Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Cannibalism (featuring Volker Rudolf)

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Daniel and Kelly talk to Dr. Volker Rudolf about cannibalism. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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To hear this podcast and more, open your free IHeartRadio app. Search all the smoke and listen now. I was interested in animal behavior, and for my master's degree, I was studying juvenile smallmouth bass. So I went out in the wild, and after getting all of the permits I needed, I brought a bunch of them back into the lab, and they were like these little guys, and as they were growing up, I noticed that the number of fish in the tanks was going down, and I was totally stumped. The water quality was great. I wasn't finding any dead bodies in the tank. They weren't, like, getting sucked into the filters. I was crawling around on the ground, trying to see if they were somehow getting out of the tanks,

despite there being a lid on all of the tanks. And then one morning, I walked into the environmental chamber, and I was shocked. One of the fish had a giant tail sticking out of its mouth. It had not occurred to me that they were eating each other. Like, one, it hadn't occurred to me because the fish in the tank were pretty similarly sized. And this was not the first time in my life,

I was going to be amazed at how big prey items are for these bass, like how much food they can fit into their gigantic mouths. So they weren't apparently able to eat each other, even when they were like pretty close to the same size. But also, I was totally naive to how common cannibalism apparently is in the animal kingdom. I was like, you can't eat your brothers and sisters. But no, absolutely they were totally fine with that. And that's what we're going to be talking about today.

Is cannibalism in the animal kingdom? We're going to mostly be talking about non-human animals, and it's going to be quite a ride. We're interviewing Fulca Rudolph, and he'll tell us all about his research in this field. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Bon Appetit. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly. extraordinary universe. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I've never eaten a human being. I'm Kelly Weiner Smith. I also have never eaten a human being. No desire to do so. But as an

ecologist, I have seen lots of animals eating other members of the same species. Well, let's dig into that a little bit more, Kelly. My question for you today is, what is the most intelligent animal you have ever eaten? Oh, geez. Probably pigs because they're super intelligent. I eat meat less these days because ever since I got on a farm and I've started interacting with like cows and pigs and goats and sheep I'm like oh my gosh you all like you have personalities if some of you are very smart but I got to be honest I feel way better about eating chicken because our chickens are so stupid and I don't feel too bad about eating chicken so anyway what about you are you saying the dumb deserve to be eaten is that what's happening here that is not what's happening here you don't

need to extrapolate to the forbidden meal, but I do think chickens, you know, they're delicious and silly. What about you? I'm not going to answer your question yet. I'm going to keep pushing you. Would you eat a chimpanzee or a bonnevo? If somebody puts the chimp skull in front of you and flips it open and says, here's a brain delicacy.

Is Kelly saying no thank you or are you digging in? Hmm. I am saying no thank you. Yeah, why am I saying no thank you? Oh, so much introspection happening right now. Are there not loads of bonobos in the wild? I don't know their status. So like one, I don't want to eat.

anything that's like endangered or threatened or anything like that. But also I guess I do feel uncomfortable the closer they are to me. And partly that's because like there's a lot of zoonotic diseases. So a lot of diseases that jump from wild animals to humans. And I guess I would worry that the more closely related you are to those organisms, the more likely something is to jump. But I wouldn't have that excuse if it was like a lab raised chimpanzee. I still don't think I'd want to eat it.

Yeah. Nope. I don't know that I have a good logical reason, but my tummy is saying no. Well, I'm an unabashed speciesist. I feel like being human is different from being a puppy or a chicken or a pig. And I used to feel like that wasn't fair. You couldn't just say, hey, members of the human species have certain rights that pigs and dogs and whatever don't. But these days, I've come to accept that that's just kind of how I feel, even if it is wrong.

And so, for example, I'm happy to eat an intelligent pig, but I wouldn't eat a very stupid person. Okay. You're cool with that. Well, I'm trying to figure out what is the logical framework behind. Is it just anything that's not humans as good? Like, so you still haven't answered. Would you eat the chimpanzee and the bonobo? I probably would eat the chimpanzee and the bonobo.

Yeah, exactly. Nice, clean, labraries, chimpanzee. Yeah, why not? I mean, I eat pigs. And so let's go all in. They're probably delicious. At least you're consistent. I recognize I'm not very consistent, which is part of why I shy away from meat altogether.

Because I feel like I haven't quite formulated the framework for what I feel comfortable with and what I don't feel comfortable with. Props to you for being consistent. Well, I think it's interesting that a lot of people probably haven't really thought through what they would eat and what they wouldn't eat and why. I remember reading an article about speciesism like 20 something years ago that actually inspired me to become a vegetarian, made me realize that I was being unfair to really smart pigs because I was giving them fewer rights than I was giving to, you know, you know, not smart humans that I would refuse to eat and made me feel like, hmm, maybe I just shouldn't be eating any creatures at all. And, you know, that lasted for like 10 years. I was a militant vegetarian for like 10 years until I had a son and he was very obviously a carnivore. And we lived in France where if you ask for vegetarian lunch, they give you like chicken or fish. So it didn't last that

long. And these days I just feel like, yes, there is something special about being human. For a while I was some special kind of vegetarian where I like mostly wouldn't eat meat. but if I knew that the animal had been treated humanely its whole life and was euthanized humanely so it was a cow that lived on this beautiful farm it had free range and had buddies it could paint twice a week and do arts and crafts and stuff yoga class on Wednesdays I would make exceptions for that and since I was a grad school at the time I couldn't afford to do that very often so it was like I'd have you know one meat dish a month where I would go and pay for that and Zach my husband likes to

left because the thing that ended up breaking my like vegetarian streak was I just couldn't stop craving Arby's beef and cheddar sandwiches, which is just the lowest quality food ever, but like my grad student heart just had to have one. And that was the thing, like I had one. And then I was like, well, I've broken it. And then for a while I just ate what I could afford, which was Arby's because I was a grad student. Anyway, I've always had a complicated relationship with meat, I guess.

