August 29, 2013 • 45 mins
Fine Young (Animal) Cannibals: Cannibalism is a bit yucky in the human world, but for animals it's just a matter of economics. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie expore the world of cannibalistic insects and their kin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas And
if all goes according to plan, I will be in
China with my wife's collecting our son and uh when
this episode airs. So certainly, if you have any positive
(00:26):
energy to spare, send it to me because I'll probably
be on the on the on the edge during this trip.
I'm sure it'll be a stressful time, but certainly a
worthwhile experience. So during this time, we're going to air
just a couple of reruns, but rewinds that we really
think deserve a second listen, and so in this episode,
(00:47):
we are going to replay our Cannibals episode. Now, I
think a lot of people ended up passing this one
by because the original title was finding on Cannibals, and
a lot of people my wife included, skipped over at
it first because I thought we were going to talk
about human cannibals, about nefarious individuals eating other individuals and
praying on the week. And certainly that is an interesting topic,
(01:09):
but a much darker topic because in this episode we
focus almost exclusively on insects and arachnets. But I would
say that I think actually the sexual cannibalism that goes
on here, the ripping off of praying manta's head, is
pretty dark stuff. But it's safer because well, we're talking
about insects, right, and it comes down to just pure
economy as we'll discussing this episode. Yeah, yeah, well we're
(01:30):
talking about sibilicide and fantaside and some Dwight shrewdism going on.
So we hope that you enjoy this. It is rife
with some lovely and awful bits of cannibalism. Robert, I've
got a burning question for you, alright, fire off. I
(01:52):
would like to know if you have ever tasted huge food.
Huge food. I'm not sure I know what that is. Well,
I hope that you're going to say now, because because
well it's non existent actually, but the first thing, otherwise
I would worry a little bit off you said, yes,
it's it's actually a spoof product. And it was supposedly
(02:13):
supposed to be a soy based food product designed to
resemble human flesh and taste and texture, and so the
website was up for about a year. MEB two thousand five,
two thousand and six, and it had all these great
products that you just never could buy. So if you wanted,
you know, if you were really wanting a finger or
(02:35):
an arm or something but didn't necessarily want to cannibalize someone,
you could In theory, do they replicate and they replicated
the taste or the form, the taste and the texture. Yeah. Well,
I mean, you know, if you really get logical about it,
I'm not sure there's anything that weird about it, not
compared to say, well, okay, you're vegetarian, right, yes, okay.
(02:58):
Do you ever have like soysage or like a soy dog,
or you know, any kind of fir or whatever. Yeah,
I have like meat simulated products. We'll see. Like that
seems like, I mean, it's not unlike that you don't
want to actually eat meat, but you're okay with something that. Yeah.
And yet there's a disconnect because sometimes when I pull
(03:20):
out a piece of what's supposed to be bacon and
I look at it and it's a little disconcerting because
I'm frying up the bacon, and yet I don't eat bacon,
and I don't necessarily want bacon, but I do have
to say, there is that that bacon taste that you
can never really replicate. Yeah, well even if you're but
I guess even if you're frying up some soy bacon,
(03:41):
it is going to look like bacon and not say
like a pig's face. Like you can't get a soy
pig face, right, Maybe you can. Maybe it's it's going
to be a small market that may actually carry that.
They do some pretty funky stuff with it. So this,
you know, in discussing like why is this creepy? And
this not you know, uh with the with the HOOFU.
(04:04):
I mean that really comes down to the basic question
about cannibalism in in nature as a whole, because it's
it's one of those things when you really look at it,
there's kind of like the animal version and then well
there's really only the animal version. Yes, well, but but
on top of the animal version, um, and this is like,
you know, as cannibalism relates to just any kind of
(04:24):
creature you might find might find that practices it, and
a lot of animals practice it. Um. If you layer
human culture and human society and our complex web of
emotions and values on top of that, it just really
complicates the matter and you get into this this area
where cannibalism is really this. I mean, it's just you know,
it's it's an outrageous thing. It's like it raises outrage
(04:48):
from people for us to would like to think that
we have morals and uh, social values and we all
cooperate with each other, we try not to eat each
other humans. Yeah. Yeah, I found this great quote from
Tom Sorel from the University of Birmingham and he said, quote,
in intellectual history, cannibals stand for alien and exotic human being,
(05:10):
specimens of our species who realize it's the darkest possibilities,
usually in places far removed from civilization cannibalism. Cannibalism both
expresses natural law and and contravenes it. So right, so
there that there's the rub right, yeah, and it happens
in nature and it's perfectly natural. They're right, and yet
(05:32):
we can't help but WinCE a little bit. Yeah. You
here that you know, if you start hearing that somebody's
like certain grinding up corpses, you know, to serving the restaurant,
people just get outraged. There's a great money Python skit
where it involves like grinding up corpses and and and
feeding it to people, and it's like the they break
the fourth wall and like the the audience just starts
throwing things. You know. It's it's it's that outrageous a concept, right, right,
(05:56):
you want to know where your meat pie came from? Yeah,
it's very like say, it's very widespread in the animal kingdom,
and it is a major mortality factor in the biology
of numerous species. So we're going to sort of walk
through the We're not really gonna go with pros and cons,
but first of us, we're gonna look at the case
for cannibalism in nature and some of the ways that
(06:17):
it's practiced, and then then we're gonna look at the
case against And for the most part, we're gonna avoid
the whole question of cannibalism um within the larger human institution.
But we do have an excellent article on the website
by Josh Clark about that, so I highly recommend checking
that out if you want to get more into the
(06:38):
you know, the serial killer cannibal topics, right and no
cannibalism all the different types of cannibalism that exists. All right, So, um,
the big thing for me when I when I was
researching this is it a lot of it really comes
down to energy, right, because if you're an organism on
this planet, unless you're a plant that's generating a lot
(07:01):
of its energy from photo through photo since this um
and even that, you're not not all the energies necessarily
coming from the Sun. But for the rest of us,
we're having to consume other little bundles of energy to
to keep our energy going. So we're having to eat
other organisms. Now we might we might not eat um,
you know, we might only eat plants, or we might
(07:22):
only eat animals, but we're having to eat something. So
it's this constant. This is huge pyramid you know of
of predators preying on other forms of energy. And even bugs.
Let's not discount bugs. Some people eat bugs and they
like them quite a bit. Well, they're supposedly quite good.
I've never had one. Have you had a bug? No? No,
But it's I think it's a street food Vietnam. Yeah,
(07:45):
suppose there was supposedly some in Thailand. I didn't get
to try it when I was there. Ye supposed to
be incredibly nutritious. Yeah, I tried if I if I
had the chance, But it's never offered on you know,
the local menus. No, you're Nelanta where the palm outa
bug salads? I don't know, you'll have to start a
food truck based on that. So, like we said, the
it all comes down to energy, it comes down to predation,
(08:07):
and cannibalism is basically a pet predator prey interaction within
a species. So it's well a member of this species
preying on a member of another of the same species. So,
like you know, when you get into the discussions of
odd did you know humans eat the handerthals and deniahnderthals
eat humans. That's not really cannibalism. It's kind of creepy,
(08:27):
but it's still it's it would be two different species
eating each other or one you know, that's that's a
whole separate podcast there. Okay, but like me eating you
same species? Right, yeah, don't worry, but let's hope it
doesn't come to that, right. So there are different types
of cannibalism, right, So there's um something called sibilicide. Yes,
(08:48):
this is the most commonly seen in the sand tiger
shark um and this is a situation where the animal
has to uteri and each one produces a number of eggs,
and but each each litteral yields just two pups, one
for each udreus. Okay, so there's some competitiveness there. Yeah,
(09:08):
these the little embryos have embryonic teeth. So you have
all these little you know, unborn brothers and sisters in there,
and it's, uh, it's kind of like a It's like
each one is like a battle royale of you know,
who's going to be the toughest. So it's slay just
kind of you know, chopped down on each other. And
the end of it, you have one shark pup left standing.
Huh okay, and so they're hungry, they've got teeth. Um.
(09:31):
It actually reminds me of Dwight Shrewt from the Office. Um.
I don't know if you ever watch I do watch it.
I don't remember the quote. Yeah, he said that he
actually absorbed his own twin brother, so he therefore had
the strength of a man and a baby. Yeah. So
I guess it would be like the Dwight Shoots of
the animal world. Yeah, yeah, you could. You could think
of this as the shoot factor. So so the so
(09:54):
these two uh stantire sharks end up emerging with the
strength with it, with a very like veracity to help them,
you know, ensure their survival. Yeah, approximately fourteen species are
of shark or thought to practice some form of this cannibalism,
but the santiger shark is the It's the one that
we've studied the most and we have the most down on. Um. Now,
(10:18):
you know, one of the things to keep in mind
about procreation in the animal kingdom is that, especially sexual reproduction,
it's like a huge energy um uh waste, not necessarily waste,
but let's say instant investment, a huge investment because just
look at humans for instance, think of all the energy
that goes into sexual selection, you know, whole products, you know,
(10:40):
people especially. You know, how much time do teenagers waste
on sexual selection? Enormous amount of time. They don't know
how they get anything done, and how do they study?
