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

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I was interested in animal behavior, and for my master's degree,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I was studying juvenile smallmouth pass So I went out
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: in the wild and after getting all of the permits
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I needed, I brought a bunch of them back into
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the lab and they were like these little guys. And
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: as they were growing up, I noticed that the number
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of fish in the tanks was going down, and I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: was totally stuffed. The water quality was great. I wasn't
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: finding any dead bodies in the tank. They weren't like
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: getting sucked into the filters. I was crawling around on
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the ground trying to see if they were somehow getting
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: out of the tanks despite there being a lid on
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: all of the tanks. And then one morning I walked
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: into the environmental chamber and I was shocked. One of
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the fish had a giant tail sticking out of its mouth.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It had not occurred to me that they were eating
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: each other like one. It hadn't occurred to me because
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the fish in the tank were pretty similarly sized, and
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: this was not the first time in my life. I
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: was going to be amazed at how big prey items
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: are for these basts, like how much food they can
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: fit into their gigantic mounds, so they were apparently able
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: to eat each other even when they were like pretty
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: close to the same size. But also I was totally
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: naive to how common cannibalism apparently is in the animal Kingdom.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I was like, you can't eat your brothers and sisters,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: but no, absolutely, they were totally fine with that. And
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that's what we're going to be talking about today is
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: cannibalism in the animal Kingdom. We're gonna mostly be talking
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: about non human animals and it's going to be quite
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: a ride. We're interviewing Folka Rudolph and he'll tell us
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: all about his research in this field. Welcome to Daniel
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Lone epetite.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Do Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I'm Daniel, I'm a
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: particle physicist and I've never eaten a human being.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Waider Smith. I also have never eaten a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: human being, no desire to do so, but as an ecologist,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I have seen lots of animals eating other members of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the same species.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: Well, let's dig into that a little bit more. Kelly,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: my question for you today is what is the most
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: intelligent animal you have ever eaten.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, geez, probably pigs because they're super intelligent. I eat
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: meat less these days because ever since I got on
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a farm and I've started interacting with like cows and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: pigs and goats and sheep, I'm like, oh my gosh,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you all like you have personalities if some of you
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: are very smart. But I gotta be honest, I feel
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: way better about eating chicken because our chickens are so stupid,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and I don't feel too bad about eating chicken.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: So anyway, what about you?
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Where are you saying the dumb deserved to be eaten?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Is that what's happening here?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: That is not what's happening here. You don't need to
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: extrapolate to the forbidden meal. But I do think chickens,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you know, they're delicious and silly.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: What about you?
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to answer your question yet, I'm gonna
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: keep pushing you. Would you eat a champanzee or a
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: buonovo if somebody puts a chimp of skull in front
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: of you and flips it open and says, here's a
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: brain delicacy. Is Kelly saying no, thank you? Or are
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: you digging in?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Hm? I am saying no thank you. Yeah, why am
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I saying no, thank you?
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So much introspection happening right now? Are there not loads
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of bonobos in the wild. I don't know their status, so,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: like one, I don't want to eat anything that's like
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: endangered or threatens or anything like that. But also, I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: guess I do feel uncomfortable the closer they are to me.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: And partly that's because, like, there's a lot of zonotic diseases,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: so a lot of diseases that jump from wild animals
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to humans, and I guess I would worry that the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: more closely related you are to those organisms, the more
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: likely something is to jump.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: But I wouldn't have that excuse if it was like.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: A labraze chimpanzee. I still don't think i'd want to
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: eat it. Yeah, nope, I don't know that I have
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a good logical reason, but my tummy is saying no.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm an una bashed speciesist. I feel like being
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: human is different from being a puppy or a chicken
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: or a pig. And I used to feel like that
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: wasn't fair that you couldn't just say, hey, members of
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: the human species have certain rights that pigs and dogs
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: and whatever, don't. But these days I've come to accept
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: that that's just kind of how I feel, even if
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: it is wrong. And so, for example, I'm happy to
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: eat an intelligent pig, but I wouldn't eat a very
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: stupid person. Okay, you're cool with that.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Well, trying to figure out what is the logical framework behind?
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Is it just anything that's not humans as good?
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: Like?
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: So you still haven't answered. Would you eat the chimpanzee
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and the bonobo?