And all of these behaviors are not rational. right these are people's emotional feelings about what's right and what's wrong what you grew up with you know i grew up not eating any shellfish at all and so like i think shellfish are gross and you cannot catch me eating shrimp i'll eat a chimpanzee but like shellfish it's icky it's like insects of the ocean i'm as likely to eat a cricket as i am to eat a shrimp i am more likely to eat a cricket than a shrimp i mean you've got to like depop the shrimp before you eat them like i know it's just gross are gross exactly and so on today's episode i'm looking forward to exploring that line like who eats who and why do they do it why don't we eat our neighbor's kids or should we you know i think

law probably plays into why we don't eat our children's kids but why is the law that way and should it be that way right should we have a reform movement that says cannibalism is actually okay you are asking all the big questions this is not my field and so i feel totally comfortable just like asking the big dumb questions. Well, that's great. I love that. All right. So speaking of big dumb questions,

I asked how common is cannibal and non-human animals and have you ever seen it in nature? And so I asked this to some of my friends. And the big dumb thing that I did was I accidentally mistyped my friend's number in because like it was somebody I hadn't messaged for a while. And I set some questions about cannibalism to like random person who's probably very confused. They never responded by like sent the. questions then I was like oh gosh I'm sorry wrong number I'm a scientist this is for like a science thing and uh like I got all awkward and I was like I need to just stop texting this person but the more

texts I send the more crazy they think I am well at least you gave them a funny story that they can tell at their next dinner party which I hope is not a cannibalistic one and if you would like to give answers to random questions maybe about cannibalism maybe about particle physics for future episodes of the podcast please write to us to questions at daniel and kelly dot org and now let's hear from Kelly's friends. I have definitely heard of animals being a cannibalistic. I remember being in the fifth grade and I had gotten like a tank of fish as a birthday present and I had one fish that attacked all the other fish and ate them and it was a little traumatic. I am really not sure. I don't think that it's terribly common in the vertebrate world, but maybe more

common in some invertebrates for some reason. I'm thinking among the insects possibly. I do think I have seen especially some insects cannibalizing other insects that I believe would be the same species. I think it is pretty widely, you know, out there. So I think like insects and even like some amphibians and things like that do it because it's one of those things where you want to eat no matter what and survive. I've also heard about bears. So bears will do it to other young cubs from breeding mothers because that will then induce them into like a breeding cycle so that they can then become the father, et cetera, and pass on their genes. I think this is probably pretty common in the animal kingdom, but I'm mostly associated with parenting. My

My understanding is that it's, in my brain anyway, is that it comes up most often in situations where like a cat or a rabbit or a dog is really kind of distressed, maybe like whatever the dog equivalent of postpartum depression is, I don't know, and they eat their offspring. I would guess that cannibalism is kind of common among frogs and snakes and insects, possibly fish. I do remember that I had Chinese fighting fish that gave birth to babies and you had to quickly separate the babies. Otherwise, mom and dad would eat them. Yeah, I guess if a bug dies in a colony, they're not just going to give it a burial. They'll probably just repurpose all its nutrients or something. I'm just guessing. How'd you feel about these answers, Kelly?

I thought that my friends gave great answers about cannibalism. I also felt like they were really great sports. One of the people, like I texted in the question and they texted back, I didn't know what to expect, but this is so totally on brand for you. And I was like, what does that mean? But also, yes, you're right, totally on brand. So, no, I thought they were great. It seems like there's this like hypothesis building.

based on the answers that invertebrates maybe do cannibalism more than vertebrates, because I thought that was like a pretty common theme. I don't actually know if like insects are more likely to eat each other than fish or frogs. I've seen lots of fish eating the same species. But yeah, I thought there were great answers. What did you think? And how are you going to try to connect it to humans this time? I thought it was interesting how widespread the answers were.

