March 11, 2014 • 45 mins
Maneater: What happens when an animal turns maneater? Is it the irresistible taste of human flesh? Is it the ease of a human kill? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie look to the environmental, biological and bad-luck causes that land humans on a predator's dinner menu. About the Art: "Two Followers of Cadmus devoured by a Dragon," by Cornelis van Haarlem. Read more about it here in the Art Spotlight post.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, wasn't a stuff about your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. I
was I was just about to say, what comes to
mind when I say the word man eater? Oh? Comes,
(00:26):
she's mad? H Now? Was she actually a man eater?
Was she out of control cannibal in that? Because that's
got kind of the vibe. I hear that song on
a picture kind of like Miami Vice type situation where
they're hunting down this woman who is on the loose
and killing and eating men and kind of like a
black widow cannibal fashion, and only two men hall and
(00:48):
Oates one mustache can bring her down exactly detectives Holland
Oates on the case. I think it was more like
she's a gold digger, She's going to run through all
the men. But we could take the whole the skew
on it that she was a flesh eating woman rampaging
around the social circles of humans. Okay, all right, I
(01:09):
like that interpretation. Now, for anyone who's thinking about turning
off the podcast right now, let me assure you this
is primarily not an episode about cannibals. This is this
is when we when we say man eater, we're bringing
to mind the the jungle man eater, the uh, the
idea that there you have animals out there that may
(01:31):
turn man eater or animals that are in and of
themselves man eaters. Uh. And it's a it's a term
that carries a lot of weight because as humans, we
generally like to think that we are in a safe area,
that we have not only reached the top of a
food chain, but we have removed ourselves from the food
chain entirely. We've we've achieved liberation from from that particular structure. Yeah,
(01:54):
we've talked about this before. Louis c. K has a
bit about how humans really take for granted the fact
that we are out of the food chain. But as
we read in the listener emails last week, there's one
person who dared to ask the question, could you have
a sudden blood luss when it comes to humans? Could
you get a taste of it and want more? Yeah?
(02:14):
And and to what extent is that just sort of
you know, human self obsession to think that we just
were so tasty, like we're we're off the menu item.
And we are so delicious that if that if a
tiger or a lion, or a chimpanzee or any kind
of creature that dabbles and meat eating at all or
to get a taste of us, then there's no way
(02:35):
they could go back. They would just have to be
man meat all the time. Cut it up for me,
put it on my plate. That's all I'm gonna eat
until you take me down inhala bullets. Wow, So you're saying,
could there be some sort of sea change that all
of a sudden put us on the menu. In other words,
these animals wouldn't go into their restaurant and have some
sort of code word in order to bring this delicacy
of humans about all of a sudden, We would just
(02:56):
be on the menu all the time. We would be
the other white meat. Yeah, I mean. And as we're
gonna discuss here, there are situations where something does occur,
or or a few different things occur that that seemed
to flip a switch in a predator that make it
go from from just it's normal dietary practices to becoming
a man eater to to preying on humans um exclusively.
(03:20):
But to what extent is it a thing? To what
extent is it us over reacting because because man eating
is uh, it's such an a loaded idea because it
just digs into our primal fears and into this, uh,
this situation of prey and predator that we again largely
like to think that we have achieved liberation from that.
We're you know, we're able to distance ourselves from predators,
(03:41):
were able to protect ourselves, and we're generally really smart prey.
We're generally not a good prey and mostly mostly um.
But but genuinely speaking, we're an intelligent, large creature that
that's not worth the effort of hunting. But if we
are in the wrong place at the wrong time, all
(04:01):
of a sudden, it becomes a very precarious event for us. Yes,
so we should probably kick off by talking about shameless
man eaters. And I think that the best example of
shameless man eaters are the nile crocodiles crocodia. Yes, you guys,
these guys, if we if we had like our ring
here in the right corner, you'd have a nile crocodile
(04:23):
wing and sometimes as large as sixteen hundred pounds in
twenty ft long. Now for for everybody that resides outside
of the United States. I'm talking about seven dred and
thirty kilograms and six meters long. Yeah, and these and
basically sub Saharan Africa is just lousy with these things.
They're they're they're everywhere and uh, and they are indiscriminate
(04:45):
in their diet. So so there's not a situation of,
oh that that crocodile, that that nile crocodile went man eater,
it developed a taste for human blood. No, the crocodile
is game for whatever it can get its jaws round.
And since human beings often live in for close proximity
with these creatures because because the river is their habitat
and the river is light, if you are somehow hacking
(05:05):
out an existence for yourself, then you are depending on
the river for water, for food, for laundry, two children
play in the water, etcetera. That the chance is going
to come up for a crocodile to snack on a human.
And it's it's hard to put an exact number on this,
but it's estimated that upwards of two people may die
each year from nile crocodile attacks. Yeah, so imagine yourself
(05:28):
at the Nile River at the banks, you're washing your
clothes and all of a sudden you are pitted against
this animal that is camouflaging itself in the water effortlessly,
just waiting right up to you, undetected. And they have
these incredibly fast reflexes, and you know, surprise attacks are
their purview, So you really don't have a chance in
(05:50):
one of those situations. And you can see why just
in this sub Saharan Africa and and the Nile that
something up to two hundred deaths a year occur because
of these crocs. Now that humans and crocodiles ever live
in harmony, I mean this is not an animal that
it is just overflowing with intelligence and uh and social
(06:10):
adaptability with with with non crocodile species. Yeah. Actually, um,
if you look at the case of one place in
western Africa, it's called Bazul, where one hundred Nile crocs
reside along with humans and what I would say is
relative harmony. You can see that this community regards Nile
crocs as sacred and they think of these crocs is
(06:34):
is having a link to survival and welfare in the seasons, right,
so they routinely sacrifice chickens to these crocodiles. So in
a way, it's a kind of a domestication, right because
they're they're giving them an animal, and they're keeping them
fat enough and full enough that they're not going to
be tempted as often by that that human snack that's
(06:56):
washing it's it's clothes in the water. Yeah, and this
has been going on since the fourteen century. So um
in some cases, as we'll discuss later on, with other animals,
there's this possibility that not only this act going on
is sort of routinizing it for the crocs, but maybe
it's a learned behavior through generations of these crocs, you know,
because that what instantly ticks off of my mind when
(07:18):
I think about that is I think about the alligators
here in the United States, And what do they always
tell you about alligators. Do not feed the alligators because
with other wild animals, you start feeding them, they start
associating a human presence with food, which is generally not
a good idea because again, one of the reasons that
humans are so good at largely avoiding uh consumption by
(07:41):
a predator is that we keep our distance from them.
We know not to go and mess with the bears,
and the bears by and large don't want to mess
with the humans. But when you start confusing the equation
by having a gift of sacrificed chicken or a delicious
garbage can involved, then it starts bringing these two species
closer and closer. And they're both very dangerous species in
(08:04):
their own way, so when they meet, uh it, it
might not be pretty. And the thing is though, in
in this area of western Africa, you may not have
the choice to keep your distance, so your water source
is probably going to be the same as these crocs,
So it would make sense that you would create this
sort of symbiotic relationship with a croc. Now, I don't
suggest that everybody hearing I didn't go out and start
(08:26):
doing that, because you know, by and large we have
the ability to keep our distance. But yeah, this, this
is what you see when when two species are or
cohabitating in the space on a very intimate terms, all right, now,
when it comes to killing and eating humans, uh, there
is one type of human that is clearly the best snack,
(08:49):
the best meal, and that is the child. Uh. Children
are of course smaller humans. They are largely uh stupid
er humans. When it comes to surviving on their own,
and they don't have as much experience they you know,
they're not gonna really be able to punch a bear
in the nose. They're they're slower, they're easily distracted. Firstance,
(09:11):
I took my son out on the belt line today,
which is this like running walking bicycling strip here in Atlanta,
formerly a train track, A really nice environment, but it
was hard to get him to walk uh ten feet
without stopping to stick to poke sticks through the fence
to try and pick up dog crap or two. And
then occasionally he would see somebody running and run himself.
(09:33):
Now there were no tigers or bears or coyotes or
wolves or anything like that on the belt line, but
if there were, they would have easily seen. This is
the kid. We're gonna try and eat these large adult runners.
And they're too fast, they're too wary. Some of them
are on bicycles. I'm not messing with that. But this guy,
he is short, he is stubby, and he keeps stopping
(09:53):
to mess with things could eat him up in a heartbeat.
Like I like to joke to my wife that if
he were out in the wild, even like squirrels would say, hey,
I could eat that guy, Maybe I should get a
taste in here. All of a sudden, you have like
twenty squirrels marching towards your son exactly. I mean, you know,
the economic value of eating um a toddler is just
it should be obvious to anything in the animal kingdom,
(10:15):
and a number of predators do pick up on that. Yeah,
And I think that's why we have so many fairy
tales that are these cautionary tales really for children, especially
when it comes to wolves, right, yeah, I mean just
think of the wolf in nursery stories. Uh and and
in myths as well. But a little red riding hood.
You know, she's just minding her own business and this
(10:36):
wolf is going to eat her in the woods. It
also goes after her elderly grandmother as well. Uh and
and then there are other stories like this three Pigs.
I mean, it just it just goes on and on.
We just have this this cultural idea of the wolf
as this predator that's roaming out on the edges of
our human world and is going to be eager to
creep in and steal our children or even eat us.
