying these forms of cannibalism, I sought to determine not only their perceived functions, but just how widespread they were or weren’t. Surprisingly—or perhaps not surprisingly given the subject matter—there is disagreement among anthropologists regarding ritual cannibalism. Some deny that it ever occurred, while others claim that the behavior did occur but was uncommon. Still others claim that cannibalism was practiced by many cultures throughout history and for a variety of reasons. One such body of evidence led me straight back to European history, where I learned that a particularly macabre form of cannibalism had been practiced for hundreds of years by nobility, physicians, and commoners alike, even into the 20th century.
As a zoologist, I was, of course, intrigued at the prospect of documenting cases of non-human cannibalism. Looking back now, I can see that I’d started my inquiry with something less than a completely open mind. Part of me reasoned that since cannibalism was presumably a rare occurrence in humans (at least in modern times), it would likely be similarly rare in the animal kingdom.
Once I dug further, though, I discovered that cannibalism differs in frequency between major animal groups—nonexistent in some and common in others. It varies from species to species and even within the same species, depending on local environmental conditions. Cannibalism also serves a variety of functions, depending on the cannibal. There are even examples in which an individual being cannibalized receives a benefit.
In several instances, cannibalism appears to have arisen only recently in a species, and human activity might be the cause. In one such case, news reports informed horrified audiences that some of the most highly recognizable animals on the planet were suddenly consuming their own young. “Polar bears resort to cannibalism as Arctic ice shrinks,” reported CNN, while the Times of London echoed the sentiment: “Climate Change Forcing Polar Bears to Become Cannibals.” It was Reuters, though, that scored a perfect ten on the gruesome scale with an online slide show in which an adult polar bear was seen carrying around the still cute-as-a button head of a dead cub, the remains of its spinal cord trailing behind like a red streamer.
The real story behind polar bear cannibalism turned out to be just as fascinating, though it would also serve as a perfect example of how many accusations of and stories about cannibalism throughout history were untrue, unproven, or exaggerated—distorted by sensationalism, deception, a lack of scientific knowledge, and just plain bad writing. With the passage of time, these accounts too often become part of the historical record, their errors long forgotten. Part of my job would be to expose those errors.
I was also extremely curious to see if the origin of cannibalism taboos could be traced back to the natural world, so I developed a pair of alternative hypotheses. Perhaps our aversion to consuming our own kind is hardwired into our brains and as such is a part of our genetic blueprint—a gene or two whose expression selects against such behavior. I reasoned that if such a built-in deterrent exists, then humans and most non-humans (with the exception of a few well-known anomalies such as black widow spiders and praying mantises) would avoid cannibalism at all costs. Thus, the taboo would have a biological foundation.