I know, apparently they don't, but I don't know. I
guess they do. But anyway, energy for the sex act itself,
then there's then on the mother's part, there's the energy
to bring the offspring to term, the energy to give birth,
(11:03):
and then the energy to raise the child till it
can fend for itself. Because the genetic mission is basically
create another, um, you know, another creature, replicate your DNA,
replicate the DNA, keep that strand of DNA going, and
then you know, put this new product on the market
and let it, you know, carry on on its own, right, Right,
It's all these niceties like playing it um, you know,
(11:24):
mose art in the uterus aren't necessarily their focus, right,
just get it out there, get it going. But you know,
in a way it's like make sure it's like the best,
you know, the best possible. Uh. And instead of eating
of the sharks in the womb, is you know, potentially
listening to Mozar, right yeah? So um, I also like
to think of think of this in terms of of
(11:46):
like a business, like if if how stuff works, sort
of launch like a like some sort of separate entity
like I don't know, um, how crabs work or something
like we're gonna do a site is just about crabs,
and we're like, this is gonna be it's gonna be
like how stuff works, except it's only gonna focus on crabs.
Is we would be kind of like the company's offspring, right,
so be like all crabs all the time, crab fashions,
(12:09):
crab recipes, crab science, but the but the but the
existing business has a certain amount of energy already tied
out into it. That's a number of employees, right, So
let's say, well, okay, we're gonna have one one employee
go out to be the editor of this new side,
and another to be the writer, another to be the
marketing guide, another to be the you know, the programmer, etcetera.
All the things that can make it what it is
(12:30):
and it has to and where it's like forming this
new entity of itself. Right, So it's this this huge
energy and h this huge energy investment, and if that
doesn't work, then one of two things are going to happen.
Either all those people are gonna lose their jobs or
they're going to be absorbed back into the parent company,
(12:50):
or at least that's my my understands, they're gonna be shrewded. Yeah,
they're gonna be shrewded. So that leads us to another
type of cannibalism that's pretty calm, really very common, and
that's the eating of one's own young, which again is
one of these kind of like terrifying type of things.
There's the classic image, is it Chronus the god? Yeah,
(13:11):
eating his own son, I think so yeah, and then
like then I'm I'm a little shaky in this particular
story from mythology, but there's a famous painting of it,
and there's I think Zeus like was able to like
somebody snug Zeus away by putting a rock in there
so that so that he would eat the rock instead
of baby Zeus, of course, because Zeus was all about
(13:33):
killing the young, his young. Yeah, so um So anyway,
it's it's another sort of terrifying idea. You know that
the oh my goodness, the mother is the lifebringer and
then you know, and if you've ever had hamsters or
or any other you know, kind of animal like that
that ends up killing it's young and or eating them,
it can be kind of a terrifying moment. But it
(13:53):
makes a lot of sense from an energy standpoint, right,
from a survival basic Yeah. There, you know, there's energy
has been expanded to create these uh, these new creatures
and their calories wrapped up in them, so you bring
them back into the fold, right right, Okay, Well I'm
actually thinking too, um sort of related to that, there's
(14:13):
the masked booby, which is air. Yes, I knew it.
I knew I couldn't just say masked booby, Yeah you've
got you can run these Yeah, I've got to give
you a hint there. But um, okay, So getting that aside,
the masked booby is actually a bird and it's indigenous
to the Galopico silence. And uh, that's a case where
(14:37):
the parents it's a case of stib eating right there.
There are two siblings, um, but that's a case where
the parents actually step in and they encourage them to
kill one of the other off. Yeah, and they actually
that the odds are stacked, um in favor of their eldest.
So it's sort of like a kid to getting them
(14:58):
into a match and seemed like a can fight and
seeing who's going to come out best. And the reason
for that is the very same, which is, you know,
you want to put all your effort into the sibling
that's going to survive and has the best chance of
carrying on. It's I mean, it sounds harsh, but so
anybody out there that is in kind of a blue
(15:20):
family type situation where they feel like their mom and
or dad are stirring competition, uh, just be glad that
they're not encouraging you to kill and eat each other.
Be glad that you're not a masked pooby. Yes, um,
but just to give you an idea of how many
different animals engage in this, and it's also you also
(15:40):
see uh. For instance, sharks will practice um uh the eating.
They'll end up eating eggs that haven't been fertilized. Um.
And sometimes the eggs will be eating that have been fertilized.
But you'll see you'll see this form of catabalism in protozoa,
sly molds, sea slugs, insects, spiders, fish, reptiles. They've they've
observed it in dinosaur fossils, um bats, seals, sea lions, otters,
(16:04):
polar bears, even otters, Yes, the cute little otters. Imagine one,
you know, cannibalizing another. It's we're eating it's young. It happens.
It never shows up in the cute pictures. But tigers, chimpanzees,
you know, amphibians, at least a hundred species of mammals
and all, and of course hamsters well yeah, yeah, they're
most known for it. Don't tap on the glass, which
(16:26):
leads us to the some of the reasons. Um, you know,
why would a mother hamster suddenly decide that she needs
to slay all her offspring and eat some of them.
I don't know, maybe she had way too many and
that's too much energy to expand on abroad that big. Yeah,
it's kind of like, if you, you know, to use
the sort of clunky business analogy from earlier, it's like,
(16:48):
if you suddenly created this enormous side project with way
too many employees, You're like, WHOA, this is gonna fail.
This doesn't make it make sense. It's not gonna bring
in enough money on its own to support that, So
we gotta we gotta bring some, if not all, of
these employees back into the fold. Yeah. Yeah, and some
of them too if they're if they're born with um
a disease or they're not quite up to part Isn't
(17:09):
that another reason that sort of call down the broad
is to take out the ones that are the weakest
and and use them for energy for everybody else. Yeah,
Like a female rattlesnakes, for instance, will consume on average
about of their postpartum math um. Mostly these are going
to be still born or just non viable offspring. So again,
(17:31):
it's like they have all these offspring, it's all about like,
let's keep the species going, let's keep the DNA going.
You're gonna want to invest in the ones that are
the best candidates. I mean, you know, it's disgusting to us,
but it really is practical if you think about it. Yeah,
if you take the anthropomorphic nests out of it, Yeah,
it's like, you know, it's the basics, the basic mission,
the genetic mission, and the the the energy logic tied
(17:54):
to it. And you if you strip away all the
layers that human culture has put on top of it,
and yeah, it's it makes perfect sense, you know, just
as a as a side observation or question. I was
thinking about this, and I was thinking about mammals who
eat their placentas after birth, and I'm wondering if they
ever cannibalize they're young, if maybe eating carried well No,
(18:18):
I'm wondering if maybe the eating the placenta actually um
serves the need of of eating some sort of protein
and getting some energy source back, and and instead of
eating their young, they eat I think would make it
would make perfect sense. I don't know. I that's a question.
If anybody knows the answer to that that I would
love to know. Um. Another great example of this comes
(18:41):
in innovasive cane toads in Australia. And these are just
some These are some some crazy animals because you'll have
a small and medium size but not large cane toads
and they'll wave a long middle toe off their hindslet
up and down in the water and they're doing this
to to to catch other toads. And then the cane
(19:04):
toad larvae will actively seek out toad eggs of the
same species to eat. So there's just like a lot
of cannibals and going on in cane totes in fact um.
And again they're invasive and they're a huge problem in Australia.
And uh they they found a two thousand tents study
found that this was actually uh encouraging them to spread,
(19:25):
because a mother toad would end up, you know, wanting
to lay her eggs in a virgin um a pond
or or a little stream or whatever just to encourage
just just to protect it from other cane toads. So
it's like you know, your it just ends up. You know,
we gotta find new water, new water to uh for
these eggs to developments so they're not eaten by all
(19:47):
the other cane totes. But they think that that they
might be able to to draw the chemical that the
eggs shed, that that that attracts the other cane toads,
and use that as some sort of a bait. It's
like a pheromone or something. Yeah, yeah, it's similar to that.
I just can't get over the image of like all
(20:07):
these toes pointing over the water like super nice swimmers. Yeah, sure,
that's happening. All right, We're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, more cannibalism. See, we could
keep going and just listing all sorts of weird and
(20:31):
gross tesque examples of mothers eating their own young, but
we should probably move on into another fascinating area of cannibalism.
Uh and definitely a sexier area of cannibalism, Sexual cannibalism.
Oh yeah, which sounds like a great, great name for
a band if it is not used already. To drawback
to a to an example that we brought up in
a previous podcast or one about Ladies Night on Planet
(20:54):
Earth about the role that the male has in any
given species, we mentioned the uh, the brown and tecanus,
which is also known as mclahy's marsupial mouse. And this
is the male that mates for twelve hours at a
time and eventually he hunts himself to death. Uh, and
then he's his mouth. He's not another mouth to feed
(21:15):
through the winter. Like the species can then just focus
on the mother raising the young. All the men are dead,
uh you know until next season. Yeah, I think maybe,
so that he's that's sort of relegated to like being
the pool boy for the female. So that being the case.
Sexual cannibalism occurs when the female eats her mate daring
or immediately after the sex act, which happens a lot.
(21:39):
Yeah apparently. And and again it's like if you look
at the male as merely a mutation necessary for a
sexual reproduction, he doesn't necessarily have a lot of use
after that that sexual encounter. So again that's that's energy
has just wasted. So it reminds me of like when
a company brings on contract workers for a project that
(22:00):
has a like a short term goal. Feel like, we
need to get this project done, but we don't want
to like hire six guys and then have to pay
them or and gals and have to pay them benefits, etcetera.