Some people thought it almost never happens and some people think it's pretty common. And I'm pretty curious to know how often does this happen out there in the animal kingdom? Is it just humans that awkwardly joke about cannibalism on podcasts? Or is that also something that happens in the fish world? Let's learn more about the forbidden meal. On today's show, we have Folker Rudolph. He's a full professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice. He's editor-in-chief at the American Naturalist, which in my field, that is a huge thing.

and deal. He is self-diagnosed with scientific ADD. He studies stuff like a phenology, which is like the timing of when stuff happens in nature, like when are the flowers blooming, when are the tadpoles turning into frogs and how does that change over time. He also studies like temporal dynamics, you know, how that stuff is changing across the United States, for example, and climate change. But we're not talking about any of that today because a few years ago he was studying cannibalism and I've never forgotten how awesome that is. So we're going to talk to him today about cannibalism. So, what got you

into cannibalism? And what do your parents think about that? So I got interested in doing grad school and looking for a thesis topic. And I did some reading. I was generally interested in the role of size and mediating interactions. And at some point, I came across some work in cannibalism

and fish. And they were really curious about kind of like the role of cannibalism in regulating the populations and then this had like bigger consequences for the entire ecosystem because this was like a top predator and they got this interesting dynamics that were all driven by cannibalism and so like look more into it and realized that there is not much known about cannibalism especially ecological consequences of it and most of beings like treated as this kind of like weird thing that happens but we don't want to talk about it kind of like but it was really interesting.

interesting to me. And so like I focused, wanted to know more about the ecology of it, kind of like what's driving it. We've now been looking more into like the evolution of it as well. So it's been more like a slow organic process. So as a parasitologist, people always want to tell me about the time they thought they were infected by a parasite. Sometimes they want to show me photos of their feces. As someone who studies cannibalism, do people try to tell you stories about like, oh, my fish ate my other fish? Have you acquired many weird stories? If I talk about my research, then And usually people get stuck on the cannibalism stuff because it's the most interesting is like dinner conversation topic.

People want to talk about cannibalism over dinner. Yeah. But it's like once we start publishing some more and then especially, and then I'll be going to talk about later this stuff we did on the interaction between communism disease, I started getting a lot of, you know, like media stuff from like radio shows and other podcasts and experts thing. And 90% of those all had to do with some weird. human anecdote thing, which is like nothing I do at all, right?

But it's like, so I get a little frustrating that like, okay, it's like, this is not really what I do, but sure. Yeah. Well, how widespread is any knowledge of cannibalism? Like, do people have mostly a misunderstanding of what cannibalism is and how it works? Or is the concept in the minds of the general public pretty much accurate? I would say there's a pretty big misconception overall. And most of that really comes from like our take.

on so like anthropomalizing the whole thing. When we think about cannibalism, it sort of goes back to the idea that this is something that only happens on the extreme weird circumstances and it's not normal. I think that's kind of like how most people think is like, oh, there's this weak anecdote about the shark doing some freaky thing and like, that's not normal. But in reality, and when cannibalism is completely normal, it's super widespread, it's everywhere in animal kingdom. And there's, why if you take the morals away from it, it makes sense, why?

Because it's in normal ecological interactions, just a predator-prey interactions, this happens to be like the same species. And how widespread is it? So I tell a story at the beginning of the episode where my small-mouth bass were eating each other during my master's project. And I was like totally surprised by, you know, where all the fish in my experiment were going. What other organisms do it?

I mean, I would say, like, if it's predatory, there's really high. chance is cannibalistic. So most species that are predators are probably to some extent cannibalistic. And then there's some variation in it, but I would say, for me, that's like the default. There are exceptions to that that are not cannibalistic. And there are various reasons for that. But I'd say the default is kind of like a predator is cannibalistic. And there are a bunch of other species that are not even predatory. They're still cannibalistic, right? Because it can help but like nutrient deficiencies and other components or just removing competitors from the field right so it's all over the place like it's probably one of the most underreported

interactions in the animal kingdom i think a lot of people might wonder why cannibalism is so widespread i think like a naive understanding of evolution like the one that i have for example would suggest that it might be detrimental to the population as a whole right but is it as simple as yeah but it helps you and your genes are all you care about pretty much yeah it's from an in real perspective it's just another way of getting resources and You're not doing it to the benefit of the population. You're just trying to increase your own personal fitness. And in many scenarios, that's a good option, right?

So you can think of it, for instance, if you're cannibalistic, you can remove competitors from the environment, right? That's like a direct one. Not only do you remove them from the environment, you actually get energy from them on top of that, right? So it's a double win situation. And the costs are something then that's like under which conditions is it's not beneficial, and then you should come back on like inclusive fitness and kind of like,

What does it do to your offspring and what's the risk of eating those? It's like Google acquiring other companies, right? Competitors off the field. Yeah, pretty much. All right. Well, then I have a question for you about cannibalism that I'm pretty sure you've never gotten before. Okay. So I've heard the argument that on other planets, if life evolves, it's very likely that there will be predators there because beings will chomp on other beings.

Because as you say, it's a rich source of nutrients. So then my question to you is, are you suggesting that aliens are very likely also cannibals? It's a pretty good chance, yeah. All right. And I think we have our spinoff movie, Alien Cannibals. We'll wait for the first draft of the script from you. I'm looking forward to that. And you're right.

It's the right question I heard before, so. Way to go, Daniel. And I got the work in aliens. All right. Double bonus. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.

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Okay, so is there a difference between cannibalism if you're the one killing the conspecific you plan on eating or if you like come across it and it's dead? Both of those are cannibalism, or does the definition of cannibalism imply that you had to, like, kill the organism before you eat it? Or is it all the same? So the definition we were kind of stuck in bin was, like, killing and at least partial consumption of a conspecific. So if it's already dead, we would, so we call it necrophagy. As like, I mean, so we talked about this. So, like, in the disease perspective, that's, like, a different dynamic. But I guess, so I would, usually we would talk about cannibalism and most of the literature involves the killing part.