(10:58):
I mean, look look at some of the films we
have of out there in which the wolf plays a
very nefarious role. There's the the Liam Neeson movie The Gray,
about Liam Neeson punching a bunch of wolves as they
try to eat him. So culturally it is woven in
our fabric. We are frightened of wolves. They are the Boogeyman.
So imagine you live in Reserve, New Mexico. Okay, I
(11:20):
just imagine you're here in New Mexico and your child
is waiting for the bus, but instead of throwing rocks
or playing chase, the children are huddled in wood and
mesh cages meant to keep them safe from any wayward
wolves that happened by this is just such a fantastic story.
I mean, especially once you start getting the details. And uh,
(11:42):
in in this case, we got the details from the
article do kid cages really predict children from wolves? By
Jeremy Berlin and he and he talks to an expert
on wolves. He specifically, he talks to Daniel McNulty, a
wildlife ecology professor at Utah State University. Uh, this is
a guy who's been studying wolves in the Alsto National
(12:03):
Park for past eighteen years and he askin said wolves
eating children at bus stops. Is this really a threat?
And he says, of course, it's not a threat, like
there are so few examples of wolves attacking humans in
the wild. For starters, Yeah, he says, a child in
a rural area is more likely to be hurt or
killed in an accident with an off road altering vehicle
(12:25):
or in a with an encounter with a feral dog
or hunting accident. And there are very few instances in
North America have wolves hurting anyone, let alone children. And
the reason why people are up in arms in this
area is because in smaller subspecies of the gray wolf
called the Mexican wolf was reintroduced in the area. It's
(12:47):
a protected species. And so on one hand you have
you have governmental bodies saying, don't hurt the wolves. They are,
they're endangered, they're protected, leave them alone. But on the
other hand, we have this primal or almost i'm all
fear of the wolf. We have certainly had experiences of
wolves praying on livestock and beloved pets, and so you
(13:07):
have you have this tug of war here and also
probably a little bit of political manipulation as well, where
people are saying, Oh, well, if you're gonna protect the
wolf and we can't shoot the wolves, then I guess
we'll have to put our children in shark cages at
the bus stop exactly, because otherwise the wolves would just
sweep in and just eat all of them every morning. Yeah.
McNulty said that he thought that this was probably a
(13:28):
publicity stunt by people who felt like their rights were
being infringed on upon the government, particularly since the e
p A was had something out there to actually have
tighter restrictions here on the Mexican wolf. So again, the
idea is that there may be some groups that are
fueling this fear, which is sort of an ancient fear
(13:49):
ingrained in us against wolves. Well, let me ask you this.
You have you have, you have a daughter. Can you
imagine taking your daughter to a bus stop to to
await the school bus since telling her, listen, honey, everything
is gonna be okay today. However, we're gonna have to
put you in a cage as you wait for the
bus because wolves may come for you and try to
(14:09):
eat you. No, I can't. I can't imagine like putting
her into what amounts as a chicken coop really if
you look at these structures and telling her that there's
this this fear that she should, you know, really be
keyed into. I mean, can you imagine what that's doing
to a kid's psyche. That's it's just not healthy. I mean.
And and also it again, it fosters this idea that
(14:30):
the wolf is a threat that needs to be eradicated,
when in reality, if you encounter wolves in the wild,
it's generally going to be a very a very calm situation.
They're gonna see you, they're gonna take off because you're
just not a prey animal to them. Yeah, McNulty says.
They don't have supernatural powers. They can't jump over mountain ranges,
they can't bring down a moose with a single bite
(14:53):
to the neck um. They are constrained by their morphology, right,
So they're going to go after something that is mall.
They're going to go after a rabbit or something that
is easy prey. They are generally frightened of humans. So
to sum it all up, yes, it's there's a small,
small chance that wolves would prey on a human child,
(15:14):
but but generally it's not something to worry about. Certainly,
nothing to worry about at the bus stop. Um. But
of course the child would be an irresistible meal to
uh to any number of other predators, uh, interestingly enough,
including the champ to the chimpanzee, which I found horrifying. Yeah. Well,
and I think that's because you know, when you think
about chimps, you think of them as these playful creatures,
(15:37):
and uh, you know, even when you hear accounts of
them killing each other, it's disturbing when when they start
eating other primates, which they do, yes, or rather monkeys,
that's that's when it starts getting a little weird for
the human observer. But certainly they eat a lot of meat,
I believe, if I remember correctly, the chimpanzee is only
(15:58):
surpassed in its meat consumption by human beings when compared
to other other species. So we can't so we can't
really judge. I think it's what you're saying. Yeah, yeah,
I mean we we have. We get kind of weird
about eating things that look too much like us for
the most part. But but they have no such qualms.
And a lot of this is about context, right, So
what sort of food sources are available, what else is
(16:20):
going on in the ecosystem, and we're going to discuss
a little bit more about this some other species that
we should really keep more worried about when it comes
to man eating. Right after we cutis great, all right,
we're back lions and tigers and bears. Oh my, Yes,
(16:44):
particularly lions and tigers. These are the big cats are
among the best examples of of man eaters that we
can you can really focus in on, and particularly when
you're looking at the situation of an animal turning man
eater and try and and just trying to to figure
out what is that, what is happening at that pivotal
moment when this animal changes from something that lives outside
(17:08):
of the human scope to a creature that is praying
exclusively on humans. Yeah, and before we talk about some
of the circumstances that would drive man eating and lions,
let's just discuss really quickly that the population of African
lions is in decline while the human population, of course
is on the rise. You have to factor in the
(17:29):
loss of habitat and human encroachment, and then you begin
to see this picture emerging of how humans and lions
are meeting far more than they ever did in history.
And of course attacks are on the rise. Yeah, and
now there's some of some very key examples of man
eating lions throughout history, and all of this certainly stokes
(17:50):
the fires of our fear and our in our fascination
with the idea of the man eating lion, but particularly
the situation in evolving two lions named ghost in Darkness. Um,
they unleash this harrowing string of attacks on Ugandan railroad workers.
Uh and uh. If you look at the older accounts
(18:12):
of the Savo lions, they were saying that the lions
flew something like a hundred and thirty five African and
Indian railroad labors and sometimes dragging them from their tents
while they slept. And you know, it all ends up
escalating in the in the hunters having to go out
and set in search of them. If you've ever seen
the movie The Ghosts in the Darkness that has a
fictionalized account of this situation. But here's the thing. These
(18:36):
lines are currently on view underneath the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
If you go to the Gateway Arch and you go
into the museum underneath it, you will see these lines
and they are surprisingly small. Um, you see them, and
you have you if you hear the story, you expect
the giant lions that are just dripping with human blood,
and they're there are a lot smaller specimens in your life.
(18:57):
So are these vampire lions that are existing to the centuries? No?
No, no no, these are the actual lions were killed and
stuffed and wound up in St. Louis, Okay. And it
turns out, by the way that these lions actually did
the lives of thirty five people that you know, hundred
plus people. Uh. Still is nothing to sneeze at. Now
this isn't the only story. There are various other accounts
(19:18):
and um, and you know, I could, I could go
into listing each of them connt by account, but they
all basically amount to the same thing. Suddenly a lion
or even a group of lions begin praying on humans
and then they don't stop until those lions are themselves
put down. Um. There are a number of reasons for
why this happens. One of the reasons is it could
(19:40):
be passed down behavior. Yes, and there's a study of
the subbo lions actually uh from the Chicago's Field Museum
that discovered that generations of the same pride exhibited similar
human eating tendencies. So the same pride had a higher
incidence of man eating. So that's and the idea here.
(20:01):
But of course there's lots of different competing circumstances and reasons, right,
I mean, one of the big ones is altered habitat
induced prey switching. Now, this is a situation, uh that
they should make a lot of sense, especially in light
of of the reality of growing human populations and uh
and at times shrinking uh prey populations in an area.
(20:22):
What ends up happening is you have alliance and they've
they've lived in this area for generations and generations and generations.
They've always prayed exclusively on this particular population of animals,
and suddenly that prey population is affected by this human presence.
Suddenly there's less for them to eat. What are they
supposed to do? They're gonna do whatever they have to
(20:43):
do to survive there. So they end up switching their
prey preference. They realize they can't uh you know, get
this traditional uh you know, dear like gazelle like animal
or whatever that they prey on. What are they going
to turn to? Well, here are all these humans in
their areas. So they end up making the switch, and
there may be a sational things that end up um
affecting that switch. For instance, what happens then if lions, uh,
(21:05):
these same lions who are trying to figure out what
they're gonna eat, what kind of prey they're going to
consist on? What happens when they come across the body
of a dead human or or or even you know,
a destigated grave of some kind, they end up trying
the human flesh. It's just another argument in their favor
of oh, well, these creatures seem to be uh as
(21:26):
delicious as anything else I could eat and uh, and
then then they seem to be everywhere, and then you
end up with the eventual situation where they actually prey
on a human, and in that they may learn, oh
well they're not that difficult to kill either. Well. Yeah,
it really plays into the whole uh survival game that
we've talked about before. You tried to conserve as much
(21:46):
energy as possible and get as much energy as possible, right,
And so if if a human presents him or herself
as easy prey, either you know, just something that you
stumbled upon them that's a dead body, or just is
a smaller human being that's easy to take down. Well,
there you go. You can conserve your energy and get
a quick meal out of it at the same time.
