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Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
"Surprising. Impressive. Cannibalism restores my faith in humanity." --Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book Review For centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in nature was dismissed as a desperate response to starvation or other life-threatening circumstances, and few spent time studying it. A taboo subject in our culture, the behavior was portrayed mostly through horror movies or tabloids sensationalizing the crimes of real-life flesh-eaters. But the true nature of cannibalism--the role it plays in evolution as well as human history--is even more intriguing (and more normal) than the misconceptions we've come to accept as fact. In Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, zoologist Bill Schutt sets the record straight, debunking common myths and investigating our new understanding of cannibalism's role in biology, anthropology, and history in the most fascinating account yet written on this complex topic. Schutt takes readers from Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains, where he wades through ponds full of tadpoles devouring their siblings, to the Sierra Nevadas, where he joins researchers who are shedding new light on what happened to the Donner Party--the most infamous episode of cannibalism in American history. He even meets with an expert on the preparation and consumption of human placenta (and, yes, it goes well with Chianti). Bringing together the latest cutting-edge science, Schutt answers questions such as why some amphibians consume their mother's skin; why certain insects bite the heads off their partners after sex; why, up until the end of the twentieth century, Europeans regularly ate human body parts as medical curatives; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of the Neanderthals. He takes us into the future as well, investigating whether, as climate change causes famine, disease, and overcrowding, we may see more outbreaks of cannibalism in many more species--including our own. Cannibalism places a perfectly natural occurrence into a vital new context and invites us to explore why it both enthralls and repels us.
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Community Reviews
This was a highly informative, enthralling read! I remember certain subjects mentioned being sensationalized throughout my life at different points (bleeding eucharist, mad cow disease, movies and articles about cannibalistic serial killers); I appreciate that those topics were expanded upon and explained thoroughly, and that our author was dedicated to his research because you couldn’t pay me to eat human placenta as Bill did (at dinner with the provider).
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Loved this book. A lot of really interesting facts/research. There was one chapter that struggled to hold my interest, but think that was a personal thing and not because of the authors writing.
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veegee reacted with :heart:
Even if I wasn't interested in cannibalism (which I am), I found this book incredibly accessible and easy to read. The author goes through cannibalism first in the animal world before looking at humans and the policial and social implications of calling people "cannibals". He discusses whether people actually were cannibals, or whether it was all a way to justify killing natives and taking their land. I actually found the animal sections a little more interesting than the people sections, but I liked them both overall. I'd recommend this book to anyone who might be interested in cannibalism at all or just wants to read about something that we don't normally talk about.
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veegee reacted with :heart:
I love reading about science so I’m definitely the target audience for an exploration of zoological and anthropological cannibalism. I was especially intrigued by the discussion of mad cow disease and the mirror illness in human cannibals. An article on a different illness has haunted me since I first read about it in 2008, and I’d love to read a more detailed explanation of what, if any, relationship these illness have (as soon as scientists figure it out): https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html.
One thing really bothered me though, despite the book coming out in 2017, Schutt seems to have missed major research on Neanderthals that came out in 2015 of DNA evidence that there was "Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals": https://nature.com/articles/nature16544.
One thing really bothered me though, despite the book coming out in 2017, Schutt seems to have missed major research on Neanderthals that came out in 2015 of DNA evidence that there was "Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals": https://nature.com/articles/nature16544.
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veegee reacted with :heart:
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