So let's just bring them on his contract workers and
then in six months we're done. So it's kind of
like the mail. In these cases, it's a contract worker
and at the when they're not needed anymore, they're let
(22:20):
go and they're they're submitting themselves to this process willingly
because they want to make sure that their offspring survived.
Is that the idea behind this what the mating? Yeah,
that they would say, okay, yeah, I will meet with you,
knowing that you're going to say you're praying mantis. You're
going to rip my head off and then consume me
as I'm mating you. Well, it's interesting. I was reading
(22:42):
some stuff about this and h most in most cases,
the mail, I mean, the male is gonna mate. That's uh.
I'm all right, ladies, that the mail is that. I mean,
that's the mail's mission. So he's he's going to engage
in that. But you'll also see, like with praying manaces,
the mails will try and survive, uh, within you know,
(23:03):
their limited ability to do so. Uh. And it's also
there's kind of it's kind of exaggerated in most praying manasis.
I understand because a lot of the the early studies
into this, you had females in captivity who had not
eaten as much as they want to. Yeah, they were veriou. Yeah.
And so here's this this mantis, and you know there
(23:25):
he's done his part or is doing his part, and
he can continue doing his part generally pretty well, even
with his head eating off. So they just go for it.
They say that typically praying manis uh cannibalistic mating process
only occurs five of the time and uh, and it
occurs most often if the female is hungry. Yeah, and
(23:47):
so most most species are only going to cannibalize regularly
in captivity. But there's a one species, uh, the mantis
religiosa um, which is which is really into it. It's
necessary they had to be removed for the mating process
to to to take effect properly. So and in these cases,
the female typically eats a third of her partners, and
(24:10):
she eats even more in the lab if the male
can't escape. But that's the thing. The male will try
and escape, it's just a third of the time he's uh,
he doesn't have a chance. Yeah, I think it was
the mantal syce I was reading about that. Uh. There
was some suggestion that they had evolved to sort of
almost create a belt like effect in their abdomen regions,
(24:30):
so that they were drawing in all of their major
organs as tightly inward as possible, so that the things
wouldn't get very easily. So they can keep processes going
at least two completely. Yeah, yeah, exactly, so they can
they can mate longer without dying. But it's interesting, um.
I was actually thinking about this to Harvard biologists Stephen J. Gould.
(24:51):
He had thought that that it wasn't as widespread as
it actually we know it is now. And his idea
was that, are you saying sexual cannibalism or cannibalism in general?
Sexual cannibal cannibalism. I think it was. It must have
been very troubling to him because he came up with
all these different ideas about it. But the main crux
of it was that maybe it wasn't as widespread as
it actually is, and that the female had just mistaken
(25:14):
her mate as prey, which I thought was really funny because,
I mean, moments before the praying mantis was you know,
filling his wings and showing his abs the six pack,
and you know, then began mating with her, and the
idea that she just sort of forgot what she was
doing and turned around and went wow, pray wow. Maybe
(25:35):
maybe he just said he had like a really horrible,
you know girlfriend at some point, and he was like like, wow,
like somebody they just like snaps at the you know,
and so he's like, all women must be like this,
regardless of species. It's possible. There's there's definitely some overreaching there.
Now there's one. You'll You'll find a sexual cannibalism in
a number of arachnids and insects, but it's particularly interesting
(25:57):
in the red back spider. Yeah. Yeah, this is a
relative of the black widow, and the males, first of all,
are really tiny. Like it's one of these cases where
where the whole are you know, the whole case for
males is just being a you know, a mutation necessary
appropriation and not being the species itself. Really opposite, I
mean really, it's really obvious in this particular species because
(26:19):
the male is just tiny, looks like an entirely different
animal in the in the the female is enormous, and
the male is a willing participant in the sexual cannibalism. Alright,
So during copulation, this uh, the little male guy, he'll
position himself above the female's jaws, all right, and uh
(26:40):
and uh and and you know, basically like shove himself
into her jaws so that she gets to eat him.
Uh and uh. And they believe that it's uh, it's
favored in sexual selection because the sexual the cannibalized spiders
received two different advantages. First of all, cannibalized males copulate
longer and fertile i more eggs than those that survive.
(27:02):
And then also the females were more likely to reject
subsequent suitors if they consumed a mate, So this makes sense.
I think they were talking about it as a sort
of like a sperm plug. Yeah, yeah, I mean, not
to get racy about it or anything, but basically that
you know, they had made their deposit in that you know,
(27:25):
any other males after that wouldn't necessarily be successful, right yeah.
And it's and it's interesting because like we're looking at
these other cases of sexual cannibalism and the male really
doesn't necessarily have any there's no argument for the male
sticking around and being eaten for the you know, the
(27:45):
advancement of the species and the him passing on his DNA.
But this is a case where there's a definite advantage
if he gives himself up to you know, to the
appetite of his mate. Yeah, and I thought something that
um was really dramatic that I read is that they
one accounts so that they actually somersault onto the things.
We just like, take me, me, eat me. And then
(28:07):
the other thing that I read is that during the
mating process that they pluck the strings on the female's
web for like eight hours. And I know, and I
thought that is kind of sweet. But then I kind
of thought, well, maybe she was like that is driving
me crazy and might eat you. Are these these guys
are so nice? And then the lady spiders are so
hard on him. It's just a it's it's a rough life.
(28:30):
And then there's the orb we weaving spider or weaving
um in which the male sexual organ gets stuck in
the female And this is by design. Again, it's the
same idea of this sort of a sperm plug. So
although she can polish him off and you know, snack
on him, she's stuck with him, so to speak, and
that just make sure that she can't meet with someone
(28:51):
else afterwards. So there's definitely design behind this. I don't
think that they're just being masochistic here. Yeah, it's not
the situation where the insect world is just like you know,
evil or anything, and it all makes makes sense the
grand scheme of things now. Um, moving away from from
sexual cannibalism, you will also find plenty of animals that
(29:12):
just seem to be kind of jerks, like kind of
any social jerks, And if they encounter anything, they're probably
you know, they're either going to run from it or
try and kill it. And if it's one of their own,
they're probably going to try and either mate with it
or kill it, or mate with it and kill it.
So the score. Like various scorpions are great examples of this.
Like scorpions tend to live very solitary lives, and if
(29:36):
they encounter another scorpion of the same variety, then there's
a very good chance that they'll that one will eat
the other one. And if they're opposite sex and uh
you know, and it's uh you know, and they see
it as a good time to mate, then they may
mate and then one will eat the other. Yeah. The
Komodo dragon is of course another great example of of
(29:58):
just being a animal just for the heck of it,
because the young, uh, the commodo dragon young are just
considered prey um, you know, up until they're certain size,
primarily raised for prey one not primarily raised for prey.
But they're they're just the parents have no role in
rearing them after they've been born, so they just have
(30:20):
to climb the trees to escape parents. Escape their parents.
Other parents will eat them. They're like, oh, look at
those guys, they look tasty. I'm hungry. Let's do this.
Interestingly enough, the one thing they can do to besides
hiding in the treetops is that they smear themselves an excrement.
Then then that will keep the the their parents from
potentially eating them. That does actually work to Yeah, okay,
(30:45):
come out with dragons too. I remember something with Sharon
Stone's husband some years back. Oh, I forgot about that,
didn't Didn't They dine on her husband's foot? I think so. Yeah.
I think they went like a behind the scenes or something,
and he went to go pett it. Yeah, it's just
like a bad idea. Yeah, I understand. It really scarred him.
He's been uh I mean emotionally to the point where
he always keeps himself smeared in Komoto experiment, especially on vacation.
(31:10):
I guess that's why their relationship didn't work. Yeah, And
of course you'll find plenty of cases where um animals
of a various form will be more than willing to
eat their own dead after they be killed by another
you know species. You know, alligator, crocodile comes across the dead, uh,
you know, creature of the same species. It's food, they'll
eat it. A number of scavengers like vultures, et cetera.
(31:34):
They see the food, they'll eat it. And even you know,
humans UM. Throughout throughout history, you have situations where humans
have eaten their own dead in cases of survival cannibalism. UM.
Some of those cases are a little controversial, like I've
I've read cases for and against the the Donner Party
(31:54):
cannibalism thing actually happening, right because there were no actual witnesses.
But and then you'll also have the case of the
soccer team and Alive UM and the and the actual
events that that movie and book were based on, where
you know, they're they're in a horrible situation. The these
there are these dead bodies, and really, on a very
logical level, those bodies are energy and in a situation
(32:18):
where it's life or death, you're going to consume that energy, right,
And I think that's the important thing to think about,
is that it really is an extreme conditions right in
with humans as it has happened. And in nature, I mean,
food is scarce um, but you know, you can always
look over at someone and say it would be a
good protein source. Yeah, And in nature it tends to
(32:39):
be a lot. It's a lot more life and death obviously,
especially these cases we're looking at in the ocean where
where competition is tremendous. And you know, I think a
lot of our our fascination with cannibalism is that it
is we we largely a lot of us anyway, live
in a time where it's really hard to imagine such
a desperate situation, and it's and that would necessitate this
(33:03):
kind of return to our primal roots and our basic programming. Yeah, actually,
wasn't it. Ted Turner, who not too long ago warned
everybody that we become cannibalists if if we didn't address
the global warming situation, missed that. Yeah, Yeah, there was.