(22:07):
And another situation with lions that can lead to this
man hunter button getting you know, ticked off in their
brain is uh is when you have an old or
an injured lion. So it's very similar to the altered
habitat induce prey switching situation. So like suddenly they've gone
from this life where they're they're praying exclusively on this
animal or this group of animals, and now they can't
(22:28):
because they're getting old. Maybe they can't they can't run
down their prey like they used to, or they're having
problems with their teeth, they can't. They can't necessarily kill
and chew like they used to. Yeah, I mean you
think about when you go to the dentist and you
have a tooth apsessor, you have dental work done, you
don't go home and eat like a chicken thigh. You
probably eat some mac and cheese. Right. Yeah, Well, we've
(22:48):
talked about the advantages of human cooking before, and you
know what a what an enormous technological achievement that was
for our species. One of the achievements there is that
Suddenly it means that if you don't have teeth to
chew your food anymore, that there is a way, you know,
you can you can cook things down, and in addition
to that, you can also chop things up, and in
(23:08):
doing so, bad teeth is not a death sentence anymore. Yeah,
and so if you think about humans versus say, zebras,
then all of a sudden, humans on the menu look
a lot more like mac and cheese to an animal
with really bad teeth. You don't. We don't have tough
hides to tear through, right, So you know, that's that's
another idea of where you have a circumstance where humans
(23:30):
might be the better choice here the other white meat.
But of course, there is not one overriding theory here
about why lions in particular go after humans from time
to time. Um. Actually, History Stuff has a really great
discussion of the Savo lions. It's a December sixteen episodes,
(23:52):
So if you guys want to learn more about that
specific instance, check that out. Because there's no there's there's
not really one reason that people can out along for
for why this happens. Yeah, If anything, it seems like,
there are probably a few different a few different of
these factors are playing in to to any given man
hunter situation, but it does seem to be the trend
(24:12):
that once that want that, once that little switch is
flipped over in the brain, Uh, they tend to go
for the human flesh. But then, but then part of
that too is that is that we have such a
stigma about man eaters and such a fear of it,
and then we have this idea in our head that,
oh that that that line has become man eater, it
must be put down. Uh. So you know that that
(24:34):
that The answer then is in kind of in the
question there. Well, right now today there's actually a news
item that in your India there is a man hunt
right now for a tigress that is going on. This
is a tigress who reportedly has taken nine human lives
in the last forty five days, and so you have
really this frenzy uh going on to to take this
(24:57):
one tiger down. Yeah. Ti beers are definitely another big
area of where we see the man eater of effect
coming in into practice and and generally speaking the same
reasons a plot, but with the added caveat that sometimes
you have. There is a theory that mistaken identity plays
a role as well. They have been tests that have
(25:18):
shown that a tiger will stalk a group of people
bending over to cut grass, and it possibly the angle
of the person, you know, the fact that they seem
like they're smaller and more compact. That may mean that
the tiger is misinterpreting what kind of animal they are.
I see. So with the genes that I have that
have like a little gazelle face on the foot, I
(25:39):
should stop wearing those out in the wild. Well, well,
I don't know, if it has the face on it,
maybe you'd be okay, because remember people with the masks
in the back of their head, so that the tiger,
you know, doesn't think that it's sneaking up on you.
That's right, because the idea here is that with a tiger,
or we've talked about this with bears too, is that
certain types of bears that you don't want to appear
(26:01):
as though you are overly excited or you are a
prey that would be frightened of this animal and start
running and flailing about. And if you have this mask on,
it makes it look as though you are not actually
retreating from the animal. It's interesting the emaion fleeing because
I've also read accounts where you have areas in India
where they don't really have a problem with tigers attacking
(26:22):
people unless they're on bicycles. Something about the speed with
which the human is moving may click something off and
the tigers said, they think, oh, well, that's that's prey
fleeing from me. I should run it down. That just
happens in my neighborhood with dogs. Now again, think back
to those reasons we listed for lions, and you can
pretty much apply all of those t tigers as well.
(26:43):
There's an estimated sevent tigers left in the wild in India. Meanwhile,
the human population in India is is over one point
to three seven billion people. So again you have you
have these wild tigers and they're inevitably going to run
into people and sometimes it's just gonna it's gonna basically
be accident. What happens when when when a tiger just
(27:04):
happens across a human. It might be an old tiger
it's forced out of it's the previous area, a young
tiger that's off it's out in search of its of
an area to call its own. And and indeed, those
are the two types of tigers that typically wind up
in these violent altercations, the young tigers and the very
old tigers. Yeah, and if you look at this current
case in Pichnore, India, that you do see habitat loss
(27:28):
playing into this idea that it is the meeting season
right now in the winter. And what happens is that
you have older tiger says that are moving along the
younger I think that when they turned three years old. Uh,
the younger female tiger says, out of the pride and saying,
go off on your own and create your own. So
that's creating more stray tigers out there in the wilderness
(27:51):
who are coming upon people. It's also worth pointing out
that a tiger usually makes one large kill every week,
and so, uh, the map here is that since India
has se hundred or so tigers, that's more than eighty
five thousand kills in a year. But we're not experiencing
anywhere near that number of of of deaths among humans
(28:14):
at the hand of tigers. Less than eighty five people
are killed or injured accidentally or otherwise in a year
by tigers in India. So many more pittent times that
die from the snake bites, rabies, uh, you name it.
But again, the idea of an anna of a predator
praying on humans, it's an idea that just resonates so
strongly with this and just drives the fear. I mean,
(28:36):
we just mentioned the story out of India, uh and
in there are many cases, you know, certain of some
of our listeners are gonna be more tied in two
news out of India uh than other listeners. But I
imagine for a lot of people, like that's gonna be
the only news you hear out of India this week
is that there's a man eating tiger on the loose.
I mean, that's how far it resonates, because that that
(28:57):
that is is is scary and and uh and and
sort of boggles your imagination and makes your your your
mind run wild no matter where you are. And they
of course, of course that would seize your imagination and
you would stay indoors um. In terms of the United States,
the real problem is a dog, spider or some other insect.
(29:18):
And according to CDC statistics of the one thousand, nine
eighty nine Americans killed by animals between nine and two
thousand and eight. Most of those deaths are attributed to dogs, insects,
and spiders. So again you have to scale the things
that are imaginary, those imaginary threats with what is actually
happening at the time. Um out in the wild. Now
(29:41):
it's it's a great thing. You mentioned dogs, but because
of course with with dogs and and in some of
these cases we might be talking about dogs that are
a bit wild, but for the most part we're talking
about the domestic dog and all the complications that come
along with that. And we could do a whole podcast
on this, and we probably should, about what happens when
we have animals that are no longer wild, they have
become domesticated, or they are kept in some sort of
(30:05):
you know, zoo type habitat, you know, totally reduced habitat,
totally unnatural living situation. What does that do to the
animal's mind, even if they are kept in uh, you know,
in relatively comfortable care, discounting abuse and UH and and
other harsh realities of domestication and animal imprisonment. Well, probably
(30:27):
one of the best examples of this can be found
in the Blackfish documentary, which talks about Tillicum who is
a killer whale, an orca and um and actually documents
the three killings of humans by Tillicum. Yes, and it's
worth it's very important to note here that there has
never been a confirmed case of an orca killing a
(30:50):
human in the wild. You've had situations where sailors have
fallen directly into into the orca pods and they've emerged
without any harm. And uh so the so the idea
that that they're killing people in captivity, that instantly raises
some questions about, well, what is it about captivity that
(31:11):
is that is making them do this. The interesting thing
about this too, is that they're not eating them, so
obviously they're not doing this as a source of protein.
They're doing this most likely as particularly when you look
at this case of Telecom as a byproduct of zukosis.
And if you look at Telecom, he was an organ
that was separated from his mother at a young age
and then shipped off to Ceiland in British Columbia to
(31:34):
perform for audiences, where he was kept in what amounted
to a lightless floating twenty by twenty eight foot shed
and shed that again had no light coming in. And
we're talking about being kept in that shed for upwards
of fourteen hours overnight. In addition to that, because he
(31:55):
hadn't been properly socialized, and kind of because he was
a little man on the totem pole, he was the
subject of a lot of aggressive acts by other orcas
that he was either mating with or performing with. So
even by the time that he was moved over to
sea World and given you know, more room to be
(32:18):
in and probably better um, you know, living quarters, he
had already began to exhibit signs of zukosis. Yeah, I mean,
it basically comes down to the fact that that in
the orca you have an intelligent social creature. And if
you take that intelligent social creature out of the wild
and put it in an enclosed environment that is it's
(32:39):
not even a slice of its natural world, you can
end up with metal suttress. You can end up with aggression,
and then it's going to manifest itself at times and
potentially fatal encounters with the human captors. Yeah, it's interesting.
If you look at this documentary, you get more information,
more end up information about these three killings. And one
of the killings was just one person who broke into
(33:01):
the holding area and UH, and they found this guy
naked and um dead the following morning, so they're not
entirely sure what happened UM. But the other two killings
happened with trainers, and in one of those instances, you
you can see the film footage on this, the trainer
has not rewarded Tillicum for Um performing a certain trick
(33:25):
because she just didn't see it. She was talking to
the audience, so she assumed he hadn't done it, so
she didn't reward him with the fish. So the idea
is that that might have set off her eventual death
with him pull him pulling her under sort of retribution
for not realizing that, you know, he had done the trick.