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: I probably would eat the champanzee and the bonobo. Yeah, exactly,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: nice clean libraries. Chimpanzee, Yeah why not? I mean I
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: eat pigs, and so let's go all in. They're probably delicious.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: At least you're consistent.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I recognize I'm not very consistent, which is part of
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: why I shy away from meat all together, because I
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: feel like I haven't quite formulated the framework for what
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I feel comfortable with and what I don't feel comfortable with.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Props to you for being consistent.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Well, I think it's interesting that a lot of people
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: probably haven't really thought through what they would eat and
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: what they wouldn't eat and why. I remember reading an
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: article about speciesism like twenty something years ago that actually
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: inspired me to become a vegetarian. Made me realize that
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: I was being unfair to really smart pigs because I
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: was giving them fewer rights then I was giving to,
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: you know, not smart humans that I would refuse to eat.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: It made me feel like, hmm, maybe I just shouldn't
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: be eating any creatures at all. And you know that
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: lasted for like ten years. I was a militant vegetarian
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: for like ten years until I had a son and
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: he was very obviously a carnivore, and we lived in France,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: where if you ask for vegetarian lunch they give you
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: like chicken or fish. So it didn't last that long.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: And these days I just feel like, yes, there is
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: something special about being human.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: For a while, I was some special kind of vegetarian
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: where I like mostly wouldn't eat meat, but if I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: knew that the animal had been treated mainly its whole
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: life and was euthanized humanely, so it was a cow
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: that lived on this beautiful farm and had free range
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and had buddies.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: It could paint twice a week and do arts and
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: crafts and.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Stuff yoga class on Wednesdays. I would make exceptions for that.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And since I was in grad school at the time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to do that very often. So it
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: was like I'd have, you know, one meat dish a
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: month where I would go and pay for that. And Zach,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: my husband, likes to laugh because the thing that ended
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: up breaking my like vegetarian streak was I just couldn't
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: stop craving Arby's beef and cheddars.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Can't witches, which is just the lowest quality food ever.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: But like my grand student heart just had to have one,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and that was the thing. Like I had one, and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: then I was like, well, I've broken it, and then
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: for a while I just ate what I could afford,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: which was Arby's because I was a grand student. Anyway,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I've always had a complicated relationship with meat, I guess.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: And all of these behaviors are not rational, right, These
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: are people's emotional feelings about what's right and what's wrong.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: What you grew up with, you know, I grew up
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: not eating the shellfish at all, and so like I
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: think shellfish are gross, and you cannot catch me eating shrimp.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: I'll eat a chimpanzee. But like shellfish, if it's icky,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: it's like insects of the ocean. I'm as likely to
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: eat a cricket as I am to eat a shrimp.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: I am more likely to eat a cricket than a shrimp.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, so you kind of like deep poop the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: shrimp before you eat them, Like, I know that's just gross.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Are gross? Exactly? And so on today's episode, I'm looking
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: forward to exploring that line, like who eats who? And
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: why do they do it? Why don't we eat our
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: neighbors kids or should we?
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I think law probably plays into why we
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: don't eat our children's kids.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Why is the law that way? And should it be
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: that way?
• 7:39
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Should we have a reform movement that says cannibalism is
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: actually okay?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: You are asking all the big questions, Daniel.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: This is not my field, and so I feel totally
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: comfortable just like asking the big dumb questions.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Well that's great, I love that, all right.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: So, speaking of big dumb questions, I asked, how common
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: is cannibal and non human animals? And have you ever
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: seen it in nature? So I asked this to some
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of my friends. And the big dumb thing that I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: did was I accidentally mistyped my friend's number in because
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like it was somebody I hadn't messaged for a while,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and I said some questions about cannibalism to like random
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: person who's probably very confused.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: They never responded by like said the questions, and I
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: was like.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I'm sorry, prom number, I'm a scientist. This
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: is for like a science thing, and uh, like I
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: got all awkward and I was like, I need to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: just stop texting this person. Let the more texts I send,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the more crazy they think.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: Well, at least you gave them a funny story that
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: they can tell at their next dinner party, which I
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: hope is not a cannibalistic one. And if you would
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: like to give answers to random questions, maybe about cannibalism,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: maybe about particle physics for future episodes of the podcast,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: please write to us to questions at Daniel and Kelly
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: dot org.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: And now let's hear from Kelly's friends.