I mean, of course it drew outrage that it was
certainly a way to get people to pay attention to
(33:25):
the problem. Oh yeah, I actually, um yeah, I actually
heard that they the Ted's Montana grills. They actually had
these these statues of people that they were going to
start rolling out in place of the buffalo of the
cannibals and things, because you know, I mean, Ted's a
savvy businesses. So cannibalism becomes a new thing, then Ted's
Montana Girl is gonna pick up on it. Of course
(33:47):
that's a brilliant idea. Um. But what about primates. I
mean that to me, primates and cannibalism is um, that's
one of those things I can't help but anthropomorphosize because
I think that we look at them and see so
much of ourselves in them, and they do cannibalize one
another from time to time. It's um. Especially um with primates,
(34:11):
you see some very disturbing acts, you know, and they're
more disturbing because they resemble us more. And you know,
you'll see you know, see you'll see chimpanzees, even gorillas
and o ring attains their cases where they're you know,
suspected of eating their own young. Um. You know, and
we've seen plenty of cases of where chimpanzees have have
have demonstrated their capacity for quote unquote cruelty towards other chimpanzees.
(34:37):
But will they I know that sometimes when they're fighting
that they'll kill each other, but when they're fighting, don't
don't necessarily eat the body afterward? Is that right? Right? Or? Yeah?
Not necessarily will they eat it? So it's it's more, um,
I guess if they come along a deceased chimpanzee or
(34:58):
other type of ape and they actually just eat it. Yeah.
In chimpanzees, typically the males will kill and eat the
infant of another female, usually in their own group, but
occasionally in another. And when chimps kill adults from other
groups in a fight, they don't eat the body, Okay.
And I remember this too, that they might eat the
infant to um force the chimpanzee into astrous so that
(35:21):
they can go ahead and propagate again. Is that right?
I believe so? Yeah, So the infant may not have
been their infant, but they want to go ahead and
mate and get the process rolling right now. It's it's
interesting when you start looking at especially at at primates
eating one another in different cases, you know, throughout history,
and they're confidantly studies arguing for and against the um
(35:44):
just how much cannibalism was going on with prehistor with
prehistoric humans, but anthropologist William Ron's suggests it's simply bad
strategy as far as evolution goes. Though, like since the
under evolutionary theory, we're fueled by that, and you know,
and they desire to see our jeans survived, you know,
eating another one of your you know, your tribe and
(36:07):
your species. That doesn't probably make sense, you know, it's
just going it's working against our our basic programming. And
and and another interesting thing to keep in mind is, uh,
you know, you may think, well, why don't humans just
raise you know, why why don't humans raise humans for food? Right?
Or how how come you don't have you know, cases
where um cannibalism becomes a stapable staple of any species
(36:32):
diet um, though it is worth pointing out that cannibalism
can play a huge role in the diet. I think
I'm gonna go back to the scorpions here for a second.
There's a study of desert scorpions, and they found the
cannibals and provided only the fourth most common meal for
a scorpion. But but as far as body mask goes,
it was the number one, representing more than of its
(36:53):
total food intake. So so yeah, So in in the
case of the scorpion, yes, cannibalism can, for i'd a
large part of its diet. But in humans you see
a different situation. Yeah, and humans nature does not necessarily
like for us to practice cannibalism. And I think that
(37:15):
you can see that pretty well illustrated in the four tribe,
Is that right with the curu? Yes, curu is a
it's a rare breed of disorder caused by what are
called prions, and these are abnormal proteins which induce irregular
protein folding in brain cells and this leads to flawed
brain tissue which results in progressive, incurable brain damage. The
(37:39):
word itself, curu means laughing disease in its name because
the scientists observed fits of hysterical laughing in those affected.
So it's pretty pretty dramatic stuff. Um. And so this
is this came on because the tribe was basically practicing
endocannibalism right with the funeral rights. They were consuming the body,
(38:00):
which you know isn't because they were looking for a
source of protein, but because they was a way to
respect the deceased, to literally absorb them, right, And it's
it's interesting. This is a case where if you if
you start thinking about cannibalism in a very logical you know,
energy sort of uh, you know a thing, then eating
one's ancestors does kind of make it makes sense. It's
(38:21):
like a way to honor them. It's like I'm inviting
their energy back into me. And uh and that's that's
pretty much how Sally would be great. Yes, symbolically it's great. Um,
And on a basic interview level, it's it's not bad either.
But the thing is, it's kind of it really opens
the door for the passage of disease. Right, And so
this is sort of like the mad cow equivalent, is
(38:43):
that right? Yes? Yeah, mad cow is a similar disorder
as is I'm going to just take a shot at this,
uh creative fed as Jacob's disease felt, Yeah, that sounds
goods uh. And this is a human variant of bad
cow disease. And they basically, like with the four A,
they were basically able to to to wipe out the
(39:03):
disease by simply getting them to stop practicing this communal cannibalism, right,
like literally overnight. Yeah, they got them to to eradicate
this from tribe. Even basically it's like, hey, guys, you
know when you're your family members go start graving mad
and are laughing at nothing and then die. Well, that
comes from the cannibalism. So let's cut that out pretty
What they're like, well, you know, we weren't two, We
(39:25):
weren't that crazy about the cannibalism. We can we can
set that aside. Well, I guess it's also in nature
a little bit of a concern for primates too, because
they sometimes will consume a body as a group, spreading
potentially a disease something like hepatitis um. And I did
want to add a side note about bnobo's um, which
(39:47):
is an ape and uh, they're sometimes called the hippie
ape because they are fun loving and they love to
mate without discretion. It's like the Key parties in the seventies.
They are the binobo along with the humans and the dolphins,
only animals that actually enjoy sex. Right yeah, yeah, so um,
(40:09):
hence called the hippie ape. I don't know, um, do
hippie apes enjoy sex? One other I don't know, but uh,
something that was pretty disconcerting is that they were observed
pretty recently in the wild to have consumed one of
their own. And again, this is the anthropomorphic thing where
we look at them when we sell but there's just
peace loving and they just love to have sex with
(40:31):
each other. Why are they eating each other? Um? But
they would be a good example of primates um taking
the body and eating it, and they actually ate that
body for more than seven hours, um, which is a
lot longer than they would take on any other body.
And some of the people in the group or the
(40:54):
individuals I guess would think, people, we're actually playing with
the food. So um, it's a it's an interesting side
note in that, Um, it's an odd occurrence for Banobo's
to be doing that and in the way that they did.
And of course you could extrapolate that it was some
sort of uh funeral, right, but then that wouldn't really
be correct because we just don't know what they were doing.
(41:16):
But it's also a good example of how that disease
could be transmitted through the group right now. And it's
easy to go to fall into the trap of saying, well,
then this is a great case of where you know,
you know, nature of horrors cannibalism and that you know,
cannibalism of this nature of this, you know, communical communal
cannibalism is just poison um And and you know maybe
(41:36):
maybe you know, you could still make that case. But
I was looking at two thousand and six University of
Virginia study and they found that cannibalism uh is actually
only documented as the predominant transmission mode of a disease
in very few species. Um. Yeah, even even through you know,
specific instances of cannibalistic transmission um that have been noted
(41:59):
um Like. Basically, the only two cases they found were
the Priyon transmission in humans that we mentioned earlier and
a a kind of protozoa based illness in lizards. And
if do you think this is because most cannialism is
one on one as opposed to a group situation like that,
the group cannibalism is more an outlier, um yeah. Well yeah,
(42:22):
And also I think it's it also comes down to
like cannibalism, like, you know, a disease is gonna needs
to spread. It's got the same genetic mission as as
as any organism, so it needs it needs a road
it can count on. Right, So, the the idea of
some sort of disease depending exclusively on cannibalism, it largely
doesn't make sense. This is not not an economic way
(42:42):
of going about it. So like so you know, for instance,
in the study, in other cases of cannibalistic disease transmission, uh,
and there were others alternate disease transmission modes existed. Um.
So it's like the you know, hepatitis or something happititize
isn't depending exclusively on group animalism to spread. But if
that door's open, it'll gladly, gladly take it. Not to
(43:05):
personify the illness too much, so I guess that the
talking about not trying to anthromorphosize. Ultimately, you can't get
back around to this question. Aren't we sort of all
cannibals on some level or another? Yeah, I mean you know,
you look at things like anything from a blood transfusion
to you know, organ transplant. I mean it's it again
(43:27):
kind of comes down to the the energy uh situation.
It's like we're we're taking energy out and storing it.
We're harvesting energy that it can that is otherwise going
to be wasted in bringing it back into ourselves. Um,
there are a few interesting cases in the in the
traditional Chinese medicine where you have what they call tibo
let's p A I B A. Oh. Nothing to do
with the martial arts exercise. You can to do with that.
(43:50):
But but this is a particular medicine that involves something
uh also referred to as a boardist because it's uh,
it's harvested from from vitas um. And this is according
to Mary Roach in her book. Still she goes into
this a little and explorers this whole chapter on cannibalism
uh in the use of materials from corpses in medicine
in that book. So highly recommend checking that out. So
(44:20):
there you have it. Fine, Young cannibals find Young animal Cannibals.
I hope you enjoyed it. It's an older episode, but
again the information is certainly all good. That's right. Uh.
So does this change the way that you look at
praying mantis is now? Do you think of them as
being these end like creatures or just horrific sexual antics? Yeah?