And when you think about zukosis and you think about
animals um having this sort of psychosis and having that
(33:49):
level of sensitivity, then that's their life. Those for their life,
and that becomes maybe a matter of life or death
to that orca. I mean, we don't know obviously, and
I don't mean to anthropomorphizus here, but you can begin
to see how something like this happens. Well, I mean,
if anyone who's a dog owner out there knows, what
do you tell a child about about the dog. No
(34:11):
matter how family the dog is, you don't touch the
dog wants eating because because no matter how domesticated the species,
that there is that basic principle of life. Food is
the is the most important thing, along with with mating
and reproduction, is a very genetic mission. Uh, you know,
at heart of every creature, and if you interfere with that, potentially,
(34:34):
you know, set off a string of events. Yeah, it's
very true. Now let's just kind of shift a couple
of degrees here, actually a lot of degrees, and talk
about humans. And we're not going to go super into
cannibalism here, but we're going to talk about this idea
about whether or not humans could actually get a taste
for human blood. Yeah. We we mentioned at the beginning
(34:55):
that there's a certain I get the sense that with
the man man eater idea that there is this notion that, oh,
humans are off the menu items and therefore we're the
most delicious, and that if anything, we're to get a
taste of us, then how could they resist eating us
all the time. Uh. There's actually an an interesting argument
that that that this this isn't the case with any
(35:17):
animal out there except humans. Of course, humans complicate the
situation as always, because we're not just this uh, this
this creature out there, uh, you know, living in an
unconscious existence in the wild. We're very conscious. We we
have these layers of culture and language in which which
just completely complicate any and everything we do. And so
(35:40):
you do have situations, obviously where people turn to cannibalism. Uh.
A lot of the time it's just for simple economic reasons,
just like the rest of the world, a situation where cannibalism,
an act of cannibalism, means survival in a bad situation.
But then you have situations where people turn to cannibalism,
uh due to uh well, for lack of a better word,
insane reasons. In two thousand and twelve, there were a
(36:03):
spate of crimes that involve face fighting, dismemberment, and cannibalism,
and in these cases, Karen Highland, she is a therapist
at Summit Malibu Treatment Center in California, said cannibalism often
begins as a fantasy which the person plays out in
his or her head. But when that person gets a
taste for real, she says, you know, like the real,
(36:26):
actual meat of the human, she says quote, the pleasure
center of the brain becomes activated and large amounts of
dopamine are released, similar to what happens when someone ingests
a drug like cocaine. I gotta say my right now,
my eyebrow is dubiously raised. Yeah, it's again, it's I
feel like it's important to again realize that with humans
(36:48):
everything is is complicated because humans can have fantasies about
doing something that they've built up in their mind for
you know, a decade or more. They can they can
just be totally enraptured, but by the idea of doing
something humans unlike uh, you know, most of the animal world.
We have we have taboos, we have things that exist
(37:09):
outside of what is accepted by our culture, and those
things can become attractive to varying degrees. So you gotta
take take that into account. And then if you're going
to eat human flesh, and it's very basis, you're ingesting something.
And if you ingest food, if you ingest uh, you know,
beef jerky, or the face of somebody that you attacked
(37:33):
on a on on the freeway, there is going to
be a biological response to that. Your boy, you are
there is gonna be uh you know, are ingesting vitamins. Uh. There,
you know your body is going to react. You're going
to you're going to feel a certain amount of pleasure
upon eating. I mean, that's just biology. And so you
add that in with all these complicated layers of fantasy
(37:54):
and and taboo and uh and sexual desire, and you're
gonna get some weird results. Well. So she's not calling
out the habit loop, as we had touched on with
Charles du Hick's research about how to make a habit, right,
but she is touching on one of the things that
makes a habit, and that's a release of dopamine. Right.
And so that's the reason why a brain says me like, yeah,
I want to do it again, but I just can't
(38:16):
conceive of doing that one time. And all of a
sudden you have this really robust neural pathway that's demanding
human flesh. I think that for me is the the
leap in logic that's a bit difficult. Well, everything else
I sort of understand. I just don't know that that
one time would be enough. Um. And but she is
(38:37):
equating it with cocaine and saying that, you know, the
cutting of cocaine is very similar in the sense of
planning for the killing and eating of someone. She's saying
that it's the same sort of anticipation and you know
this the same sort of uh real hook that's in
(38:59):
your brain and about what's about to happen. I feel
like she might be chewing more than she bites off. Now.
I ran across another article that dealt with some of
this title at A Beginner's Guide to Sexual Cannibalism by
and Dr Mark D. Griffiths, PhD. And this season, but
this is on Psychology Today, and they pointed and and
I'm just gonna read you this quote from it, so
(39:21):
that so that the reference that Mark Griffiths is making here,
uh you know it isn't overstated, he says. Leslie Hinsel,
author of Cannibalism as a Sexual Disorder, says eating human
flesh can cause an increase in levels of vitamin A
and amino acids, which can cause a chemical effect on
the blood and in the brain. This chemical reaction could
possibly lead to the altered states that some cannibals have
(39:44):
have claimed to have experienced. However, this theory has not
been substantiated by scientific evidence. Well, there you go. Yeah,
I gotta say, but again, I you know, think to
that time that you had, like a really delicious hamburger
or some sort of a treat that you normally don't
allow yourself, and how satisfying that food can be. It can't.
(40:05):
Food can be euphoric, like a really good piece of
sushi are really you know, particularly perfect grapefruit there you
can feel a sense of euphoria with your food just
on its own, without layering in sexual fantasy and cultural taboos.
So again, eating is a physical act that has an
(40:28):
effect on the brain, even if you're not talking about cantalism.
I just don't Yeah, I just don't see human meat
being a go to comfort food. I mean maybe And actually,
if today's video game releases any indication it's a possibility.
There's a game called Tasty Tasty Grandpa that just came out. Yeah,
(40:49):
this is gonna be an iOS two D quote eat
em up that you can play on your your phone
and various gadgets, um, and hopefully it will be available
by the time this podcast goes lives because because it
looks amazing, Uh, do a search for Tasty Tasty Grandpa
and you can see the video clip Basically you start
off as this as this baby and uh and what
do you do to survive? Well, you have to eat
(41:11):
those who are older than you to level up to
a different age group. And we're talking very cartoon cannibalism.
It's just just you know, eat whole with no blood
or bones or anything. Grows like that. Yeah, the background
is an Elizabethan Theater carousel, so it's nothing to do
morbid or anything. But the older user gets, the more
younger people are out to get them. So then you
(41:34):
have to try to survive cannibalism as well. Well. I
feel like it's a perfect metaphor for life, especially if
you're if you happen to be in the media. Uh So,
if you're doing a podcast, you start thinking, oh, man,
look at the look at the playing field. We have
all these young people coming up, and there's still old
dudes out there that I want to take down and
(41:55):
get their spot, you know. Well, as as far as
exploring cannibalism through technology, I can't help but think about
the singularity of course again when robots will be our overlords.
And I think this is where I think cannibalisms and
humans may finally meet. As I envision these arenas where
humans are ushered in along with sort of like half
(42:19):
droid half animals and made to try to consume each other. WHOA,
So you're saying that when the when the robots take over, yes,
they will initiate gladiatorial combat between captured humans and cybernetic
animals something like that, and they have to eat each other. Well,
of course cybernetic animals, and how that's gonna work adjustive system.
(42:42):
But this is what's in my mind going to happen.
I love how we discussed bringing up the Tasty Tasty
Grandpa as a way to to ease out of the
cannibalism discussion in the Lighter Territory to close out the podcast,
and you you managed to grab the wheel and pulled
right back around to post apocalypt gladiatorial battle between humans
(43:03):
and cybernet animals. Yeah, I put us in the ditch, didn't.
But think about it, right, I mean at that point,
at the Singularity, we will be striving for meeting in
our life, right because computers will be doing everything, So
this provides meeting in a way survival, Okay, I mean
I'm not advocating that you've put the idea out there
into the internet, which is kind of the mind of
(43:26):
our future machine masters. So when it does, when it
when that, if it does happen, I feel like future
generations can look back to Julie Douglas and say, she's
the one who told the robots that this is what
would help us out in the end. Oh my gosh,
you're saying that when in the future I am staring
into the eyes and the jaws of a wooly mammoth
hybrid jaguar and meeting my death, that I should think
(43:50):
my past self. Yeah, you have chosen the form of
the destructor, putting that into the stream of a robot consciousness. Okay,
fair enough. So there you go. Eaters, the idea of
the man eater, the reality of the man eat or
what what may tip the scale in some cases for
an animal and and make it go after human prey,
(44:11):
either you know, just a little bit or exclusively. Yeah,
a couple of things for you guys to percolate on.
And if you want to find out more information, more
stuff that we're putting out there in the universe and
given to the robots, you can check out a little website.
We have, yes, stuff to blow your mind. Dot com.
That is the mothership. You will find all of our
podcast episodes there, and I mean all of them, because
(44:32):
you will find an incomplete catalog of our episodes on iTunes,
on SoundCloud in other places. Those are great places to
to check us out. But you want everything, you have
to come to our website. This is how it is. Hey.