• 8:50
  Speaker 7: I have definitely heard of animals being cannibalistic. I remember
• 8:58
  Speaker 7: being in the fifth grade and I had gotten like
• 9:01
  Speaker 7: a tink of fish as a birthday peasant, and I
• 9:04
  Speaker 7: had one fish that attacked all the other fish and
• 9:07
  Speaker 7: ate them, and it.
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: Was a little traumatic I am really not sure. I
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: don't think that it's terribly common in the vertebrate world,
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: but maybe more common in some invertebrates for some reason.
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: I'm thinking among the insects possibly. I do think I
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: have seen, especially some insects cannibalizing other insects that I
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: believe would be the same species.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: I think it is pretty widely you know, out there,
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: So I think like insects and even like some amphibians
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: and things like that do it because it's one of
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: those things where you want to eat no matter what
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: and survive. I've also heard about bears, so bears will
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: do it to other young cubs from from breeding mothers
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: because that will then induce them into like a breeding
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: cycle so that they can then become the father, et cetera
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: and pass on their genes.
• 10:09
  Speaker 8: I think this is probably pretty common in the animal kingdom,
• 10:13
  Speaker 8: but I mostly associated with parenting. My understanding is that
• 10:20
  Speaker 8: it in my brain anyway, is that it comes up
• 10:23
  Speaker 8: most often in situations where like a cat or a
• 10:29
  Speaker 8: rabbit or a dog like is really kind of distressed,
• 10:36
  Speaker 8: maybe like whatever. The dog equivalent of postpartum depression is,
• 10:41
  Speaker 8: I don't know, and they eat their offspring.
• 10:43
  Speaker 9: I would guess that cannibalism is kind of common among
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: fogs and snakes and insects, possibly fish. I do remember
• 10:57
  Speaker 9: that I had signed these fighting fish that gave birth
• 10:59
  Speaker 9: to babies, and you had to quickly separate the babies
• 11:02
  Speaker 9: otherwise mom and dad would eat them.
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:06
  Speaker 9: I guess if the bud dies in a colony, they're
• 11:09
  Speaker 9: not just gonna.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: Give it a burial.
• 11:11
  Speaker 9: They'll probably just repurpose all it's nutrients or something. I'm
• 11:15
  Speaker 9: just guessing.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: How do you feel about these answers, Kelly?
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I thought that my friends gave great answers about cannibalism.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I also felt like they were really great sports.
• 11:24
  Speaker 6: One of the.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: People, like, I texted in the question and they texted back,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect, but this is so
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: totally on brand for you.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I was like, what does that mean?
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: But then also, yes, you're right, totally on brand. So no,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I thought they were great. It seems like there's this
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: like hypothesis building based on the answers that invertebrates maybe
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: do cannibalism more than vertebrates, because I thought that was
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: like a pretty common theme. I don't actually know if
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: like insects are more likely to eat each other than
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: fish or frogs. I've seen lots of fish eating the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: same species. But yeah, I thought there were great answers.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: What did you think? And how are you going to
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: try to connect it to humans?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: This time?
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting how widespread the answers were.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Some people thought it almost never happens, and some people
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: think it's pretty common. I'm pretty curious to know how
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: often does this happen out there in the animal kingdom?
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Is just humans that awkwardly joke about cannibalism on podcasts?
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Or is that also something that happens in the fish world.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Let's learn more about the forbidden meal on today's show,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: We Have Folk Are Rudolph. He's a full professor of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: ecology and evolutionary biology at RICE. He's editor in chief
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: at The American Naturalist, which in my field, that is
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a huge stinking deal. He is self diagnosed with scientific
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: add He studies stuff like a penology, which is like
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the timing of when stuff happens in nature, like when
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: are the flowers blooming, when are the tadpoles turning into frogs?
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: And how does that change over time?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: He also studies like temporal dynamics, you know how that
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: stuff is changing across the United States, for example, and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: climate change. But we're not talking about any of that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: today because a few years ago he was studying cannibalism
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and I've never forgotten how awesome that is. So we're
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: going to talk to him today about cannibalism.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So what got you into cannibalism.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: And what do your parents think about that?
• 13:20
  Speaker 10: So I got interested in doing grad school. I was
• 13:22
  Speaker 10: looking for a thesis topic, and I did some reading.
