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In this instance, the phenomenon that evolved can be filed under the rather broad ecological heading of phenotypic plasticity: When changing environmental conditions allow multiple phenotypes (observable characteristics or traits) to arise from a single genotype (the genetic makeup of an organism).
females begins exhibiting male-typical behaviors. Relatively quickly, the former female transforms into a male, a form of phenotypic plasticity known in the trade as protogyny. The opposite occurs in protandry, in which individuals begin life as males and transform into females. Examples include the clownfish (Amphiprion), whose behavior could have offered an intriguing alternative resolution to the animated film Finding Nemo.
the most significant of these is a heightened chance of acquiring harmful parasites or diseases from a conspecific. Both parasites and pathogens are often species-specific and many of them have evolved mechanisms to defeat their host’s immune defenses. As a result, predators that consume their own kind run a greater risk of picking up a disease or a parasite than do predators that feed solely on other species.
A cannibal that consumes its own offspring, siblings, or even more distant relatives, removes those genes from the population, so it reduces its own inclusive fitness. Since this is bad juju, natural selection should favor cannibals that can discriminate between kin and non-kin, primarily because eating non-relatives results in no loss of inclusive fitness.
As the name implies, trophic eggs, produced by some species of spiders, lady beetles, and snails, function solely as food. These prepackaged meals often outnumber the fertilized eggs in a given clutch—a fact exemplified by the results of an observational study on the rock snail (Thais emarginata). This species commonly lays a clutch of around 500 eggs but averages only 16 egg-munching hatchlings.
In an extreme act of parental care, she calls the babies to her by drumming on their web and presses her body down into the gathering crowd. The ravenous spiderlings swarm over their mother’s body. Then they eat her alive, draining her bodily fluids and leaving behind a husklike corpse.
One such result has been the classification of distinct forms of cannibalism, such as filial cannibalism (eating one’s own offspring) and heterocannibalism (eating unrelated conspecifics), both of which have become vital to the concept of cannibalism as normal behavior.
Cannibalism also occurs when litter size exceeds the number of available teats or when pups are deformed, weak, or dead.
Along those lines, scientists estimate that for every million eggs produced by an Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), approximately one egg will result in an adult fish. Partially compensating for these lottery-like odds is the fact that each female produces between four and ten million eggs in a single spawning.
parental care occurs in only around 20 percent of the 420 families of bony fishes (a group composed of nearly all living species except sharks and their flattened relatives, the skates and rays).
Egg theft can be explained by the preference for some females to spawn at sites already containing eggs, even if they’re not hers. In these instances, once a female deposits her own clutch, the male will selectively eat the eggs he previously stole and deposited there.
Also destined for the digital equivalent of the cutting room floor are shots showing male cichlids fertilizing the eggs in the females’ mouths, always a difficult topic to explain during family TV time.
These embryos (averaging 19 in number) had fallen victim to the ultimate in sibling rivalry—a form of in utero cannibalism known as adelphophagy (from the Ancient Greek for “brother eating”), or sibling cannibalism.
Researchers sometimes refer to these types of victims as “food caches,” as sibling cannibalism becomes an efficient way to produce well-nourished offspring (albeit fewer of them) during times of stress.
The cannibal association continued through the 1970s and 1980s, even though researchers working with these spiders were beginning to discover that the behavior in black widows was actually a rare occurrence. They determined that not only did most male spiders depart unharmed after copulation, but some of them lived in the female’s web for several weeks, even sharing her prey.
Stannard believes that by the end of the 16th century, the Spanish had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of between 60 and 80 million indigenous people in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Even if one were to discount the millions of deaths resulting from diseases, this would still make the Spanish conquest of the New World the greatest act of genocide in recorded history.
The belief was that this form of ritual cannibalism was a way to transfer desired traits, like strength or courage, from the deceased enemy to themselves.
Medical orderlies were then instructed to cut the livers from the bodies, and the organs were cooked and served to the senior staff. Tachibana and several others were arrested after the war, but since cannibalism was not listed as a war crime, they were actually convicted and hanged for preventing the honorable burial of the prisoners the officer and his men had eaten. Later was it revealed that an American submarine had recovered one of the nine downed fliers, thus saving him from a similar fate at the hands of the starving Japanese. The lucky man’s name was Lt. George H. W. Bush.
Beliefs or not, though, they were forced by missionaries and government officials to abandon their funerary rites and to bury their dead in what these strangers believed to be the civilized manner. Conklin said that this was a ritual the Wari’ found to be particularly repellent, since they considered the ground “cold, wet and polluting” and that “to leave a loved one’s body to rot in the dirt was disrespectful and degrading to the dead and heart-wrenching for those who mourned them.”
since surely even the dimmest of Jesus’s supporters hadn’t taken him literally when he said, “I am the gate” (John 10:9) or “I am the true vine” (John 15:1).
For example, the same fundamentalists who believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish and survived for three days within its belly also believe that the wine and host they consume during Holy Communion are only symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
As pronounced by Innocent III, from that moment on, the faithful would be required to believe that the consecrated elements in the Eucharist (i.e., the bread and wine) were literally changed into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Other host-conspiracy buffs suggested that the villains were using the Savior’s blood to rid themselves of the foetor Judaicus (“Jewish stink”).
Prolonged hunger carves the body into what researchers call the asthenic build.19 The face grows thin, with pronounced cheekbones, atrophied facial muscles account for the ‘mask of famine,’
Other pieces of bone exhibited a condition known as “pot polish,” a smoothing of the edges that results from the bones being stirred in a pot.
During Packer’s sentencing, the judge was rumored to have made the following statement: “There were only seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them, you depraved Republican son of a bitch!”
stones of nursery literature in the West.” As such, these stories served to reinforce the idea, for readers of all ages, that cannibalism was the stuff of nightmares and naughty children.
In a rare instance of 18th-century clarity regarding Columbus and those who followed him, Crusoe wonders whether killing the cannibals would “justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of these people.”
But if that didn’t work, anyone who practiced man-eating could be enslaved or killed by any method, no matter how cruel or gruesome it might appear.
Human skulls not ground into powder were often left out in the air, where they served as the substrate for “skull moss”—a curative applied topically to stem bleeding and to treat disorders of the head.
They would use the ointment itself on either the weapon that had caused the injury (if available) or a wooden facsimile of it. Given the fact that hoplochrisma had no side effects, it might be classified as one of the most effective treatments available at the time,
Given its essential role in fetal development, what the human placenta experiences after delivery must surely be the most precipitous fall from grace in all of Organdom.
Nothing it seems to me is more difficult than to explain to a cannibal why he should give up human flesh. He immediately asks, “Why mustn’t I eat it?” And I have never yet been able to find an answer to that question beyond the somewhat unsatisfactory one, “Because you mustn’t.”
Fore elders told the foreigners that the sickness resulted from a form of sorcery. The kiaps were informed that the process went something like this: Sorcerers would stealthily obtain an item connected to their intended victim, like feces, hair, or discarded food. After wrapping the object in leaves, they would place it in a swampy area where it couldn’t be found. As the sorcery bundle began to decompose, so, too, the Fore said, would the victim.
the corpse was placed on a bed of edible leaves in order to ensure that “nothing was lost on the ground as this would have been disrespectful.”