(44:42):
Let us know you can find us in all the
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(45:02):
you could always drop us a line, and we encourage
you to do so at Below the Mind at Discovery
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas And
if all goes according to plan, I will be in
China with my wife's collecting our son and uh when
this episode airs. So certainly, if you have any positive
(00:26):
energy to spare, send it to me because I'll probably
be on the on the on the edge during this trip.
I'm sure it'll be a stressful time, but certainly a
worthwhile experience. So during this time, we're going to air
just a couple of reruns, but rewinds that we really
think deserve a second listen, and so in this episode,
(00:47):
we are going to replay our Cannibals episode. Now, I
think a lot of people ended up passing this one
by because the original title was finding on Cannibals, and
a lot of people my wife included, skipped over at
it first because I thought we were going to talk
about human cannibals, about nefarious individuals eating other individuals and
praying on the week. And certainly that is an interesting topic,
(01:09):
but a much darker topic because in this episode we
focus almost exclusively on insects and arachnets. But I would
say that I think actually the sexual cannibalism that goes
on here, the ripping off of praying manta's head, is
pretty dark stuff. But it's safer because well, we're talking
about insects, right, and it comes down to just pure
economy as we'll discussing this episode. Yeah, yeah, well we're
(01:30):
talking about sibilicide and fantaside and some Dwight shrewdism going on.
So we hope that you enjoy this. It is rife
with some lovely and awful bits of cannibalism. Robert, I've
got a burning question for you, alright, fire off. I
(01:52):
would like to know if you have ever tasted huge food.
Huge food. I'm not sure I know what that is. Well,
I hope that you're going to say now, because because
well it's non existent actually, but the first thing, otherwise
I would worry a little bit off you said, yes,
it's it's actually a spoof product. And it was supposedly
(02:13):
supposed to be a soy based food product designed to
resemble human flesh and taste and texture, and so the
website was up for about a year. MEB two thousand five,
two thousand and six, and it had all these great
products that you just never could buy. So if you wanted,
you know, if you were really wanting a finger or
(02:35):
an arm or something but didn't necessarily want to cannibalize someone,
you could In theory, do they replicate and they replicated
the taste or the form, the taste and the texture. Yeah. Well,
I mean, you know, if you really get logical about it,
I'm not sure there's anything that weird about it, not
compared to say, well, okay, you're vegetarian, right, yes, okay.
(02:58):
Do you ever have like soysage or like a soy dog,
or you know, any kind of fir or whatever. Yeah,
I have like meat simulated products. We'll see. Like that
seems like, I mean, it's not unlike that you don't
want to actually eat meat, but you're okay with something that. Yeah.
And yet there's a disconnect because sometimes when I pull
(03:20):
out a piece of what's supposed to be bacon and
I look at it and it's a little disconcerting because
I'm frying up the bacon, and yet I don't eat bacon,
and I don't necessarily want bacon, but I do have
to say, there is that that bacon taste that you
can never really replicate. Yeah, well even if you're but
I guess even if you're frying up some soy bacon,
(03:41):
it is going to look like bacon and not say
like a pig's face. Like you can't get a soy
pig face, right, Maybe you can. Maybe it's it's going
to be a small market that may actually carry that.
They do some pretty funky stuff with it. So this,
you know, in discussing like why is this creepy? And
this not you know, uh with the with the HOOFU.
(04:04):
I mean that really comes down to the basic question
about cannibalism in in nature as a whole, because it's
it's one of those things when you really look at it,
there's kind of like the animal version and then well
there's really only the animal version. Yes, well, but but
on top of the animal version, um, and this is like,
you know, as cannibalism relates to just any kind of
(04:24):
creature you might find might find that practices it, and
a lot of animals practice it. Um. If you layer
human culture and human society and our complex web of
emotions and values on top of that, it just really
complicates the matter and you get into this this area
where cannibalism is really this. I mean, it's just you know,
it's it's an outrageous thing. It's like it raises outrage
(04:48):
from people for us to would like to think that
we have morals and uh, social values and we all
cooperate with each other, we try not to eat each
other humans. Yeah. Yeah, I found this great quote from
Tom Sorel from the University of Birmingham and he said, quote,
in intellectual history, cannibals stand for alien and exotic human being,
(05:10):
specimens of our species who realize it's the darkest possibilities,
usually in places far removed from civilization cannibalism. Cannibalism both
expresses natural law and and contravenes it. So right, so
there that there's the rub right, yeah, and it happens
in nature and it's perfectly natural. They're right, and yet
(05:32):
we can't help but WinCE a little bit. Yeah. You
here that you know, if you start hearing that somebody's
like certain grinding up corpses, you know, to serving the restaurant,
people just get outraged. There's a great money Python skit
where it involves like grinding up corpses and and and
feeding it to people, and it's like the they break
the fourth wall and like the the audience just starts
throwing things. You know. It's it's it's that outrageous a concept, right, right,
(05:56):
you want to know where your meat pie came from? Yeah,
it's very like say, it's very widespread in the animal kingdom,
and it is a major mortality factor in the biology
of numerous species. So we're going to sort of walk
through the We're not really gonna go with pros and cons,
but first of us, we're gonna look at the case
for cannibalism in nature and some of the ways that
(06:17):
it's practiced, and then then we're gonna look at the
case against And for the most part, we're gonna avoid
the whole question of cannibalism um within the larger human institution.
But we do have an excellent article on the website
by Josh Clark about that, so I highly recommend checking
that out if you want to get more into the
(06:38):
you know, the serial killer cannibal topics, right and no
cannibalism all the different types of cannibalism that exists. All right, So, um,
the big thing for me when I when I was
researching this is it a lot of it really comes
down to energy, right, because if you're an organism on
this planet, unless you're a plant that's generating a lot
(07:01):
of its energy from photo through photo since this um
and even that, you're not not all the energies necessarily
coming from the Sun. But for the rest of us,
we're having to consume other little bundles of energy to
to keep our energy going. So we're having to eat
other organisms. Now we might we might not eat um,
you know, we might only eat plants, or we might
(07:22):
only eat animals, but we're having to eat something. So
it's this constant. This is huge pyramid you know of
of predators preying on other forms of energy. And even bugs.
Let's not discount bugs. Some people eat bugs and they
like them quite a bit. Well, they're supposedly quite good.
I've never had one. Have you had a bug? No? No,
But it's I think it's a street food Vietnam. Yeah,
(07:45):
suppose there was supposedly some in Thailand. I didn't get
to try it when I was there. Ye supposed to
be incredibly nutritious. Yeah, I tried if I if I
had the chance, But it's never offered on you know,
the local menus. No, you're Nelanta where the palm outa
bug salads? I don't know, you'll have to start a
food truck based on that. So, like we said, the
it all comes down to energy, it comes down to predation,
(08:07):
and cannibalism is basically a pet predator prey interaction within
a species. So it's well a member of this species
preying on a member of another of the same species. So,
like you know, when you get into the discussions of
odd did you know humans eat the handerthals and deniahnderthals
eat humans. That's not really cannibalism. It's kind of creepy,
(08:27):
but it's still it's it would be two different species
eating each other or one you know, that's that's a
whole separate podcast there. Okay, but like me eating you
same species? Right, yeah, don't worry, but let's hope it
doesn't come to that, right. So there are different types
of cannibalism, right, So there's um something called sibilicide. Yes,
(08:48):
this is the most commonly seen in the sand tiger
shark um and this is a situation where the animal
has to uteri and each one produces a number of eggs,
and but each each litteral yields just two pups, one
for each udreus. Okay, so there's some competitiveness there. Yeah,
(09:08):
these the little embryos have embryonic teeth. So you have
all these little you know, unborn brothers and sisters in there,
and it's, uh, it's kind of like a It's like
each one is like a battle royale of you know,
who's going to be the toughest. So it's slay just
kind of you know, chopped down on each other. And
the end of it, you have one shark pup left standing.
Huh okay, and so they're hungry, they've got teeth. Um.
(09:31):
It actually reminds me of Dwight Shrewt from the Office. Um.
I don't know if you ever watch I do watch it.
I don't remember the quote. Yeah, he said that he
actually absorbed his own twin brother, so he therefore had
the strength of a man and a baby. Yeah. So
I guess it would be like the Dwight Shoots of
the animal world. Yeah, yeah, you could. You could think
of this as the shoot factor. So so the so
(09:54):
these two uh stantire sharks end up emerging with the
strength with it, with a very like veracity to help them,
you know, ensure their survival. Yeah, approximately fourteen species are
of shark or thought to practice some form of this cannibalism,
but the santiger shark is the It's the one that
we've studied the most and we have the most down on. Um. Now,
(10:18):
you know, one of the things to keep in mind
about procreation in the animal kingdom is that, especially sexual reproduction,
it's like a huge energy um uh waste, not necessarily waste,
but let's say instant investment, a huge investment because just
look at humans for instance, think of all the energy
that goes into sexual selection, you know, whole products, you know,
(10:40):
people especially. You know, how much time do teenagers waste
on sexual selection? Enormous amount of time. They don't know
how they get anything done, and how do they study?