But of course, like most terms, there's various definitions of it floating around. Okay. All right. So I know that all of us on this call are parents. So what are some benefits of eating your children? Interesting choice. I mean, it's like, so when you see parents consuming their offspring, right, but for many ways, that's like the thing that usually selects against cannibalism.

But there are reports of this in various instances where you have parents eating their offspring. And the example, for instance, in fish, there's an interesting study that came out a while ago where they showed that males that was regarding the eggs from the females were more likely to cannibalize the eggs if they thought that they weren't actually the dads, right? So the other dad would swoop in doing like the fertilization process. And if they thought someone else actually fertilized the eggs, they would just still. eat it and do it over again. There's another one where you have scenarios where, like, parents will consume their

offspring, for instance, in case of a disturbance, for instance, or like the risk of predation, I think in those cases, it's kind of like the idea behind it is the evaluating is, okay, if some predator comes in, they're going to eat all my eggs, I get nothing. If I eat the eggs, I at least get part of the energy back that it invested in it. Right? So it's kind of like a very risky kind of like, do you lose it all or do it keep some of it's like scenario, which does happen in some scenarios. That's cold. Yeah. Rather cannibal dilemma, huh?

Yeah. But there were a few instances where eating your offspring is beneficial. I mean, I can not really think of a whole lot. Like I said, in most cases, that's what selects against it. Don't eat your kids. Follow up on that one. We do like a random survey of people. before we do an interview to ask what their opinions are on the topic.

And one of the people we interviewed said that they thought mostly cannibalism was about eating their young because they had heard so many stories. And I guess they had a lot of like hamsters and the hamsters would get stressed out and they'd eat their young. So it was like a stress thing. But you're saying that like it definitely happens sometimes, but it's probably not the most common example of cannibalism. So I mean, the most part is like the eating your honest kind of like a byproduct of just

eating your conspecifics, right? So it does happen. Sorry, what's a conspecific for those of us who are not biologists? Oh, sorry, conspecific means like a member of your own species. I see, okay. Because sometimes cannibalism gets confused with, like, predation, but it has to be the same species or it's not cannibalism. So in most scenarios, right, where you have cannibalism, you get the accidental or occasional eating of your own offspring, right? And so, of instance, like, we did a study in flower beetles, we kind of tried to figure out whether these guys recognize their eggs,

their eggs, their own eggs, and whether they would eat them less, because these are really cannibalistic. And so what we figured out is that, yes, they do seem to recognize it, but that just means they eat them somewhat less, not they don't eat them. Okay. Right. And so I feel like many examples, it's kind of like when the risk of encountering your own, like, babies is relatively weak, there's no real selection for, like, recognizing or worrying about it. you just eat whoever is like, it fits in your mouth sort of perspective. And sometimes those may be your offspring and sometimes they're not. And I think in the case of the hamsters and the others, it's like they would probably eat

other babies too if they're in there. It's not that they specifically want to eat their own babies. They're just like stressed out. They're trying to remove competitors, the territorial. And there's just not enough of a barrier to like select against not eating your own in that scenario. But yeah. I'm still trying to understand the fact that there's no select.

pressure against eating your neighbor's kids. I mean, don't a lot of creatures survive because of communities, you know, a bunch of penguins huddle together to survive the wind or a pride of lions help each other out or whatever. Don't we all get along better if we stop eating our kids and worry about our kids being eaten every time we leave the house? Isn't there some benefit to that? I mean, so I just said they brought up the pride of lion because lions are also pretty cannibalistic. it's not like they're helping it out in fact you often have

so like the meals go in and like when they take over pride especially like kill all the offsprings of the female and eat them because they want to be like the dads of the kids and not like raise somebody else's kid at least that's how that theory goes I mean that's a very sort of group selecting perspective

which is an interesting discussion I'm sure Kelly has some ideas about it too is that a controversial topic or something Partial. Because we don't understand whether it happens or some people believe it does and some people believe it doesn't. Or as a non-biologist, I don't know what's sort of the third rail to discuss in terms of evolution. Because it's a hard scenario to really make work to like care and like help genetically unrelated

individuals. It's a complicated strategy to get working because it's just so prone to cheating. And so usually when you see this or like helping behavior, that's kind of like more or something where it's like your offspring or your siblings or something like that. In that case is it comes back to like kid selection and inclusive fitness, which is also something that influences cannibalism. In fact, with the helping, I often like to think of this altruistic behavior. Cannibalism is like the flip side of a coin, right?

Then both extreme, there's the helping and being mutualistic and beneficial. And then there's the other extreme of like just being as selfish as you possibly can. and so cannibalism is like the selfish as possibly can because you're literally killing someone on for your own benefit right at hard to be more selfish and understanding at what point you know like selection favors one strategy over the other that's kind of like I think one of the interesting questions yeah I feel like my brief take on it is that for a while you know this idea that animals were doing things for the benefit of the species was kind of a popular idea it was a long time ago and then pretty quickly when we started

digging in, it just wasn't making sense and doing things for the benefit of the species at the expense of yourself just sort of doesn't really work evolutionarily. And now the big question is when organisms are helping each other, why the heck are they doing that? So we've almost swung to the opposite direction. Now we're trying to explain why animals help each other out. And often it turns out that they're related in some way or maybe they're like reciprocally sharing resources. And it's like, all right, you helped me out. So I'll help you out. But like if someone doesn't help out, then, you know, maybe you eat them instead. That's sort of my take on how we've sort of swung from one direction to another.

