Red-Haired Ash Reads

As soon as I saw this book I knew it was one I wanted to read. This was a fascinating look at cannibalism in humans, animals, and insects. While this seems like a book that would discuss cannibal serial killers, it doesn’t and the author explains early on why he doesn’t cover that topic. I agree with some of the author’s reasons for not writing about serial killers and I think it actually made this a better book because it focused on the rest of the world instead of just serial killers. 

“Cannibalism occurs in every class of vertebrates, from fish to mammals.”

This book covers a lot of different types of cannibalism in animals and all of it was fascinating. From the beginning of this book I was hooked and I took a lot of notes along the way. This book covers cannibalism in tadpoles, fish, birds, preying mantis, spiders, snails, crickets, polar bears, monkeys, and dinosaurs. The wide range of animals and insects that was covered really shows how widespread cannibalism is across species. I found all of these different forms of cannibalism very fascinating and I learned so much about the animal kingdom. 

“Cannibalism is found in over fifteen hundred species.”

This book also covers cannibalism in early ancestors (Neanderthals), cannibalism in certain cultures, endocannibalism, exocannibalism, survivor cannibalism, medical cannibalism and cannibalism in the Bible. Before reading this book I didn’t realize there were so many forms of cannibalism or that it was so prevalent throughout history, so as you can imagine I learned a lot from this book. The most interesting of these for me was medical cannibalism because I never really considered it before. It was also surprising to find out how many kinds of medical cannibalism there is, such as women eating their placentas and how Victorians used to turn Egyptian mummies into medicinal powders. 

Of course this book also covers cannibalism related diseases like Kuru and Mad Cow Disease. This was not the first time I had learned about Kuru but it was still a fascinating look at a culture’s death practices and the horrible side effects that came from it. Mad Cow Disease was a new one for me. I had heard of it, but I never realized it was caused by eating flesh. I knew nothing about how cow feed was made so it was all so surprising to learn that they use body parts in the process, and that poor processing of the feed led to this disease. 

Overall, this was an absolutely fascinating and informative book about a potentially morbid topic but Schutt does a great job at keeping this topic light. If you like medical history or just want to know more about this topic, I highly recommend this book. 

TW: cannibalism (animal and human); infanticide in animals; animal experimentations; animal cruelty and death; colonization; 

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