I know, apparently they don't, but I don't know. I
guess they do. But anyway, energy for the sex act itself,
then there's then on the mother's part, there's the energy
to bring the offspring to term, the energy to give birth,
(11:03):
and then the energy to raise the child till it
can fend for itself. Because the genetic mission is basically
create another, um, you know, another creature, replicate your DNA,
replicate the DNA, keep that strand of DNA going, and
then you know, put this new product on the market
and let it, you know, carry on on its own, right, Right,
It's all these niceties like playing it um, you know,
(11:24):
mose art in the uterus aren't necessarily their focus, right,
just get it out there, get it going. But you know,
in a way it's like make sure it's like the best,
you know, the best possible. Uh. And instead of eating
of the sharks in the womb, is you know, potentially
listening to Mozar, right yeah? So um, I also like
to think of think of this in terms of of
(11:46):
like a business, like if if how stuff works, sort
of launch like a like some sort of separate entity
like I don't know, um, how crabs work or something
like we're gonna do a site is just about crabs,
and we're like, this is gonna be it's gonna be
like how stuff works, except it's only gonna focus on crabs.
Is we would be kind of like the company's offspring, right,
so be like all crabs all the time, crab fashions,
(12:09):
crab recipes, crab science, but the but the but the
existing business has a certain amount of energy already tied
out into it. That's a number of employees, right, So
let's say, well, okay, we're gonna have one one employee
go out to be the editor of this new side,
and another to be the writer, another to be the
marketing guide, another to be the you know, the programmer, etcetera.
All the things that can make it what it is
(12:30):
and it has to and where it's like forming this
new entity of itself. Right, So it's this this huge
energy and h this huge energy investment, and if that
doesn't work, then one of two things are going to happen.
Either all those people are gonna lose their jobs or
they're going to be absorbed back into the parent company,
(12:50):
or at least that's my my understands, they're gonna be shrewded. Yeah,
they're gonna be shrewded. So that leads us to another
type of cannibalism that's pretty calm, really very common, and
that's the eating of one's own young, which again is
one of these kind of like terrifying type of things.
There's the classic image, is it Chronus the god? Yeah,
(13:11):
eating his own son, I think so yeah, and then
like then I'm I'm a little shaky in this particular
story from mythology, but there's a famous painting of it,
and there's I think Zeus like was able to like
somebody snug Zeus away by putting a rock in there
so that so that he would eat the rock instead
of baby Zeus, of course, because Zeus was all about
(13:33):
killing the young, his young. Yeah, so um So anyway,
it's it's another sort of terrifying idea. You know that
the oh my goodness, the mother is the lifebringer and
then you know, and if you've ever had hamsters or
or any other you know, kind of animal like that
that ends up killing it's young and or eating them,
it can be kind of a terrifying moment. But it
(13:53):
makes a lot of sense from an energy standpoint, right,
from a survival basic Yeah. There, you know, there's energy
has been expanded to create these uh, these new creatures
and their calories wrapped up in them, so you bring
them back into the fold, right right, Okay, Well I'm
actually thinking too, um sort of related to that, there's
(14:13):
the masked booby, which is air. Yes, I knew it.
I knew I couldn't just say masked booby, Yeah you've
got you can run these Yeah, I've got to give
you a hint there. But um, okay, So getting that aside,
the masked booby is actually a bird and it's indigenous
to the Galopico silence. And uh, that's a case where
(14:37):
the parents it's a case of stib eating right there.
There are two siblings, um, but that's a case where
the parents actually step in and they encourage them to
kill one of the other off. Yeah, and they actually
that the odds are stacked, um in favor of their eldest.
So it's sort of like a kid to getting them
(14:58):
into a match and seemed like a can fight and
seeing who's going to come out best. And the reason
for that is the very same, which is, you know,
you want to put all your effort into the sibling
that's going to survive and has the best chance of
carrying on. It's I mean, it sounds harsh, but so
anybody out there that is in kind of a blue
(15:20):
family type situation where they feel like their mom and
or dad are stirring competition, uh, just be glad that
they're not encouraging you to kill and eat each other.
Be glad that you're not a masked pooby. Yes, um,
but just to give you an idea of how many
different animals engage in this, and it's also you also
(15:40):
see uh. For instance, sharks will practice um uh the eating.
They'll end up eating eggs that haven't been fertilized. Um.
And sometimes the eggs will be eating that have been fertilized.
But you'll see you'll see this form of catabalism in protozoa,
sly molds, sea slugs, insects, spiders, fish, reptiles. They've they've
observed it in dinosaur fossils, um bats, seals, sea lions, otters,
(16:04):
polar bears, even otters, Yes, the cute little otters. Imagine one,
you know, cannibalizing another. It's we're eating it's young. It happens.
It never shows up in the cute pictures. But tigers, chimpanzees,
you know, amphibians, at least a hundred species of mammals
and all, and of course hamsters well yeah, yeah, they're
most known for it. Don't tap on the glass, which
(16:26):
leads us to the some of the reasons. Um, you know,
why would a mother hamster suddenly decide that she needs
to slay all her offspring and eat some of them.
I don't know, maybe she had way too many and
that's too much energy to expand on abroad that big. Yeah,
it's kind of like, if you, you know, to use
the sort of clunky business analogy from earlier, it's like,
(16:48):
if you suddenly created this enormous side project with way
too many employees, You're like, WHOA, this is gonna fail.
This doesn't make it make sense. It's not gonna bring
in enough money on its own to support that, So
we gotta we gotta bring some, if not all, of
these employees back into the fold. Yeah. Yeah, and some
of them too if they're if they're born with um
a disease or they're not quite up to part Isn't
(17:09):
that another reason that sort of call down the broad
is to take out the ones that are the weakest
and and use them for energy for everybody else. Yeah,
Like a female rattlesnakes, for instance, will consume on average
about of their postpartum math um. Mostly these are going
to be still born or just non viable offspring. So again,
(17:31):
it's like they have all these offspring, it's all about like,
let's keep the species going, let's keep the DNA going.
You're gonna want to invest in the ones that are
the best candidates. I mean, you know, it's disgusting to us,
but it really is practical if you think about it. Yeah,
if you take the anthropomorphic nests out of it, Yeah,
it's like, you know, it's the basics, the basic mission,
the genetic mission, and the the the energy logic tied
(17:54):
to it. And you if you strip away all the
layers that human culture has put on top of it,
and yeah, it's it makes perfect sense, you know, just
as a as a side observation or question. I was
thinking about this, and I was thinking about mammals who
eat their placentas after birth, and I'm wondering if they
ever cannibalize they're young, if maybe eating carried well No,
(18:18):
I'm wondering if maybe the eating the placenta actually um
serves the need of of eating some sort of protein
and getting some energy source back, and and instead of
eating their young, they eat I think would make it
would make perfect sense. I don't know. I that's a question.
If anybody knows the answer to that that I would
love to know. Um. Another great example of this comes
(18:41):
in innovasive cane toads in Australia. And these are just
some These are some some crazy animals because you'll have
a small and medium size but not large cane toads
and they'll wave a long middle toe off their hindslet
up and down in the water and they're doing this
to to to catch other toads. And then the cane
(19:04):
toad larvae will actively seek out toad eggs of the
same species to eat. So there's just like a lot
of cannibals and going on in cane totes in fact um.
And again they're invasive and they're a huge problem in Australia.
And uh they they found a two thousand tents study
found that this was actually uh encouraging them to spread,
(19:25):
because a mother toad would end up, you know, wanting
to lay her eggs in a virgin um a pond
or or a little stream or whatever just to encourage
just just to protect it from other cane toads. So
it's like you know, your it just ends up. You know,
we gotta find new water, new water to uh for
these eggs to developments so they're not eaten by all
(19:47):
the other cane totes. But they think that that they
might be able to to draw the chemical that the
eggs shed, that that that attracts the other cane toads,
and use that as some sort of a bait. It's
like a pheromone or something. Yeah, yeah, it's similar to that.
I just can't get over the image of like all
(20:07):
these toes pointing over the water like super nice swimmers. Yeah, sure,
that's happening. All right, We're gonna take a quick break
and when we come back, more cannibalism. See, we could
keep going and just listing all sorts of weird and
(20:31):
gross tesque examples of mothers eating their own young, but
we should probably move on into another fascinating area of cannibalism.
Uh and definitely a sexier area of cannibalism, Sexual cannibalism.
Oh yeah, which sounds like a great, great name for
a band if it is not used already. To drawback
to a to an example that we brought up in
a previous podcast or one about Ladies Night on Planet
(20:54):
Earth about the role that the male has in any
given species, we mentioned the uh, the brown and tecanus,
which is also known as mclahy's marsupial mouse. And this
is the male that mates for twelve hours at a
time and eventually he hunts himself to death. Uh, and
then he's his mouth. He's not another mouth to feed
(21:15):
through the winter. Like the species can then just focus
on the mother raising the young. All the men are dead,
uh you know until next season. Yeah, I think maybe,
so that he's that's sort of relegated to like being
the pool boy for the female. So that being the case.
Sexual cannibalism occurs when the female eats her mate daring
or immediately after the sex act, which happens a lot.
(21:39):
Yeah apparently. And and again it's like if you look
at the male as merely a mutation necessary for a
sexual reproduction, he doesn't necessarily have a lot of use
after that that sexual encounter. So again that's that's energy
has just wasted. So it reminds me of like when
a company brings on contract workers for a project that
(22:00):
has a like a short term goal. Feel like, we
need to get this project done, but we don't want
to like hire six guys and then have to pay
them or and gals and have to pay them benefits, etcetera.
So let's just bring them on his contract workers and
then in six months we're done. So it's kind of
like the mail. In these cases, it's a contract worker
and at the when they're not needed anymore, they're let
(22:20):
go and they're they're submitting themselves to this process willingly
because they want to make sure that their offspring survived.