You can also check out our blog posts. There are
videos links out to our various social media accounts that includes,
for instance, our Facebook feed or Twitter feed or tumbler feed,
(44:52):
Google Plus. Uh, but check it out. There's a there's
one in particular that you follow. We are probably doing
something on it as well at this very moment, at
this very moment. And you can also send us your
thoughts via email, and you can do that below the
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
(45:14):
thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, wasn't a stuff about your mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. I
was I was just about to say, what comes to
mind when I say the word man eater? Oh? Comes,
(00:26):
she's mad? H Now? Was she actually a man eater?
Was she out of control cannibal in that? Because that's
got kind of the vibe. I hear that song on
a picture kind of like Miami Vice type situation where
they're hunting down this woman who is on the loose
and killing and eating men and kind of like a
black widow cannibal fashion, and only two men hall and
(00:48):
Oates one mustache can bring her down exactly detectives Holland
Oates on the case. I think it was more like
she's a gold digger, She's going to run through all
the men. But we could take the whole the skew
on it that she was a flesh eating woman rampaging
around the social circles of humans. Okay, all right, I
(01:09):
like that interpretation. Now, for anyone who's thinking about turning
off the podcast right now, let me assure you this
is primarily not an episode about cannibals. This is this
is when we when we say man eater, we're bringing
to mind the the jungle man eater, the uh, the
idea that there you have animals out there that may
(01:31):
turn man eater or animals that are in and of
themselves man eaters. Uh. And it's a it's a term
that carries a lot of weight because as humans, we
generally like to think that we are in a safe area,
that we have not only reached the top of a
food chain, but we have removed ourselves from the food
chain entirely. We've we've achieved liberation from from that particular structure. Yeah,
(01:54):
we've talked about this before. Louis c. K has a
bit about how humans really take for granted the fact
that we are out of the food chain. But as
we read in the listener emails last week, there's one
person who dared to ask the question, could you have
a sudden blood luss when it comes to humans? Could
you get a taste of it and want more? Yeah?
(02:14):
And and to what extent is that just sort of
you know, human self obsession to think that we just
were so tasty, like we're we're off the menu item.
And we are so delicious that if that if a
tiger or a lion, or a chimpanzee or any kind
of creature that dabbles and meat eating at all or
to get a taste of us, then there's no way
(02:35):
they could go back. They would just have to be
man meat all the time. Cut it up for me,
put it on my plate. That's all I'm gonna eat
until you take me down inhala bullets. Wow, So you're saying,
could there be some sort of sea change that all
of a sudden put us on the menu. In other words,
these animals wouldn't go into their restaurant and have some
sort of code word in order to bring this delicacy
of humans about all of a sudden, We would just
(02:56):
be on the menu all the time. We would be
the other white meat. Yeah, I mean. And as we're
gonna discuss here, there are situations where something does occur,
or or a few different things occur that that seemed
to flip a switch in a predator that make it
go from from just it's normal dietary practices to becoming
a man eater to to preying on humans um exclusively.
(03:20):
But to what extent is it a thing? To what
extent is it us over reacting because because man eating
is uh, it's such an a loaded idea because it
just digs into our primal fears and into this, uh,
this situation of prey and predator that we again largely
like to think that we have achieved liberation from that.
We're you know, we're able to distance ourselves from predators,
(03:41):
were able to protect ourselves, and we're generally really smart prey.
We're generally not a good prey and mostly mostly um.
But but genuinely speaking, we're an intelligent, large creature that
that's not worth the effort of hunting. But if we
are in the wrong place at the wrong time, all
(04:01):
of a sudden, it becomes a very precarious event for us. Yes,
so we should probably kick off by talking about shameless
man eaters. And I think that the best example of
shameless man eaters are the nile crocodiles crocodia. Yes, you guys,
these guys, if we if we had like our ring
here in the right corner, you'd have a nile crocodile
(04:23):
wing and sometimes as large as sixteen hundred pounds in
twenty ft long. Now for for everybody that resides outside
of the United States. I'm talking about seven dred and
thirty kilograms and six meters long. Yeah, and these and
basically sub Saharan Africa is just lousy with these things.
They're they're they're everywhere and uh, and they are indiscriminate
(04:45):
in their diet. So so there's not a situation of,
oh that that crocodile, that that nile crocodile went man eater,
it developed a taste for human blood. No, the crocodile
is game for whatever it can get its jaws round.
And since human beings often live in for close proximity
with these creatures because because the river is their habitat
and the river is light, if you are somehow hacking
(05:05):
out an existence for yourself, then you are depending on
the river for water, for food, for laundry, two children
play in the water, etcetera. That the chance is going
to come up for a crocodile to snack on a human.
And it's it's hard to put an exact number on this,
but it's estimated that upwards of two people may die
each year from nile crocodile attacks. Yeah, so imagine yourself
(05:28):
at the Nile River at the banks, you're washing your
clothes and all of a sudden you are pitted against
this animal that is camouflaging itself in the water effortlessly,
just waiting right up to you, undetected. And they have
these incredibly fast reflexes, and you know, surprise attacks are
their purview, So you really don't have a chance in
(05:50):
one of those situations. And you can see why just
in this sub Saharan Africa and and the Nile that
something up to two hundred deaths a year occur because
of these crocs. Now that humans and crocodiles ever live
in harmony, I mean this is not an animal that
it is just overflowing with intelligence and uh and social
(06:10):
adaptability with with with non crocodile species. Yeah. Actually, um,
if you look at the case of one place in
western Africa, it's called Bazul, where one hundred Nile crocs
reside along with humans and what I would say is
relative harmony. You can see that this community regards Nile
crocs as sacred and they think of these crocs is
(06:34):
is having a link to survival and welfare in the seasons, right,
so they routinely sacrifice chickens to these crocodiles. So in
a way, it's a kind of a domestication, right because
they're they're giving them an animal, and they're keeping them
fat enough and full enough that they're not going to
be tempted as often by that that human snack that's
(06:56):
washing it's it's clothes in the water. Yeah, and this
has been going on since the fourteen century. So um
in some cases, as we'll discuss later on, with other animals,
there's this possibility that not only this act going on
is sort of routinizing it for the crocs, but maybe
it's a learned behavior through generations of these crocs, you know,
because that what instantly ticks off of my mind when
(07:18):
I think about that is I think about the alligators
here in the United States, And what do they always
tell you about alligators. Do not feed the alligators because
with other wild animals, you start feeding them, they start
associating a human presence with food, which is generally not
a good idea because again, one of the reasons that
humans are so good at largely avoiding uh consumption by
(07:41):
a predator is that we keep our distance from them.
We know not to go and mess with the bears,
and the bears by and large don't want to mess
with the humans. But when you start confusing the equation
by having a gift of sacrificed chicken or a delicious
garbage can involved, then it starts bringing these two species
closer and closer. And they're both very dangerous species in
(08:04):
their own way, so when they meet, uh it, it
might not be pretty. And the thing is though, in
in this area of western Africa, you may not have
the choice to keep your distance, so your water source
is probably going to be the same as these crocs,
So it would make sense that you would create this
sort of symbiotic relationship with a croc. Now, I don't
suggest that everybody hearing I didn't go out and start
(08:26):
doing that, because you know, by and large we have
the ability to keep our distance. But yeah, this, this
is what you see when when two species are or
cohabitating in the space on a very intimate terms, all right, now,
when it comes to killing and eating humans, uh, there
is one type of human that is clearly the best snack,
(08:49):
the best meal, and that is the child. Uh. Children
are of course smaller humans. They are largely uh stupid
er humans. When it comes to surviving on their own,
and they don't have as much experience they you know,
they're not gonna really be able to punch a bear
in the nose. They're they're slower, they're easily distracted. Firstance,
(09:11):
I took my son out on the belt line today,
which is this like running walking bicycling strip here in Atlanta,
formerly a train track, A really nice environment, but it
was hard to get him to walk uh ten feet
without stopping to stick to poke sticks through the fence
to try and pick up dog crap or two. And
then occasionally he would see somebody running and run himself.
(09:33):
Now there were no tigers or bears or coyotes or
wolves or anything like that on the belt line, but
if there were, they would have easily seen. This is
the kid. We're gonna try and eat these large adult runners.
And they're too fast, they're too wary. Some of them
are on bicycles. I'm not messing with that. But this guy,
he is short, he is stubby, and he keeps stopping
(09:53):
to mess with things could eat him up in a heartbeat.
Like I like to joke to my wife that if
he were out in the wild, even like squirrels would say, hey,
I could eat that guy, Maybe I should get a
taste in here. All of a sudden, you have like
twenty squirrels marching towards your son exactly. I mean, you know,
the economic value of eating um a toddler is just
it should be obvious to anything in the animal kingdom,
(10:15):
and a number of predators do pick up on that. Yeah,
And I think that's why we have so many fairy
tales that are these cautionary tales really for children, especially
when it comes to wolves, right, yeah, I mean just
think of the wolf in nursery stories. Uh and and
in myths as well. But a little red riding hood.
You know, she's just minding her own business and this
(10:36):
wolf is going to eat her in the woods. It
also goes after her elderly grandmother as well. Uh and
and then there are other stories like this three Pigs.
I mean, it just it just goes on and on.
We just have this this cultural idea of the wolf
as this predator that's roaming out on the edges of
our human world and is going to be eager to
creep in and steal our children or even eat us.
(10:58):
I mean, look look at some of the films we
have of out there in which the wolf plays a
very nefarious role. There's the the Liam Neeson movie The Gray,
about Liam Neeson punching a bunch of wolves as they
try to eat him. So culturally it is woven in
our fabric. We are frightened of wolves. They are the Boogeyman.