• 13:25
  Speaker 10: I was generally interested like in the role of size
• 13:28
  Speaker 10: and like mediating interactions, and at some point it came
• 13:31
  Speaker 10: across some work in cannibalism and fish, and they were
• 13:34
  Speaker 10: really curious about kind of like the role of cannibalism
• 13:39
  Speaker 10: and regulating the populations. And then this had bigger consequences
• 13:42
  Speaker 10: for the entire ecosystem because this was like a top
• 13:45
  Speaker 10: predator and they got this interesting dynamics that were all
• 13:49
  Speaker 10: driven by cannibalism, and so like look more into it
• 13:52
  Speaker 10: and realize that there is not much known about cannibalism,
• 13:56
  Speaker 10: especially ecological consequences of it, and most have been tweeted
• 14:00
  Speaker 10: this kind of like weird thing that happens, but we
• 14:02
  Speaker 10: don't want to talk about it kind of like, but
• 14:06
  Speaker 10: it was really interesting to me, and so like I focused,
• 14:08
  Speaker 10: I wanted to know more about the ecology of it,
• 14:10
  Speaker 10: kind of.
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: Like what's driving it.
• 14:11
  Speaker 10: We've now been looking more into like the evolution of
• 14:13
  Speaker 10: it as well, so it's been more like a slow
• 14:16
  Speaker 10: organic process.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So as a parasitologist, people always want to tell me
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: about the time they thought they were infected by a parasite.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they want to show me photos of their feces.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: As someone who studies cannibalism, do people try to tell
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: you stories about like, oh, my fish, ate my other fish?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Have you acquired many weird stories?
• 14:33
  Speaker 10: If I talk about my research, then you should people
• 14:35
  Speaker 10: get stuck on the cannibalism stuff because the most interesting
• 14:38
  Speaker 10: dinner conversation topic.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: People wanted to talk about cannibalism over dinner.
• 14:44
  Speaker 10: Yeah, but it's like once we start publishing some more
• 14:48
  Speaker 10: and then especially and then we're going to talk about
• 14:50
  Speaker 10: later this stuff we did on the interaction between comes
• 14:52
  Speaker 10: from disease. I started getting a lot of you know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 10: like media stuff from like in radio shows and other
• 14:59
  Speaker 10: podcasts thing, and nine of those all had to do
• 15:04
  Speaker 10: with some weird human anecdote thing, which is like nothing
• 15:07
  Speaker 10: I do at all or right, but it's like so
• 15:10
  Speaker 10: I got a little frustrating. They're like, okays, like this
• 15:12
  Speaker 10: is not really what I do, but sure, yeah.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Well, how widespread is any knowledge of cannibalism, Like do
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: people have mostly a misunderstanding of what cannibalism is and
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: how it works? Or is the concept in the minds
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: of the general public pretty much accurate.
• 15:27
  Speaker 10: I would say there's a pretty big misconception overall. And
• 15:32
  Speaker 10: most of that so really comes from like our take
• 15:34
  Speaker 10: on like entreprenmdvising the whole thing when we think about
• 15:38
  Speaker 10: cannibalism it so it goes back to the idea that
• 15:41
  Speaker 10: this is something that only happens on the extreme weird circumstances.
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: It's not normal.
• 15:47
  Speaker 10: I think that's kind of like how most people think, like, oh,
• 15:50
  Speaker 10: there's this week antidote about the shark doing some freaky thing,
• 15:53
  Speaker 10: and like.
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: That's not normal.
• 15:55
  Speaker 10: And in reality, and when cannibalism is completely normal, it's
• 15:59
  Speaker 10: super widespread. It's everywhere in animal kingdom, And there's why
• 16:04
  Speaker 10: do we take the morals away from it? It makes
• 16:07
  Speaker 10: sense because it's some normal ecological interactions just to predator
• 16:11
  Speaker 10: prey interactions.
• 16:12
  Speaker 6: This happens to be like the same species.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: And how widespread is it?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So I tell a story at the beginning of the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: episode where my small mouth bass we're eating each other
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: during my master's project, and I was like totally surprised
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: by you know, where all the fish and my experiment
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: were going.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: What other organisms do it?