Is that how biologists all look at each other? They're like, look, we'll collaborate on this paper. But if you stop pulling your weight, I might just eat you. Academia's tough. Exactly. But not that tough, I guess. Well, you know, something that's forefront in my mind during this conversation is the obvious counter example, which is humans.

As humans, we do help each other out. Young men go off and die in wars to protect other people. It's also one of the examples of a species that maybe has less cannibalism than other species. Is it because we've succeeded to help each other out so much and work together as a society? Is that why we have a stigma against cannibalism? Or are you going to tell me that people eat each other just as much as other species? So I'm not an altropologist, but it's like when we looked into some of this, we kind of got into the anthropology literature. And I will say, like, for most of the human history, there's.

been an element of cannibalism. And I linked it back to Neanderthal, it's different cultures. The point in which all societies, as far as we know, stop cannibalism is actually pretty recent. Like in some of Papua New Guinea, you still had cannibalism in the like the 1950s to 1970s somewhere around that. So for modern humans, right, 21st century humans, that's definitely true. But in the past, cannibalism has been pretty much part of like many different cultures, like across all the different continents. And that range between, you know, like, some like ancestral rituals.

It's about now ensuring that your ancestors live on to, like, getting the powers of your enemies and these sorts of different components. So humans have definitely engaged in cannibalistic activities in past societies, for sure. You mentioned that in the 1950s, cannibalism was still happening in Papua, New Guinea, and that group became fairly famous

because of a disease that they got through that practice. And when we come back from the break, We're going to go ahead and talk about that. So everybody finished cooking up your dinner and you get ready to hear about it. Hola, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper

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When you think about emotion regulation, like, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it, if it's going to be beneficial to you. Because it's easy to say, like, go you, go blank yourself, right? It's easy. It's easy to just drink the extra beer. it's easy to ignore to suppress seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just like walk the other way avoidance is easier ignoring is easier denial is easier drinking is easier yelling screaming is easy complex problem solving meditating you know takes effort listen to the psychology podcast on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts don't let biased algorithms or degree screens

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Find out how you can make stars part of your talent strategy at tear the paper sealing.org brought to you by opportunity at work in the ad council. Kelly, do you have a snack in front of you? Are you ready to talk about cannibalism some more? Oh, you know, I always have snacks. I've got my cheese and crackers and salami, and I'm just not thinking too hard about it.

And, you know, as a person who studies parasites, I never think too hard about what I'm eating. Or maybe I should. But anyway, that would be a good diet strategy. We talked about the folks in Papua New Guinea who were engaging in cannibalism up until the 1950s and another area of research that you focused on is disease and how it maybe makes cannibalism less beneficial.

So can you tell us a little bit more about Kuru and then about disease transmission from cannibalism in the non-human animals? So when Koura got famous because it's like, it's a prion disease that's in some way, you can sort of think of it like Kretzvalliakup disease, another prion disease, that's like a neurodrenive disease. And it's interesting about it that often can take a long time

for it just like come up like in several years. Can you tell us real quick what are prion diseases? Because I think a lot of people don't know about this. Right. So prion disease is diseases that are called by infectious proteins, which are actually proteins that are normally in your body, but they're being inspired to change their shape. And that shape then is not as functional can cause various diseases. There's like I mentioned Kirtzal-Yakot disease, which is like a new genetic disease. There are several equivalents that we know of like an animal disease is like my cow disease, a few other ones. So if prions are proteins, it means they're not alive, right?

There's like little bits of stuff, they're little molecular machines. What makes it a disease and not like a poison? Is it because it replicates itself somehow or... It replicates itself in the body because it's basically sort of a dynamic reaction where it's like you can think of one protein that's like changed in the shape, bumping into the normal shape one and like changing it to that shape like, weird. chain reaction. That's crazy.

Proteins are amazing. It was a long controversy to prove that they're actually the cause of a disease because they're like normal parts of your body and there's no like external infectious agent that was initially identified. So it's a really interesting history about like how long it took him to figure out what prior diseases are and how what causes them. Yeah, they're crazy. But so as you noted for the folks who were suffering from this neurodegenerative disease,

it was really hard to figure out a cause because there was this long. delay between the activity and then the onset of symptoms. Can you tell us some more about that before I derailed you? The idea was that they found these diseases in certain cultural groups in Papua New Guinea and ultimately it was so attracted to some of their like erring rituals which involved actually so consuming part of the dead ancestor, right? So like it had so diseased and they figured that this was like the main source and how these things were actually being transmitted. And that's kind of like the history of how Kuru was linked to the cannibalistic practices in humans.

Wait, so they would bury the ancestors and then eat them, or eat them and then bury them? Or, I lost track. That's a good question. I'm trying to remember how it. Or maybe it's like that Swedish dish where you bury them, you let them rot for six months, and then you dig them up and eat them? No. I think it was before.