So imagine you live in Reserve, New Mexico. Okay, I
(11:20):
just imagine you're here in New Mexico and your child
is waiting for the bus, but instead of throwing rocks
or playing chase, the children are huddled in wood and
mesh cages meant to keep them safe from any wayward
wolves that happened by this is just such a fantastic story.
I mean, especially once you start getting the details. And uh,
(11:42):
in in this case, we got the details from the
article do kid cages really predict children from wolves? By
Jeremy Berlin and he and he talks to an expert
on wolves. He specifically, he talks to Daniel McNulty, a
wildlife ecology professor at Utah State University. Uh, this is
a guy who's been studying wolves in the Alsto National
(12:03):
Park for past eighteen years and he askin said wolves
eating children at bus stops. Is this really a threat?
And he says, of course, it's not a threat, like
there are so few examples of wolves attacking humans in
the wild. For starters, Yeah, he says, a child in
a rural area is more likely to be hurt or
killed in an accident with an off road altering vehicle
(12:25):
or in a with an encounter with a feral dog
or hunting accident. And there are very few instances in
North America have wolves hurting anyone, let alone children. And
the reason why people are up in arms in this
area is because in smaller subspecies of the gray wolf
called the Mexican wolf was reintroduced in the area. It's
(12:47):
a protected species. And so on one hand you have
you have governmental bodies saying, don't hurt the wolves. They are,
they're endangered, they're protected, leave them alone. But on the
other hand, we have this primal or almost i'm all
fear of the wolf. We have certainly had experiences of
wolves praying on livestock and beloved pets, and so you
(13:07):
have you have this tug of war here and also
probably a little bit of political manipulation as well, where
people are saying, Oh, well, if you're gonna protect the
wolf and we can't shoot the wolves, then I guess
we'll have to put our children in shark cages at
the bus stop exactly, because otherwise the wolves would just
sweep in and just eat all of them every morning. Yeah.
McNulty said that he thought that this was probably a
(13:28):
publicity stunt by people who felt like their rights were
being infringed on upon the government, particularly since the e
p A was had something out there to actually have
tighter restrictions here on the Mexican wolf. So again, the
idea is that there may be some groups that are
fueling this fear, which is sort of an ancient fear
(13:49):
ingrained in us against wolves. Well, let me ask you this.
You have you have, you have a daughter. Can you
imagine taking your daughter to a bus stop to to
await the school bus since telling her, listen, honey, everything
is gonna be okay today. However, we're gonna have to
put you in a cage as you wait for the
bus because wolves may come for you and try to
(14:09):
eat you. No, I can't. I can't imagine like putting
her into what amounts as a chicken coop really if
you look at these structures and telling her that there's
this this fear that she should, you know, really be
keyed into. I mean, can you imagine what that's doing
to a kid's psyche. That's it's just not healthy. I mean.
And and also it again, it fosters this idea that
(14:30):
the wolf is a threat that needs to be eradicated,
when in reality, if you encounter wolves in the wild,
it's generally going to be a very a very calm situation.
They're gonna see you, they're gonna take off because you're
just not a prey animal to them. Yeah, McNulty says.
They don't have supernatural powers. They can't jump over mountain ranges,
they can't bring down a moose with a single bite
(14:53):
to the neck um. They are constrained by their morphology, right,
So they're going to go after something that is mall.
They're going to go after a rabbit or something that
is easy prey. They are generally frightened of humans. So
to sum it all up, yes, it's there's a small,
small chance that wolves would prey on a human child,
(15:14):
but but generally it's not something to worry about. Certainly,
nothing to worry about at the bus stop. Um. But
of course the child would be an irresistible meal to
uh to any number of other predators, uh, interestingly enough,
including the champ to the chimpanzee, which I found horrifying. Yeah. Well,
and I think that's because you know, when you think
about chimps, you think of them as these playful creatures,
(15:37):
and uh, you know, even when you hear accounts of
them killing each other, it's disturbing when when they start
eating other primates, which they do, yes, or rather monkeys,
that's that's when it starts getting a little weird for
the human observer. But certainly they eat a lot of meat,
I believe, if I remember correctly, the chimpanzee is only
(15:58):
surpassed in its meat consumption by human beings when compared
to other other species. So we can't so we can't
really judge. I think it's what you're saying. Yeah, yeah,
I mean we we have. We get kind of weird
about eating things that look too much like us for
the most part. But but they have no such qualms.
And a lot of this is about context, right, So
what sort of food sources are available, what else is
(16:20):
going on in the ecosystem, and we're going to discuss
a little bit more about this some other species that
we should really keep more worried about when it comes
to man eating. Right after we cutis great, all right,
we're back lions and tigers and bears. Oh my, Yes,
(16:44):
particularly lions and tigers. These are the big cats are
among the best examples of of man eaters that we
can you can really focus in on, and particularly when
you're looking at the situation of an animal turning man
eater and try and and just trying to to figure
out what is that, what is happening at that pivotal
moment when this animal changes from something that lives outside
(17:08):
of the human scope to a creature that is praying
exclusively on humans. Yeah, and before we talk about some
of the circumstances that would drive man eating and lions,
let's just discuss really quickly that the population of African
lions is in decline while the human population, of course
is on the rise. You have to factor in the
(17:29):
loss of habitat and human encroachment, and then you begin
to see this picture emerging of how humans and lions
are meeting far more than they ever did in history.
And of course attacks are on the rise. Yeah, and
now there's some of some very key examples of man
eating lions throughout history, and all of this certainly stokes
(17:50):
the fires of our fear and our in our fascination
with the idea of the man eating lion, but particularly
the situation in evolving two lions named ghost in Darkness. Um,
they unleash this harrowing string of attacks on Ugandan railroad workers.
Uh and uh. If you look at the older accounts
(18:12):
of the Savo lions, they were saying that the lions
flew something like a hundred and thirty five African and
Indian railroad labors and sometimes dragging them from their tents
while they slept. And you know, it all ends up
escalating in the in the hunters having to go out
and set in search of them. If you've ever seen
the movie The Ghosts in the Darkness that has a
fictionalized account of this situation. But here's the thing. These
(18:36):
lines are currently on view underneath the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
If you go to the Gateway Arch and you go
into the museum underneath it, you will see these lines
and they are surprisingly small. Um, you see them, and
you have you if you hear the story, you expect
the giant lions that are just dripping with human blood,
and they're there are a lot smaller specimens in your life.
(18:57):
So are these vampire lions that are existing to the centuries? No?
No, no no, these are the actual lions were killed and
stuffed and wound up in St. Louis, Okay. And it
turns out, by the way that these lions actually did
the lives of thirty five people that you know, hundred
plus people. Uh. Still is nothing to sneeze at. Now
this isn't the only story. There are various other accounts
(19:18):
and um, and you know, I could, I could go
into listing each of them connt by account, but they
all basically amount to the same thing. Suddenly a lion
or even a group of lions begin praying on humans
and then they don't stop until those lions are themselves
put down. Um. There are a number of reasons for
why this happens. One of the reasons is it could
(19:40):
be passed down behavior. Yes, and there's a study of
the subbo lions actually uh from the Chicago's Field Museum
that discovered that generations of the same pride exhibited similar
human eating tendencies. So the same pride had a higher
incidence of man eating. So that's and the idea here.
(20:01):
But of course there's lots of different competing circumstances and reasons, right,
I mean, one of the big ones is altered habitat
induced prey switching. Now, this is a situation, uh that
they should make a lot of sense, especially in light
of of the reality of growing human populations and uh
and at times shrinking uh prey populations in an area.
(20:22):
What ends up happening is you have alliance and they've
they've lived in this area for generations and generations and generations.
They've always prayed exclusively on this particular population of animals,
and suddenly that prey population is affected by this human presence.
Suddenly there's less for them to eat. What are they
supposed to do? They're gonna do whatever they have to
(20:43):
do to survive there. So they end up switching their
prey preference. They realize they can't uh you know, get
this traditional uh you know, dear like gazelle like animal
or whatever that they prey on. What are they going
to turn to? Well, here are all these humans in
their areas. So they end up making the switch, and
there may be a sational things that end up um
affecting that switch. For instance, what happens then if lions, uh,
(21:05):
these same lions who are trying to figure out what
they're gonna eat, what kind of prey they're going to
consist on? What happens when they come across the body
of a dead human or or or even you know,
a destigated grave of some kind, they end up trying
the human flesh. It's just another argument in their favor
of oh, well, these creatures seem to be uh as
(21:26):
delicious as anything else I could eat and uh, and
then then they seem to be everywhere, and then you
end up with the eventual situation where they actually prey
on a human, and in that they may learn, oh
well they're not that difficult to kill either. Well. Yeah,
it really plays into the whole uh survival game that
we've talked about before. You tried to conserve as much
(21:46):
energy as possible and get as much energy as possible, right,
And so if if a human presents him or herself
as easy prey, either you know, just something that you
stumbled upon them that's a dead body, or just is
a smaller human being that's easy to take down. Well,
there you go. You can conserve your energy and get
a quick meal out of it at the same time.