• 16:28
  Speaker 10: I mean, I would say, like, if it's predatory, there's
• 16:32
  Speaker 10: really high chance it's cannibalistic. So most species and other
• 16:36
  Speaker 10: predators are probably to some extent cannibalistic, and then there's
• 16:40
  Speaker 10: some variation and nuanced. But I would say for me
• 16:42
  Speaker 10: that it's like the default. There are exceptions to that
• 16:45
  Speaker 10: that are not cannibalistic, and there various reasons for that.
• 16:49
  Speaker 10: But I'd say the default is kind of like predatory.
• 16:52
  Speaker 10: It's cannibalistic, and there are a bunch of other species
• 16:54
  Speaker 10: that are not even predatory. There's still cannibalistic, right because
• 16:57
  Speaker 10: it can help, but like nutrient deficiencies, the components or
• 17:01
  Speaker 10: just removing competitors from the field, right, So it's all
• 17:04
  Speaker 10: over the place. It's probably one of the most underreported
• 17:08
  Speaker 10: interactions in the animal kingdom.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people might wonder why cannibalism
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: is so widespread. I think like a naive understanding of evolution,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: like the one that I have, for example, would suggest
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: that it might be detrimental to the population as a whole. Right,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: But is it as simple as yeah, but it helps
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: you and your genes or all you care about pretty much.
• 17:27
  Speaker 10: Yeah, it's from a in real perspective, it's just another
• 17:30
  Speaker 10: way of getting resources, and you're not doing it to
• 17:34
  Speaker 10: the benefit of the population. You're just trying to increase
• 17:36
  Speaker 10: your own personal fitness. And in many scenarios that's a
• 17:40
  Speaker 10: good option. Right, So you can think of it, for instance,
• 17:44
  Speaker 10: if you're cannibalistic, you can remove competitors from the environment.
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: Right, that's like a direct goal.
• 17:48
  Speaker 10: Not only do you remove them from the environment, you
• 17:50
  Speaker 10: actually get energy from them on top of it. Right,
• 17:52
  Speaker 10: So it's a double wind situation and the costs are something.
• 17:57
  Speaker 10: Then that's like under which conditions is it not beneficial?
• 18:00
  Speaker 10: And then you come back on like inclusive fitness and
• 18:02
  Speaker 10: kind of like what does it do to your offspring
• 18:04
  Speaker 10: and what's the risk of eating those.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: It's like Google acquiring other companies, right, competitors off the field.
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty much.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: All right, Well, then I have a question for you
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: about cannibalism that I'm pretty sure you've never gotten before.
• 18:17
  Speaker 6: Okay, So I've.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Heard the argument that on other planets, if life evolves,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: it's very likely that there will be predators there because
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: beings will chomp on other beings because, as you say,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: it's a rich source of nutrients. So then my question
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: to you is are you suggesting that aliens are very
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: likely also cannibals.
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: That's a pretty good chance.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, and I think we have our spinoff
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: movie Alien Cannibals. We'll wait for the first drafter the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: script from you looking forward to that.
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: It's the question I heard before.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So Daniel.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: And I got the work in Aliens double bonus.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, So is there a difference between cannibalism if you're
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the one killing the conspecific you plan on eating, or
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: if you like come across it and it's dead, both
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: of those are cannibalism or does the definition of cannibalism
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: imply that you had to like kill the organism before
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: you eat it or is it all the same?
• 19:30
  Speaker 10: So the definition were kind of stuck in bin was
• 19:32
  Speaker 10: like killing in at least partial consumption of a conspecific,
• 19:36
  Speaker 10: So if it's already dead, we would call it necrophagi.
• 19:40
  Speaker 10: As I comment, so we talked about this, so like
• 19:43
  Speaker 10: in the disease perspective, that's like a different dynamic. But
• 19:46
  Speaker 10: I guess so I would usually we can talk about
• 19:48
  Speaker 10: cannibalism and most of the literature in the walls the
• 19:51
  Speaker 10: killing part. But of course, like most terms, there's various
• 19:55
  Speaker 10: definitions of it floating around.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so I know that all of us
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: on this call are parents, So what are some benefits
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: of eating your children?