I don't remember the details. I would have to look that up again. Listen to me about prime diseases, too. They're actually very stable, so sometimes even cooking can't kill them, right? with just another sort of thing that mixed fire and disease is weird. And so the connection to cannibalism is that if this exists in the person you're eating, you eat the thing, now you have the protein in you, and so now you have the disease? Yes.

So that's how it was like traced back. It was tricky, but I mean, they're used to like, you know, records of like previous infections or like weird behaviors of people and other stuff and trying to trace it back to like where they came from. But of course it's like hard to trace a disease back that sometimes takes 20 plus years to establish and figure out where it's coming from. Yeah. So how common is this in non-human animals, not necessarily prions jumping back and forth during cannibalism, but just like any disease and what kind of diseases are most commonly transmitted? It's an interesting question

because of things like, in one way you can just think of like cannibalism being so like a way of interacting with members of your own species, which can always increase the risk of infection, right? So if you consume an individual that's infected, just by like, getting in contact with infected individual, there's a good chance that you pick it up. But are you saying you're more likely to get a disease if you eat somebody from your own species than if you eat somebody not from your species? Is that because you're more likely to be susceptible to the same diseases? It's more likely to go to susceptible to the same diseases.

In fact, there's been like some theories and experiments like Dave Fenwick who was like testing that and so like, oh, it was like, are you more likely to get infected by your own species? That did that actually in tadbolts. Believe it not, they're also cannibalistic some of them. Spadefoot tadpoles, actually. And they found that when they consumed their con-specific that was infected, they got more likely to be infected than if they ate another species. And so they used that as like an idea of selecting against cannibalism,

and they did find that they were more likely to discriminate against their own species than the other and less likely to eat them. And so there was the idea that disease could select against cannibalism because there's a higher risk of infection. Does it depend on the kind of diseases? So, like, you know, if someone's not sneezing anymore, because they're dead, they're probably not going to give me the cold or the flu. If I eat their brains, I might get a prion disease. So is there certain kinds of diseases you're more likely to get?

Or is it not that easy? Because it's ecology. I think ultimately there is not a lot of research on this specific topic. You might be surprising. But I'm like, for instance, I have like in insects and others. Like, it's pretty common that when they're individuals. become infected, then ingestion can lead to another infection. But there's also this scenario where, like, if it's a disease that, for instance, needs

to be inhaled or get in the respiratory tract or, like, go a certain route, and you eat it, and they're just going to your stomach and get digested, they're not going to actually become infected, right? So if you consume the individuals before it's an infectious state, especially, then, you know, like, you could actually remove sick individuals from the population. So it really depends on how much the infection relies on you actually come in contact with it or whether it relies on you being ingested by the individual. I think there are no hard facts on it, but I think it comes down to the transmission mode of the disease.

And in general, most of these diseases are killed by cooking, right? So if you cook the creature, you're most likely going to kill the disease except for prions, which is why they're so terrifying, right? Yeah. I guess in the natural world, tadpole, don't usually, like, grill each other before eating. There's not a lot of cooking going on in the natural world. But is there zero? Like, I mean, is there really zero use of fire by any other creature other than humans?

Excuse my completely naive question. I don't think chimpanzees are bonobos cook over fire. They've got other ways of trying to remove parasites that folks have postulated, but they're not cooking their meat beforehand. And so are there other species where cannibalism seems to be sort of disinclined or suppressed the way it is in modern humans, or is it really everywhere in the animal kingdom? I would say it's almost everywhere. It's like I always call it ubiquitous. I'm not saying everybody is cannibalistic, but a lot of them are.

And there's, of course, a gradient, right? It's like some species are highly cannibalistic, and some species may not be cannibalistic. Yeah, it's a full spectrum, I would say. And is there any organization to that spectrum? Is it like the more your fish-like, the more cannibalistic you are? or, you know, the larger your number of offspring or something? What are the patterns? Kelly is like, list of grass.

Like, I was thought about it. And it's like, I don't think there is a general meta-in-law list that's, like, can pull that out. I think part of that is because I don't think cannibalism is sufficiently reported in most organisms. Sometimes I remember reading, like, papers about food webs where it's like, oh, like, in this food web, there's like, you know, they have no cannibalistic link in it. And, like, I looked at it and, like, pulled out tens of it. species that are known to be cannibalistic. There's a strong under-reporting that makes it difficult to go out there and say,

okay, all the general patterns, similar like certain taxa or certain functional groups are more cannibalistic than others. I don't think we even have the data to test that right now. Wow. That's why I say, like, I do think, like, most per the dispirate cannibalistic, but then after that, it's very hard to make more generalization about which ones are more likely. I think there's certain, you know, like, if you're species with parental care or certain

social structure. It's a lot less likely or even selected against it. So there should be some patterns, but I'm not aware of any analysis that it'll look at that. And when you say underreported, that makes it sound like it's, you know, stigmatized or something. People don't want to talk about it. Is it just that we don't have the data because there isn't enough funding or because it's difficult to gather for some reason? I think it's because for like decades people stigmatized it. All right. So if you think if you go back to like Ibel Abelsfeld was a famous like behavioral ecologist. And he was the one that I always talked about, like, they're good for the species, where I was like, oh, we don't do that. And cannibalism was immediately linked into this,