(22:07):
And another situation with lions that can lead to this
man hunter button getting you know, ticked off in their
brain is uh is when you have an old or
an injured lion. So it's very similar to the altered
habitat induce prey switching situation. So like suddenly they've gone
from this life where they're they're praying exclusively on this
animal or this group of animals, and now they can't
(22:28):
because they're getting old. Maybe they can't they can't run
down their prey like they used to, or they're having
problems with their teeth, they can't. They can't necessarily kill
and chew like they used to. Yeah, I mean you
think about when you go to the dentist and you
have a tooth apsessor, you have dental work done, you
don't go home and eat like a chicken thigh. You
probably eat some mac and cheese. Right. Yeah, Well, we've
(22:48):
talked about the advantages of human cooking before, and you
know what a what an enormous technological achievement that was
for our species. One of the achievements there is that
Suddenly it means that if you don't have teeth to
chew your food anymore, that there is a way, you know,
you can you can cook things down, and in addition
to that, you can also chop things up, and in
(23:08):
doing so, bad teeth is not a death sentence anymore. Yeah,
and so if you think about humans versus say, zebras,
then all of a sudden, humans on the menu look
a lot more like mac and cheese to an animal
with really bad teeth. You don't. We don't have tough
hides to tear through, right, So you know, that's that's
another idea of where you have a circumstance where humans
(23:30):
might be the better choice here the other white meat.
But of course, there is not one overriding theory here
about why lions in particular go after humans from time
to time. Um. Actually, History Stuff has a really great
discussion of the Savo lions. It's a December sixteen episodes,
(23:52):
So if you guys want to learn more about that
specific instance, check that out. Because there's no there's there's
not really one reason that people can out along for
for why this happens. Yeah, If anything, it seems like,
there are probably a few different a few different of
these factors are playing in to to any given man
hunter situation, but it does seem to be the trend
(24:12):
that once that want that, once that little switch is
flipped over in the brain, Uh, they tend to go
for the human flesh. But then, but then part of
that too is that is that we have such a
stigma about man eaters and such a fear of it,
and then we have this idea in our head that,
oh that that that line has become man eater, it
must be put down. Uh. So you know that that
(24:34):
that The answer then is in kind of in the
question there. Well, right now today there's actually a news
item that in your India there is a man hunt
right now for a tigress that is going on. This
is a tigress who reportedly has taken nine human lives
in the last forty five days, and so you have
really this frenzy uh going on to to take this
(24:57):
one tiger down. Yeah. Ti beers are definitely another big
area of where we see the man eater of effect
coming in into practice and and generally speaking the same
reasons a plot, but with the added caveat that sometimes
you have. There is a theory that mistaken identity plays
a role as well. They have been tests that have
(25:18):
shown that a tiger will stalk a group of people
bending over to cut grass, and it possibly the angle
of the person, you know, the fact that they seem
like they're smaller and more compact. That may mean that
the tiger is misinterpreting what kind of animal they are.
I see. So with the genes that I have that
have like a little gazelle face on the foot, I
(25:39):
should stop wearing those out in the wild. Well, well,
I don't know, if it has the face on it,
maybe you'd be okay, because remember people with the masks
in the back of their head, so that the tiger,
you know, doesn't think that it's sneaking up on you.
That's right, because the idea here is that with a tiger,
or we've talked about this with bears too, is that
certain types of bears that you don't want to appear
(26:01):
as though you are overly excited or you are a
prey that would be frightened of this animal and start
running and flailing about. And if you have this mask on,
it makes it look as though you are not actually
retreating from the animal. It's interesting the emaion fleeing because
I've also read accounts where you have areas in India
where they don't really have a problem with tigers attacking
(26:22):
people unless they're on bicycles. Something about the speed with
which the human is moving may click something off and
the tigers said, they think, oh, well, that's that's prey
fleeing from me. I should run it down. That just
happens in my neighborhood with dogs. Now again, think back
to those reasons we listed for lions, and you can
pretty much apply all of those t tigers as well.
(26:43):
There's an estimated sevent tigers left in the wild in India. Meanwhile,
the human population in India is is over one point
to three seven billion people. So again you have you
have these wild tigers and they're inevitably going to run
into people and sometimes it's just gonna it's gonna basically
be accident. What happens when when when a tiger just
(27:04):
happens across a human. It might be an old tiger
it's forced out of it's the previous area, a young
tiger that's off it's out in search of its of
an area to call its own. And and indeed, those
are the two types of tigers that typically wind up
in these violent altercations, the young tigers and the very
old tigers. Yeah, and if you look at this current
case in Pichnore, India, that you do see habitat loss
(27:28):
playing into this idea that it is the meeting season
right now in the winter. And what happens is that
you have older tiger says that are moving along the
younger I think that when they turned three years old. Uh,
the younger female tiger says, out of the pride and saying,
go off on your own and create your own. So
that's creating more stray tigers out there in the wilderness
(27:51):
who are coming upon people. It's also worth pointing out
that a tiger usually makes one large kill every week,
and so, uh, the map here is that since India
has se hundred or so tigers, that's more than eighty
five thousand kills in a year. But we're not experiencing
anywhere near that number of of of deaths among humans
(28:14):
at the hand of tigers. Less than eighty five people
are killed or injured accidentally or otherwise in a year
by tigers in India. So many more pittent times that
die from the snake bites, rabies, uh, you name it.
But again, the idea of an anna of a predator
praying on humans, it's an idea that just resonates so
strongly with this and just drives the fear. I mean,
(28:36):
we just mentioned the story out of India, uh and
in there are many cases, you know, certain of some
of our listeners are gonna be more tied in two
news out of India uh than other listeners. But I
imagine for a lot of people, like that's gonna be
the only news you hear out of India this week
is that there's a man eating tiger on the loose.
I mean, that's how far it resonates, because that that
(28:57):
that is is is scary and and uh and and
sort of boggles your imagination and makes your your your
mind run wild no matter where you are. And they
of course, of course that would seize your imagination and
you would stay indoors um. In terms of the United States,
the real problem is a dog, spider or some other insect.
(29:18):
And according to CDC statistics of the one thousand, nine
eighty nine Americans killed by animals between nine and two
thousand and eight. Most of those deaths are attributed to dogs, insects,
and spiders. So again you have to scale the things
that are imaginary, those imaginary threats with what is actually
happening at the time. Um out in the wild. Now
(29:41):
it's it's a great thing. You mentioned dogs, but because
of course with with dogs and and in some of
these cases we might be talking about dogs that are
a bit wild, but for the most part we're talking
about the domestic dog and all the complications that come
along with that. And we could do a whole podcast
on this, and we probably should, about what happens when
we have animals that are no longer wild, they have
become domesticated, or they are kept in some sort of
(30:05):
you know, zoo type habitat, you know, totally reduced habitat,
totally unnatural living situation. What does that do to the
animal's mind, even if they are kept in uh, you know,
in relatively comfortable care, discounting abuse and UH and and
other harsh realities of domestication and animal imprisonment. Well, probably
(30:27):
one of the best examples of this can be found
in the Blackfish documentary, which talks about Tillicum who is
a killer whale, an orca and um and actually documents
the three killings of humans by Tillicum. Yes, and it's
worth it's very important to note here that there has
never been a confirmed case of an orca killing a
(30:50):
human in the wild. You've had situations where sailors have
fallen directly into into the orca pods and they've emerged
without any harm. And uh so the so the idea
that that they're killing people in captivity, that instantly raises
some questions about, well, what is it about captivity that
(31:11):
is that is making them do this. The interesting thing
about this too, is that they're not eating them, so
obviously they're not doing this as a source of protein.
They're doing this most likely as particularly when you look
at this case of Telecom as a byproduct of zukosis.
And if you look at Telecom, he was an organ
that was separated from his mother at a young age
and then shipped off to Ceiland in British Columbia to
(31:34):
perform for audiences, where he was kept in what amounted
to a lightless floating twenty by twenty eight foot shed
and shed that again had no light coming in. And
we're talking about being kept in that shed for upwards
of fourteen hours overnight. In addition to that, because he
(31:55):
hadn't been properly socialized, and kind of because he was
a little man on the totem pole, he was the
subject of a lot of aggressive acts by other orcas
that he was either mating with or performing with. So
even by the time that he was moved over to
sea World and given you know, more room to be
(32:18):
in and probably better um, you know, living quarters, he
had already began to exhibit signs of zukosis. Yeah, I mean,
it basically comes down to the fact that that in
the orca you have an intelligent social creature. And if
you take that intelligent social creature out of the wild
and put it in an enclosed environment that is it's
(32:39):
not even a slice of its natural world, you can
end up with metal suttress. You can end up with aggression,
and then it's going to manifest itself at times and
potentially fatal encounters with the human captors. Yeah, it's interesting.
If you look at this documentary, you get more information,
more end up information about these three killings. And one
of the killings was just one person who broke into
(33:01):
the holding area and UH, and they found this guy
naked and um dead the following morning, so they're not
entirely sure what happened UM. But the other two killings
happened with trainers, and in one of those instances, you
you can see the film footage on this, the trainer
has not rewarded Tillicum for Um performing a certain trick
(33:25):
because she just didn't see it. She was talking to
the audience, so she assumed he hadn't done it, so
she didn't reward him with the fish. So the idea
is that that might have set off her eventual death
with him pull him pulling her under sort of retribution
for not realizing that, you know, he had done the trick.
