I've been doing a project on human cannibalism and how it relates to zoological cannibalism. What i've discovered is that cannibalism is hugely widespread in the animal kingdom, more than most people seem to realise. In fact i tried asking why people don't perform cannibalism on Yahoo Answers:
Why don't we eat dead people? - Yahoo! Answers
I didn't get a great reception, though i never implied i wanted to do it - i was simply asking. Why this irrational hatred? i have a few potential answers:
1: Cannibalism leads to diseases spreading. Prions, etc. (however i'm unconvinced by this as prions mainly seem to be transmitted in uncooked brain tissue, not in normal meat from what i can tell)
2: Eating dead people would lead to problems with the image you have of living people, leading to an unstable society. (this mainly relies on the idea that some "primitive" societies have been documented to perform cannibalism, whereas modern "civilised" ones do not, evidently. In fact, they abhorr it.
3: People equate the act of eating a human with predators, and they needed to be scared of predators in order to stay alive.
I'm more a biologist than a psychologist, so these are pretty rough ideas.. Anyone got any thoughts? I've done a bit of reading and all three ideas seem to have some backing.. would love to hear what people have to say, so long as it's not "You have a sick mind"..