where it's kind of like, oh, that's just a freak of nature. It only happens, you know, like Maroon on an island and have nothing else to eat over the airplane crashes in the Arctic or something, right? It was definitely considered as not a normal interactions. And I still think to this day, it's like it's less than other interactions. Also, it's a lot more than it was, let's say, like, in the 90s or the early 2000. So I was like, so it's getting a little bit more attention, but because of the stigmatization, there was very little research for law. And I felt every time I published one of my paper, I had first to argue and saying,

actually, this is everywhere. We just don't talk about it. Right. So I was like, I had to justify why I'm even doing this and that it's not weird and just, you know, like an unnatural behavior, but it's like pretty common. So if I had to summarize your entire academic career, in one sentence, would it be fair to say cannibalism is everywhere and actually it's usually good? He does a lot of other stuff too, but I think it's fair to say that it's really a part of

the natural ecosystem and in many ways it can be good, right? For instance, cannibalism in predatory species can really stabilize predator pre dynamics and in fact help natural ecosystem do not cycle as much, right? Or it can promote coexistence, right? So it actually plays an important role and natural ecosystem is just we haven't appreciated. I didn't expect we were going to end up being pro-cannibalism on this podcast, but here we are. We jumped around, which is totally great, but we were talking about parents eating their kids. I feel like it's much worse for kids to eat their parents because, like, how can you not appreciate all the effort your parents have put in there? But does that happen?

Yes. What? Can you give us some examples? I mean, in those cases, well, you think about it is, like, there's some species. out that they're pretty much just reproduced it once in their lifetime, right? It's like, and we often think about like these repeated reproductive events where during a lifetime you have multiple babies and so on. But for many species, it's a one-time thing, right?

It's like they put all their eggs in the basket that were reproduced. And in those instances, actually, it's like there are some species. I'm trying to think of it. I think there's at least like a spider species. But essentially the idea there is that the parents would die anyway. And it's kind of like parent nourishment provision, right? It's like they give the kids more food. And in this case, it's just their last donation and it's them.

Man. Right? It's like the all-in investment, the ultimate parenting. Kids are always taking, taking, taking, taking. All right. Well, I feel like I have to connect the obvious dots here. You're telling us that cannibalism is actually pretty widespread. It's even existed in human society for a long time.

It's often beneficial. And it's probably a good idea to eat your parents. So would you advise cannibalism? Would you saying, like, hey, you're putting your parents to rest, your options are like cremation, burial, or saute. Is that something we should have in our society? I'm really shocked you're going there, Daniel, but okay. Yeah, yeah.

I feel like I shouldn't be answering that question at all. Look, when the aliens come, they're going to ask us this question, and we need to have an answer, you know? You can plead the fifth. I always go back to like what Kelly said, like with parasites and all that. I'm like, that's just an if you think. Got it. Yeah, we're not going to think too hard about that.

So I'm trained as an ecologist. I love hearing about, you know, ecological systems, and I was going through the, like, titles of papers that you've published, and I got really excited about the bulgy frogs. And so tell us about why salamander cannibalism results in bulgy frogs. So the frogs, not necessarily bulgey, is the tadpoles that are bulgy, right? So now that people think of, like, giant blobby frogs. So they're actually tadpoles, and they're so, like, get bulgey by getting these, like, outer jelly layers that really make him way bigger than the normally would be.

And so that's a species in Japan that, like, one of our collaborators that came across. And it's a defense mechanism because by being bigger, they can't get eaten by salamanders, potentially because they don't fit in their mouth, right? So it's like, blow yourself up, kind of like the puffer fish, so you don't fit in somebody else's mouth, which means you survive. Too big to fail, yeah. And so these researchers found is like, so cannibalism in these salivism in these salivism, manas, which actually cannibalism in salamanders is really common.

I've seen one species so far that it's not cannibalistic, but everybody else have worked with all the other species. We're all cannibalistic to some extent. But they're so cute. They are very cute. I agree. Salamandos will eat whatever it fits in their mouth, right? It's kind of like, if it moves, they'll try to shove it in their mouth.

Like toddlers. I'm convinced if your parents would fit in your mouth, toddlers would try to eat them. They probably would just shove it in there. If you don't think about it, right? You're just like, food, food, food. Exactly. More food. And so in salamander, sometimes you get, like, different courts,

which means, like, some parents lay the eggs earlier, and there may be, like, a few weeks later, another egg laying events, right? And these guys hatch, and they're smaller than their earlier ones. And for those early ones, they often get eaten by the older salamander larvae. And because of that, they actually, grow a lot faster and get bigger like way bigger than the woods without cannibalism right so there's the clear beneficial role of like you know eating account specific to get bigger and stronger and that's like accelerates growth for a few individuals like the cannibals in the system

and they are the ones that then also pose the biggest risk for the tad bolts in the system because that's the other main food source and so when you have those giant cannibals in the system that's select for bulgy tadpoles. And so that's kind of like how to get the feedback. So why aren't the tadpoles always bulgy? Is it just like hard to move around if you're always bulgy? So you only do it if you have to be bulgy? I think there's a big investment cost in doing that.

And if they don't have to, they don't do it. So it's kind of like an antipreditor response. Like once the predation is clearly happening, they're like, oh, crap, like it better get bulgy fast. Yeah. So it's expensive, but it saves your life. Yes. But you don't do it unless you have to. Exactly.