• 20:09
  Speaker 10: Interesting choice? I mean, so when you see parents consuming
• 20:16
  Speaker 10: their offspring, right, But for many ways, that's like the
• 20:20
  Speaker 10: thing that usually selects against cannibalism. But there are reports
• 20:23
  Speaker 10: of this and various instances where you have parents eating
• 20:27
  Speaker 10: their offspring. And the example for instance, like in fish,
• 20:32
  Speaker 10: there's an interesting study that came out a while ago
• 20:34
  Speaker 10: where they showed that males that was regarding the eggs
• 20:38
  Speaker 10: for the females, we're more likely to cannibalize the eggs
• 20:42
  Speaker 10: if they thought that they weren't actually the deads, right,
• 20:45
  Speaker 10: so the other dad would swoop in doing like the
• 20:47
  Speaker 10: fertilization process, and if they thought someone else actually fertilized
• 20:51
  Speaker 10: the eggs that would just eat it and do it
• 20:52
  Speaker 10: over again. There's another one where you have scenarios where
• 20:56
  Speaker 10: like parents will consume their offspring, for instance, in case
• 21:00
  Speaker 10: of a disturbance for instance, or like the risk of predation.
• 21:03
  Speaker 10: I think in those cases it's kind of like the
• 21:06
  Speaker 10: idea behind it is the evaluating is, Okay, if some
• 21:10
  Speaker 10: preter comes in, they're going to eat all my eggs,
• 21:14
  Speaker 10: I get nothing. If I eat the eggs, I at
• 21:17
  Speaker 10: least get part of the energy back that invested in it,
• 21:20
  Speaker 10: all right, So it's kind of like a very risky
• 21:22
  Speaker 10: kind of like to lose it all or do it
• 21:24
  Speaker 10: keep some of it? So like scenario which it does
• 21:26
  Speaker 10: happen in some scenarios that's cold, yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Rather cannibal dilemma, huh yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 10: But there very few instances where eating your offspring is beneficial.
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: I mean, I can not really think of a whole lot.
• 21:41
  Speaker 10: Like I said, in most cases, that's what selects against it.
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: Don't eat your kids.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Follow up on that one, we do like a random
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: survey of people before we do an interview to ask
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: what their opinions are on the topic, and one of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the people we interviewed said that they thought mostly cannibalism
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was about eating their young because they had heard so
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: many store worries and I guess they had a lot
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of like hamsters, and the hamsters would get stressed out
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and they'd eat their young, so it was like a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: stress thing. But you're saying that, like, it definitely happens sometimes,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: but it's probably not the most common example of cannibalism.
• 22:12
  Speaker 10: So, I mean, the most part is like the eating
• 22:14
  Speaker 10: you're on is kind of like a byproduct of just
• 22:16
  Speaker 10: eating your conspecifics, right, So it does happen.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Sorry, what's a conspecific for those of us who are
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: not biologists.
• 22:21
  Speaker 10: Sorry, conspecific means like a member of your own species.
• 22:24
  Speaker 10: I see, Okay, because sometimes cannibalism gets so confused with
• 22:28
  Speaker 10: like predation, but it has to be the same species or.
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: It's not cannibalism.
• 22:33
  Speaker 10: So in most scenarios where you have cannibalism, you get
• 22:37
  Speaker 10: the accidental or occasional eating of your own offspring, right,
• 22:41
  Speaker 10: and so incentce Like, we did a study in flower beetles,
• 22:44
  Speaker 10: so we kind of tried to figure out whether these
• 22:46
  Speaker 10: guys recognize their eggs their own eggs and whether they
• 22:50
  Speaker 10: would eat them less, because these are really cannibalistic. And
• 22:54
  Speaker 10: so what we figured out is that, yes, they do
• 22:57
  Speaker 10: seem to recognize it, but that just means they eat
• 22:59
  Speaker 10: them some what less, not that don't eat it.
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 23:05
  Speaker 10: And so I feel like many examples, it's kind of
• 23:07
  Speaker 10: like when the risk of encountering your own like babies
• 23:12
  Speaker 10: is relatively there's no real selection for like recognizing or
• 23:17
  Speaker 10: worrying about it, and you just eat whoever's like it
• 23:19
  Speaker 10: fits in your mouth sort of perspective.
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: And sometimes those may be your offspring and sometimes they're not.
• 23:25
  Speaker 10: And I think in the case of the hamsters and
• 23:28
  Speaker 10: the others, it's like they would probably eat other babies too.