Is that the idea behind this what the mating? Yeah,
that they would say, okay, yeah, I will meet with you,
knowing that you're going to say you're praying mantis. You're
going to rip my head off and then consume me
as I'm mating you. Well, it's interesting. I was reading
(22:42):
some stuff about this and h most in most cases,
the mail, I mean, the male is gonna mate. That's uh.
I'm all right, ladies, that the mail is that. I mean,
that's the mail's mission. So he's he's going to engage
in that. But you'll also see, like with praying manaces,
the mails will try and survive, uh, within you know,
(23:03):
their limited ability to do so. Uh. And it's also
there's kind of it's kind of exaggerated in most praying manasis.
I understand because a lot of the the early studies
into this, you had females in captivity who had not
eaten as much as they want to. Yeah, they were veriou. Yeah.
And so here's this this mantis, and you know there
(23:25):
he's done his part or is doing his part, and
he can continue doing his part generally pretty well, even
with his head eating off. So they just go for it.
They say that typically praying manis uh cannibalistic mating process
only occurs five of the time and uh, and it
occurs most often if the female is hungry. Yeah, and
(23:47):
so most most species are only going to cannibalize regularly
in captivity. But there's a one species, uh, the mantis
religiosa um, which is which is really into it. It's
necessary they had to be removed for the mating process
to to to take effect properly. So and in these cases,
the female typically eats a third of her partners, and
(24:10):
she eats even more in the lab if the male
can't escape. But that's the thing. The male will try
and escape, it's just a third of the time he's uh,
he doesn't have a chance. Yeah, I think it was
the mantal syce I was reading about that. Uh. There
was some suggestion that they had evolved to sort of
almost create a belt like effect in their abdomen regions,
(24:30):
so that they were drawing in all of their major
organs as tightly inward as possible, so that the things
wouldn't get very easily. So they can keep processes going
at least two completely. Yeah, yeah, exactly, so they can
they can mate longer without dying. But it's interesting, um.
I was actually thinking about this to Harvard biologists Stephen J. Gould.
(24:51):
He had thought that that it wasn't as widespread as
it actually we know it is now. And his idea
was that, are you saying sexual cannibalism or cannibalism in general?
Sexual cannibal cannibalism. I think it was. It must have
been very troubling to him because he came up with
all these different ideas about it. But the main crux
of it was that maybe it wasn't as widespread as
it actually is, and that the female had just mistaken
(25:14):
her mate as prey, which I thought was really funny because,
I mean, moments before the praying mantis was you know,
filling his wings and showing his abs the six pack,
and you know, then began mating with her, and the
idea that she just sort of forgot what she was
doing and turned around and went wow, pray wow. Maybe
(25:35):
maybe he just said he had like a really horrible,
you know girlfriend at some point, and he was like like, wow,
like somebody they just like snaps at the you know,
and so he's like, all women must be like this,
regardless of species. It's possible. There's there's definitely some overreaching there.
Now there's one. You'll You'll find a sexual cannibalism in
a number of arachnids and insects, but it's particularly interesting
(25:57):
in the red back spider. Yeah. Yeah, this is a
relative of the black widow, and the males, first of all,
are really tiny. Like it's one of these cases where
where the whole are you know, the whole case for
males is just being a you know, a mutation necessary
appropriation and not being the species itself. Really opposite, I
mean really, it's really obvious in this particular species because
(26:19):
the male is just tiny, looks like an entirely different
animal in the in the the female is enormous, and
the male is a willing participant in the sexual cannibalism. Alright,
So during copulation, this uh, the little male guy, he'll
position himself above the female's jaws, all right, and uh
(26:40):
and uh and and you know, basically like shove himself
into her jaws so that she gets to eat him.
Uh and uh. And they believe that it's uh, it's
favored in sexual selection because the sexual the cannibalized spiders
received two different advantages. First of all, cannibalized males copulate
longer and fertile i more eggs than those that survive.
(27:02):
And then also the females were more likely to reject
subsequent suitors if they consumed a mate, So this makes sense.
I think they were talking about it as a sort
of like a sperm plug. Yeah, yeah, I mean, not
to get racy about it or anything, but basically that
you know, they had made their deposit in that you know,
(27:25):
any other males after that wouldn't necessarily be successful, right yeah.
And it's and it's interesting because like we're looking at
these other cases of sexual cannibalism and the male really
doesn't necessarily have any there's no argument for the male
sticking around and being eaten for the you know, the
(27:45):
advancement of the species and the him passing on his DNA.
But this is a case where there's a definite advantage
if he gives himself up to you know, to the
appetite of his mate. Yeah, and I thought something that
um was really dramatic that I read is that they
one accounts so that they actually somersault onto the things.
We just like, take me, me, eat me. And then
(28:07):
the other thing that I read is that during the
mating process that they pluck the strings on the female's
web for like eight hours. And I know, and I
thought that is kind of sweet. But then I kind
of thought, well, maybe she was like that is driving
me crazy and might eat you. Are these these guys
are so nice? And then the lady spiders are so
hard on him. It's just a it's it's a rough life.
(28:30):
And then there's the orb we weaving spider or weaving
um in which the male sexual organ gets stuck in
the female And this is by design. Again, it's the
same idea of this sort of a sperm plug. So
although she can polish him off and you know, snack
on him, she's stuck with him, so to speak, and
that just make sure that she can't meet with someone
(28:51):
else afterwards. So there's definitely design behind this. I don't
think that they're just being masochistic here. Yeah, it's not
the situation where the insect world is just like you know,
evil or anything, and it all makes makes sense the
grand scheme of things now. Um, moving away from from
sexual cannibalism, you will also find plenty of animals that
(29:12):
just seem to be kind of jerks, like kind of
any social jerks, And if they encounter anything, they're probably
you know, they're either going to run from it or
try and kill it. And if it's one of their own,
they're probably going to try and either mate with it
or kill it, or mate with it and kill it.
So the score. Like various scorpions are great examples of this.
Like scorpions tend to live very solitary lives, and if
(29:36):
they encounter another scorpion of the same variety, then there's
a very good chance that they'll that one will eat
the other one. And if they're opposite sex and uh
you know, and it's uh you know, and they see
it as a good time to mate, then they may
mate and then one will eat the other. Yeah. The
Komodo dragon is of course another great example of of
(29:58):
just being a animal just for the heck of it,
because the young, uh, the commodo dragon young are just
considered prey um, you know, up until they're certain size,
primarily raised for prey one not primarily raised for prey.
But they're they're just the parents have no role in
rearing them after they've been born, so they just have
(30:20):
to climb the trees to escape parents. Escape their parents.
Other parents will eat them. They're like, oh, look at
those guys, they look tasty. I'm hungry. Let's do this.
Interestingly enough, the one thing they can do to besides
hiding in the treetops is that they smear themselves an excrement.
Then then that will keep the the their parents from
potentially eating them. That does actually work to Yeah, okay,
(30:45):
come out with dragons too. I remember something with Sharon
Stone's husband some years back. Oh, I forgot about that,
didn't Didn't They dine on her husband's foot? I think so. Yeah.
I think they went like a behind the scenes or something,
and he went to go pett it. Yeah, it's just
like a bad idea. Yeah, I understand. It really scarred him.
He's been uh I mean emotionally to the point where
he always keeps himself smeared in Komoto experiment, especially on vacation.
(31:10):
I guess that's why their relationship didn't work. Yeah, And
of course you'll find plenty of cases where um animals
of a various form will be more than willing to
eat their own dead after they be killed by another
you know species. You know, alligator, crocodile comes across the dead, uh,
you know, creature of the same species. It's food, they'll
eat it. A number of scavengers like vultures, et cetera.
(31:34):
They see the food, they'll eat it. And even you know,
humans UM. Throughout throughout history, you have situations where humans
have eaten their own dead in cases of survival cannibalism. UM.
Some of those cases are a little controversial, like I've
I've read cases for and against the the Donner Party
(31:54):
cannibalism thing actually happening, right because there were no actual witnesses.
But and then you'll also have the case of the
soccer team and Alive UM and the and the actual
events that that movie and book were based on, where
you know, they're they're in a horrible situation. The these
there are these dead bodies, and really, on a very
logical level, those bodies are energy and in a situation
(32:18):
where it's life or death, you're going to consume that energy, right,
And I think that's the important thing to think about,
is that it really is an extreme conditions right in
with humans as it has happened. And in nature, I mean,
food is scarce um, but you know, you can always
look over at someone and say it would be a
good protein source. Yeah, And in nature it tends to
(32:39):
be a lot. It's a lot more life and death obviously,
especially these cases we're looking at in the ocean where
where competition is tremendous. And you know, I think a
lot of our our fascination with cannibalism is that it
is we we largely a lot of us anyway, live
in a time where it's really hard to imagine such
a desperate situation, and it's and that would necessitate this
(33:03):
kind of return to our primal roots and our basic programming. Yeah, actually,
wasn't it. Ted Turner, who not too long ago warned
everybody that we become cannibalists if if we didn't address
the global warming situation, missed that. Yeah, Yeah, there was.