And when you think about zukosis and you think about
animals um having this sort of psychosis and having that
(33:49):
level of sensitivity, then that's their life. Those for their life,
and that becomes maybe a matter of life or death
to that orca. I mean, we don't know obviously, and
I don't mean to anthropomorphizus here, but you can begin
to see how something like this happens. Well, I mean,
if anyone who's a dog owner out there knows, what
do you tell a child about about the dog. No
(34:11):
matter how family the dog is, you don't touch the
dog wants eating because because no matter how domesticated the species,
that there is that basic principle of life. Food is
the is the most important thing, along with with mating
and reproduction, is a very genetic mission. Uh, you know,
at heart of every creature, and if you interfere with that, potentially,
(34:34):
you know, set off a string of events. Yeah, it's
very true. Now let's just kind of shift a couple
of degrees here, actually a lot of degrees, and talk
about humans. And we're not going to go super into
cannibalism here, but we're going to talk about this idea
about whether or not humans could actually get a taste
for human blood. Yeah. We we mentioned at the beginning
(34:55):
that there's a certain I get the sense that with
the man man eater idea that there is this notion that, oh,
humans are off the menu items and therefore we're the
most delicious, and that if anything, we're to get a
taste of us, then how could they resist eating us
all the time. Uh. There's actually an an interesting argument
that that that this this isn't the case with any
(35:17):
animal out there except humans. Of course, humans complicate the
situation as always, because we're not just this uh, this
this creature out there, uh, you know, living in an
unconscious existence in the wild. We're very conscious. We we
have these layers of culture and language in which which
just completely complicate any and everything we do. And so
(35:40):
you do have situations, obviously where people turn to cannibalism. Uh.
A lot of the time it's just for simple economic reasons,
just like the rest of the world, a situation where cannibalism,
an act of cannibalism, means survival in a bad situation.
But then you have situations where people turn to cannibalism,
uh due to uh well, for lack of a better word,
insane reasons. In two thousand and twelve, there were a
(36:03):
spate of crimes that involve face fighting, dismemberment, and cannibalism,
and in these cases, Karen Highland, she is a therapist
at Summit Malibu Treatment Center in California, said cannibalism often
begins as a fantasy which the person plays out in
his or her head. But when that person gets a
taste for real, she says, you know, like the real,
(36:26):
actual meat of the human, she says quote, the pleasure
center of the brain becomes activated and large amounts of
dopamine are released, similar to what happens when someone ingests
a drug like cocaine. I gotta say my right now,
my eyebrow is dubiously raised. Yeah, it's again, it's I
feel like it's important to again realize that with humans
(36:48):
everything is is complicated because humans can have fantasies about
doing something that they've built up in their mind for
you know, a decade or more. They can they can
just be totally enraptured, but by the idea of doing
something humans unlike uh, you know, most of the animal world.
We have we have taboos, we have things that exist
(37:09):
outside of what is accepted by our culture, and those
things can become attractive to varying degrees. So you gotta
take take that into account. And then if you're going
to eat human flesh, and it's very basis, you're ingesting something.
And if you ingest food, if you ingest uh, you know,
beef jerky, or the face of somebody that you attacked
(37:33):
on a on on the freeway, there is going to
be a biological response to that. Your boy, you are
there is gonna be uh you know, are ingesting vitamins. Uh. There,
you know your body is going to react. You're going
to you're going to feel a certain amount of pleasure
upon eating. I mean, that's just biology. And so you
add that in with all these complicated layers of fantasy
(37:54):
and and taboo and uh and sexual desire, and you're
gonna get some weird results. Well. So she's not calling
out the habit loop, as we had touched on with
Charles du Hick's research about how to make a habit, right,
but she is touching on one of the things that
makes a habit, and that's a release of dopamine. Right.
And so that's the reason why a brain says me like, yeah,
I want to do it again, but I just can't
(38:16):
conceive of doing that one time. And all of a
sudden you have this really robust neural pathway that's demanding
human flesh. I think that for me is the the
leap in logic that's a bit difficult. Well, everything else
I sort of understand. I just don't know that that
one time would be enough. Um. And but she is
(38:37):
equating it with cocaine and saying that, you know, the
cutting of cocaine is very similar in the sense of
planning for the killing and eating of someone. She's saying
that it's the same sort of anticipation and you know
this the same sort of uh real hook that's in
(38:59):
your brain and about what's about to happen. I feel
like she might be chewing more than she bites off. Now.
I ran across another article that dealt with some of
this title at A Beginner's Guide to Sexual Cannibalism by
and Dr Mark D. Griffiths, PhD. And this season, but
this is on Psychology Today, and they pointed and and
I'm just gonna read you this quote from it, so
(39:21):
that so that the reference that Mark Griffiths is making here,
uh you know it isn't overstated, he says. Leslie Hinsel,
author of Cannibalism as a Sexual Disorder, says eating human
flesh can cause an increase in levels of vitamin A
and amino acids, which can cause a chemical effect on
the blood and in the brain. This chemical reaction could
possibly lead to the altered states that some cannibals have
(39:44):
have claimed to have experienced. However, this theory has not
been substantiated by scientific evidence. Well, there you go. Yeah,
I gotta say, but again, I you know, think to
that time that you had, like a really delicious hamburger
or some sort of a treat that you normally don't
allow yourself, and how satisfying that food can be. It can't.
(40:05):
Food can be euphoric, like a really good piece of
sushi are really you know, particularly perfect grapefruit there you
can feel a sense of euphoria with your food just
on its own, without layering in sexual fantasy and cultural taboos.
So again, eating is a physical act that has an
(40:28):
effect on the brain, even if you're not talking about cantalism.
I just don't Yeah, I just don't see human meat
being a go to comfort food. I mean maybe And actually,
if today's video game releases any indication it's a possibility.
There's a game called Tasty Tasty Grandpa that just came out. Yeah,
(40:49):
this is gonna be an iOS two D quote eat
em up that you can play on your your phone
and various gadgets, um, and hopefully it will be available
by the time this podcast goes lives because because it
looks amazing, Uh, do a search for Tasty Tasty Grandpa
and you can see the video clip Basically you start
off as this as this baby and uh and what
do you do to survive? Well, you have to eat
(41:11):
those who are older than you to level up to
a different age group. And we're talking very cartoon cannibalism.
It's just just you know, eat whole with no blood
or bones or anything. Grows like that. Yeah, the background
is an Elizabethan Theater carousel, so it's nothing to do
morbid or anything. But the older user gets, the more
younger people are out to get them. So then you
(41:34):
have to try to survive cannibalism as well. Well. I
feel like it's a perfect metaphor for life, especially if
you're if you happen to be in the media. Uh So,
if you're doing a podcast, you start thinking, oh, man,
look at the look at the playing field. We have
all these young people coming up, and there's still old
dudes out there that I want to take down and
(41:55):
get their spot, you know. Well, as as far as
exploring cannibalism through technology, I can't help but think about
the singularity of course again when robots will be our overlords.
And I think this is where I think cannibalisms and
humans may finally meet. As I envision these arenas where
humans are ushered in along with sort of like half
(42:19):
droid half animals and made to try to consume each other. WHOA,
So you're saying that when the when the robots take over, yes,
they will initiate gladiatorial combat between captured humans and cybernetic
animals something like that, and they have to eat each other. Well,
of course cybernetic animals, and how that's gonna work adjustive system.
(42:42):
But this is what's in my mind going to happen.
I love how we discussed bringing up the Tasty Tasty
Grandpa as a way to to ease out of the
cannibalism discussion in the Lighter Territory to close out the podcast,
and you you managed to grab the wheel and pulled
right back around to post apocalypt gladiatorial battle between humans
(43:03):
and cybernet animals. Yeah, I put us in the ditch, didn't.
But think about it, right, I mean at that point,
at the Singularity, we will be striving for meeting in
our life, right because computers will be doing everything, So
this provides meeting in a way survival, Okay, I mean
I'm not advocating that you've put the idea out there
into the internet, which is kind of the mind of
(43:26):
our future machine masters. So when it does, when it
when that, if it does happen, I feel like future
generations can look back to Julie Douglas and say, she's
the one who told the robots that this is what
would help us out in the end. Oh my gosh,
you're saying that when in the future I am staring
into the eyes and the jaws of a wooly mammoth
hybrid jaguar and meeting my death, that I should think
(43:50):
my past self. Yeah, you have chosen the form of
the destructor, putting that into the stream of a robot consciousness. Okay,
fair enough. So there you go. Eaters, the idea of
the man eater, the reality of the man eat or
what what may tip the scale in some cases for
an animal and and make it go after human prey,
(44:11):
either you know, just a little bit or exclusively. Yeah,
a couple of things for you guys to percolate on.
And if you want to find out more information, more
stuff that we're putting out there in the universe and
given to the robots, you can check out a little website.
We have, yes, stuff to blow your mind. Dot com.
That is the mothership. You will find all of our
podcast episodes there, and I mean all of them, because
(44:32):
you will find an incomplete catalog of our episodes on iTunes,
on SoundCloud in other places. Those are great places to
to check us out. But you want everything, you have
to come to our website. This is how it is. Hey.
You can also check out our blog posts. There are
videos links out to our various social media accounts that includes,
for instance, our Facebook feed or Twitter feed or tumbler feed,
(44:52):
Google Plus. Uh, but check it out. There's a there's
one in particular that you follow. We are probably doing
something on it as well at this very moment, at
this very moment. And you can also send us your
thoughts via email, and you can do that below the
mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and
(45:14):
thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.