Excellent. So this is something at the cutting edge of understanding cannibalism. Can we zoom out and understand, like, what are the big questions to remain? Like, you're a researcher, your professor, you're doing research right now into cannibalism. What is it like a big question you would love to know the answer to about cannibalism? Or what are we going to know about cannibalism in 20 years that we don't know today? I think, for me, what's something we're working on. I'm currently actually having a grant that we're submitted to look at this more,

is trying to understand kind of like what limits cannibalism because like what I've seen work with a bunch of different species there's a range of cannibalistic behavior like I said that goes from like the super cannibalistic right it's like they see another offsposite they will eat them immediately because one where like it's pretty uncommon even within the same species you can find populations with some or more cannibalistic than others and it has a genetic component into it. So it's not just like some environmental media one. It's like it's an inherited trade where like some are more cannibalistic, some or less. And we don't really understand why. And I always like to think of this. I said before, catalysm is that form or the ultimate selfish behavior.

And Kelly mentioned before that for like decades, people were really interested in kind of like, okay, when should selfish behavior move to altruistic behavior? And we spent on like decades on like figuring out when mutualism, altruism should happen. But we don't really have a rule that says, like, what should stop being extremely selfish, right? Why isn't everybody as cannibalistic as they can possibly be, right? There has to be something that's limited. And so what we try to understand is, like, what are the environmental conditions that can do this? Is this something that really can go in different ways?

And there are, like, multiple behaviors that can mitigate the cost of cannibalism. we talked about like one big of the cost of cannibalism is eating your own offspring right you own children because that's a big loss of fitness you can mitigate this by recognizing your own offspring and you can still be as cannibalistic as you want right because then you set off the cost of fitness loss but you can still remove your competitors you can still get extra meals and all that stuff and your kids competitors right if you eat your neighbor's kids then your kids are like top of the class right so many lessons here so there are many different ways of like mitigating the cost of cannibalism and it's more like

a behavioral multidimensional space where you can like just recognize them or it could be that your kids just get the genes to like get the hell out of here right leave your parents as fast as possible and walk away from them and then also like the parents can just continue to be cannibalistic right so the different behaviors that can play a role with it and understanding how they all interact with each other to really drive them. the evolution of cannibalism and then see how that can explain a lot of the variation that we see within and across species. I think that's a big question for us. So you said you've been like beating the drum that like cannibalism is common. This happens all the time. We need to

understand it more. Has that message gotten out? Are ecologists over the stigma? Are more people studying this now? I think there are more people studying it now. I'm not sure that this is because of me or whether that's just, well, actually, I'm pretty sure it's not because of me. I'm sure There's nothing to do with it. I think that the stigma has, like, receded in is just by having more and more studies over the time to, like, look at this. I know that there's been, like, a popular book on cannibalism that came out a few years ago that was just, like,

talking about the misconception behind it and how that's pretty common. I don't think it was actually a scientist necessarily who works on it that wrote it, but they just thought it was a cool topic or something. That probably helped, too, to, like, get it more out in their, like, public's mind. But I think for researchers, it's funny, whenever I gave this topic, and then talked about cannibalisms and other things. And people would always come up and say, yeah, I see this all the time. And just never thought about it or like what do the consequences.

So, right, with people that work in natural system, unless they work on plants, probably have seen cannibalism at some point. Like you said, like, or at home, right, you see fish getting eaten. You were like, oh, how come I never get, you know, more guppies? And it's like, they're eating. All get eaten up. Yep. When books on cannibalism have the best titles, I've got, is eating people wrong?

Which I found on my husband's table the other day. And I got fairly nervous. So the children and I, you know, went on a vacation. But it turned out it was not about us. Just for research. Just for research. Well, what about portrayals in popular media? You know, when I watch a show and they talk about particle physics and often cringing because they get all the details wrong, if you watch Silence of the Lambs or, you know, that TV show Hannibal was very popular, are you cringing because you're like, oh, my God, that would never happen that way?

or are you just glad to hear people talking about cannibalism? Since it's your position that more people should do it. The answer to both of this is now, right? Because like all the human cannibalism is nothing that I do. It's all really like a psychological, mostly weird behavior that it's not in line with like the natural canolastic behavior that we see in like in these ecosystems. So no, it's like I don't think they get it wrong because to me it has nothing to do. with what I see out in nature. All right.

So Fulca is not saying that any of us should engage in cannibalism. No. And I think that's where we need to end this conversation. I feel like we pushed here to like embrace it and adores it. But like, no. We should study it more, not actually do it. That's right, right. All right.

The lawyers have gotten to you both. You're both afraid to say the truth. All right. All right. Well, thank you so much for being. on the show. You might have noticed I've avoided saying your name the whole time because now I'm convinced that I'm doing it wrong and I'm super embarrassed about it. But anyway, this has been a ton of fun. Thanks for being a good sport about all of the jokes that we made and the weird

human references that we insisted on shoehorning in. And we look forward to having you back on the show in like a decade to tell us about what you've discovered. All right. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the delicious conversations. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by IHeart Radio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows.

If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at questions at Daniel and Kelly.org. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X. Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe. Don't be shy.

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