I mean, of course it drew outrage that it was
certainly a way to get people to pay attention to
(33:25):
the problem. Oh yeah, I actually, um yeah, I actually
heard that they the Ted's Montana grills. They actually had
these these statues of people that they were going to
start rolling out in place of the buffalo of the
cannibals and things, because you know, I mean, Ted's a
savvy businesses. So cannibalism becomes a new thing, then Ted's
Montana Girl is gonna pick up on it. Of course
(33:47):
that's a brilliant idea. Um. But what about primates. I
mean that to me, primates and cannibalism is um, that's
one of those things I can't help but anthropomorphosize because
I think that we look at them and see so
much of ourselves in them, and they do cannibalize one
another from time to time. It's um. Especially um with primates,
(34:11):
you see some very disturbing acts, you know, and they're
more disturbing because they resemble us more. And you know,
you'll see you know, see you'll see chimpanzees, even gorillas
and o ring attains their cases where they're you know,
suspected of eating their own young. Um. You know, and
we've seen plenty of cases of where chimpanzees have have
have demonstrated their capacity for quote unquote cruelty towards other chimpanzees.
(34:37):
But will they I know that sometimes when they're fighting
that they'll kill each other, but when they're fighting, don't
don't necessarily eat the body afterward? Is that right? Right? Or? Yeah?
Not necessarily will they eat it? So it's it's more, um,
I guess if they come along a deceased chimpanzee or
(34:58):
other type of ape and they actually just eat it. Yeah.
In chimpanzees, typically the males will kill and eat the
infant of another female, usually in their own group, but
occasionally in another. And when chimps kill adults from other
groups in a fight, they don't eat the body, Okay.
And I remember this too, that they might eat the
infant to um force the chimpanzee into astrous so that
(35:21):
they can go ahead and propagate again. Is that right?
I believe so? Yeah, So the infant may not have
been their infant, but they want to go ahead and
mate and get the process rolling right now. It's it's
interesting when you start looking at especially at at primates
eating one another in different cases, you know, throughout history,
and they're confidantly studies arguing for and against the um
(35:44):
just how much cannibalism was going on with prehistor with
prehistoric humans, but anthropologist William Ron's suggests it's simply bad
strategy as far as evolution goes. Though, like since the
under evolutionary theory, we're fueled by that, and you know,
and they desire to see our jeans survived, you know,
eating another one of your you know, your tribe and
(36:07):
your species. That doesn't probably make sense, you know, it's
just going it's working against our our basic programming. And
and and another interesting thing to keep in mind is, uh,
you know, you may think, well, why don't humans just
raise you know, why why don't humans raise humans for food? Right?
Or how how come you don't have you know, cases
where um cannibalism becomes a stapable staple of any species
(36:32):
diet um, though it is worth pointing out that cannibalism
can play a huge role in the diet. I think
I'm gonna go back to the scorpions here for a second.
There's a study of desert scorpions, and they found the
cannibals and provided only the fourth most common meal for
a scorpion. But but as far as body mask goes,
it was the number one, representing more than of its
(36:53):
total food intake. So so yeah, So in in the
case of the scorpion, yes, cannibalism can, for i'd a
large part of its diet. But in humans you see
a different situation. Yeah, and humans nature does not necessarily
like for us to practice cannibalism. And I think that
(37:15):
you can see that pretty well illustrated in the four tribe,
Is that right with the curu? Yes, curu is a
it's a rare breed of disorder caused by what are
called prions, and these are abnormal proteins which induce irregular
protein folding in brain cells and this leads to flawed
brain tissue which results in progressive, incurable brain damage. The
(37:39):
word itself, curu means laughing disease in its name because
the scientists observed fits of hysterical laughing in those affected.
So it's pretty pretty dramatic stuff. Um. And so this
is this came on because the tribe was basically practicing
endocannibalism right with the funeral rights. They were consuming the body,
(38:00):
which you know isn't because they were looking for a
source of protein, but because they was a way to
respect the deceased, to literally absorb them, right, And it's
it's interesting. This is a case where if you if
you start thinking about cannibalism in a very logical you know,
energy sort of uh, you know a thing, then eating
one's ancestors does kind of make it makes sense. It's
(38:21):
like a way to honor them. It's like I'm inviting
their energy back into me. And uh and that's that's
pretty much how Sally would be great. Yes, symbolically it's great. Um,
And on a basic interview level, it's it's not bad either.
But the thing is, it's kind of it really opens
the door for the passage of disease. Right, And so
this is sort of like the mad cow equivalent, is
(38:43):
that right? Yes? Yeah, mad cow is a similar disorder
as is I'm going to just take a shot at this,
uh creative fed as Jacob's disease felt, Yeah, that sounds
goods uh. And this is a human variant of bad
cow disease. And they basically, like with the four A,
they were basically able to to to wipe out the
(39:03):
disease by simply getting them to stop practicing this communal cannibalism, right,
like literally overnight. Yeah, they got them to to eradicate
this from tribe. Even basically it's like, hey, guys, you
know when you're your family members go start graving mad
and are laughing at nothing and then die. Well, that
comes from the cannibalism. So let's cut that out pretty
What they're like, well, you know, we weren't two, We
(39:25):
weren't that crazy about the cannibalism. We can we can
set that aside. Well, I guess it's also in nature
a little bit of a concern for primates too, because
they sometimes will consume a body as a group, spreading
potentially a disease something like hepatitis um. And I did
want to add a side note about bnobo's um, which
(39:47):
is an ape and uh, they're sometimes called the hippie
ape because they are fun loving and they love to
mate without discretion. It's like the Key parties in the seventies.
They are the binobo along with the humans and the dolphins,
only animals that actually enjoy sex. Right yeah, yeah, so um,
(40:09):
hence called the hippie ape. I don't know, um, do
hippie apes enjoy sex? One other I don't know, but uh,
something that was pretty disconcerting is that they were observed
pretty recently in the wild to have consumed one of
their own. And again, this is the anthropomorphic thing where
we look at them when we sell but there's just
peace loving and they just love to have sex with
(40:31):
each other. Why are they eating each other? Um? But
they would be a good example of primates um taking
the body and eating it, and they actually ate that
body for more than seven hours, um, which is a
lot longer than they would take on any other body.
And some of the people in the group or the
(40:54):
individuals I guess would think, people, we're actually playing with
the food. So um, it's a it's an interesting side
note in that, Um, it's an odd occurrence for Banobo's
to be doing that and in the way that they did.
And of course you could extrapolate that it was some
sort of uh funeral, right, but then that wouldn't really
be correct because we just don't know what they were doing.
(41:16):
But it's also a good example of how that disease
could be transmitted through the group right now. And it's
easy to go to fall into the trap of saying, well,
then this is a great case of where you know,
you know, nature of horrors cannibalism and that you know,
cannibalism of this nature of this, you know, communical communal
cannibalism is just poison um And and you know maybe
(41:36):
maybe you know, you could still make that case. But
I was looking at two thousand and six University of
Virginia study and they found that cannibalism uh is actually
only documented as the predominant transmission mode of a disease
in very few species. Um. Yeah, even even through you know,
specific instances of cannibalistic transmission um that have been noted
(41:59):
um Like. Basically, the only two cases they found were
the Priyon transmission in humans that we mentioned earlier and
a a kind of protozoa based illness in lizards. And
if do you think this is because most cannialism is
one on one as opposed to a group situation like that,
the group cannibalism is more an outlier, um yeah. Well yeah,
(42:22):
And also I think it's it also comes down to
like cannibalism, like, you know, a disease is gonna needs
to spread. It's got the same genetic mission as as
as any organism, so it needs it needs a road
it can count on. Right, So, the the idea of
some sort of disease depending exclusively on cannibalism, it largely
doesn't make sense. This is not not an economic way
(42:42):
of going about it. So like so you know, for instance,
in the study, in other cases of cannibalistic disease transmission, uh,
and there were others alternate disease transmission modes existed. Um.
So it's like the you know, hepatitis or something happititize
isn't depending exclusively on group animalism to spread. But if
that door's open, it'll gladly, gladly take it. Not to
(43:05):
personify the illness too much, so I guess that the
talking about not trying to anthromorphosize. Ultimately, you can't get
back around to this question. Aren't we sort of all
cannibals on some level or another? Yeah, I mean you know,
you look at things like anything from a blood transfusion
to you know, organ transplant. I mean it's it again
(43:27):
kind of comes down to the the energy uh situation.
It's like we're we're taking energy out and storing it.
We're harvesting energy that it can that is otherwise going
to be wasted in bringing it back into ourselves. Um,
there are a few interesting cases in the in the
traditional Chinese medicine where you have what they call tibo
let's p A I B A. Oh. Nothing to do
with the martial arts exercise. You can to do with that.
(43:50):
But but this is a particular medicine that involves something
uh also referred to as a boardist because it's uh,
it's harvested from from vitas um. And this is according
to Mary Roach in her book. Still she goes into
this a little and explorers this whole chapter on cannibalism
uh in the use of materials from corpses in medicine
in that book. So highly recommend checking that out. So
(44:20):
there you have it. Fine, Young cannibals find Young animal Cannibals.
I hope you enjoyed it. It's an older episode, but
again the information is certainly all good. That's right. Uh.
So does this change the way that you look at
praying mantis is now? Do you think of them as
being these end like creatures or just horrific sexual antics? Yeah?
(44:42):
Let us know you can find us in all the
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That's the mothership, but you can also find us in
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Head over to YouTube and you can catch us uh
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(45:02):
you could always drop us a line, and we encourage
you to do so at Below the Mind at Discovery
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