• 23:31
  Speaker 10: In there, it's not that they specifically want to eat
• 23:33
  Speaker 10: their own babies. They're just like stressed at they're trying
• 23:35
  Speaker 10: to remove competitors the territorial and there's just not enough
• 23:39
  Speaker 10: of a bear to like select against not eating your
• 23:43
  Speaker 10: own in that scenario.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm still trying to understand the fact that
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: there's no selection pressure against eating your neighbor's kids. I mean,
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: don't a lot of creatures survive because of communities, You know,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: A bunch of penguins held together to survive the wind,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: or a pride of lions help each other out or whatever.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Don't we all get along better if we stop eating
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: our kids and worry about our kids being eaten every
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: time we leave the house. Isn't there some benefit to that?
• 24:08
  Speaker 10: I just brought up the pride of line because lines
• 24:11
  Speaker 10: are also pretty cannibalistic, so i'llout that helping now. In fact,
• 24:17
  Speaker 10: you often have so like the meals go in and
• 24:20
  Speaker 10: like when the takeover, probably to especially like kill all
• 24:23
  Speaker 10: the offsprings of the female and eat them because they
• 24:26
  Speaker 10: want to be like the dad's of the kids and
• 24:29
  Speaker 10: not like raise somebody else's kid. At least that's how
• 24:31
  Speaker 10: the theory goes. I mean, that's a very sort of
• 24:34
  Speaker 10: group selecting perspective, which is an interesting discussion. I'm sure
• 24:38
  Speaker 10: Kelly has some ideas about it too.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Is that a controversial topic or something partial because we
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: don't understand whether it happens or some people believe it
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: does and some people who believe it doesn't. Or as
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: a non biologist, I don't know what sort of the
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: third rail to discuss in terms of.
• 24:54
  Speaker 10: Evolution, because it's a hard scenario to really make work
• 24:57
  Speaker 10: to like care and like help the unrelated individuals. It's
• 25:02
  Speaker 10: a complicated strategy to get working because it's just so
• 25:05
  Speaker 10: prone to cheating. And so usually when you see this
• 25:09
  Speaker 10: or like helping behavior, that's kind of like more something
• 25:12
  Speaker 10: where it's like your offspring or your siblings or something
• 25:16
  Speaker 10: like that. In that case, is it comes back to
• 25:18
  Speaker 10: like kind selection and inclusive fitness, which is also something
• 25:22
  Speaker 10: that influences cannibalism. In fact, for the helping, I often
• 25:26
  Speaker 10: like to think of this altruistic behavior, and cannibalism is
• 25:30
  Speaker 10: like the flip side of a coin. Right, then both
• 25:32
  Speaker 10: extreme there's the helping and being mutualistic and beneficial, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 10: then there's the other extreme of like just being as
• 25:38
  Speaker 10: selfish as you possibly can. And so cannibalism is like
• 25:41
  Speaker 10: the selfish as possibly can because you're literally killing someone
• 25:45
  Speaker 10: on for your own benefit, right, it's hard to be
• 25:48
  Speaker 10: more selfish and understanding at what point you know, like
• 25:53
  Speaker 10: selection favors one strategy over the other.
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: That's kind of like I think one of the interesting questions.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like my take on it is that
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: for a while, you know this idea that animals were
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: doing things for the benefit of the species was kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of a popular idea. It was a long time ago,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and then pretty quickly when we started digging in, it just.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Wasn't making sense.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And doing things for the benefit of the species at
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the expense of yourself just sort of doesn't really work evolutionarily.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And now the big question is when organisms are helping
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: each other, why the heck are they doing that.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: So we've almost swung to the opposite direction.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Now we're trying to explain why animals help each other out,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and often it turns out that they're related in some way,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: or maybe they're like reciprocally sharing resources, and it's like,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: all right, you helped.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Me out, so I'll help you out.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: But like if someone doesn't help out, then you know,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: maybe you eat them instead. That's sort of my take
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: on how we've sort of swung from one direction to another.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Is that how biologists all look at each other. They're like, look,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: we'll collaborate on this paper, but if you stop pulling
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: your weight, I might just eat you.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Academia is tough, exactly, but not that tough.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: I guess. Well, you know, something that's forefront in my
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: mind during this conversation is the obvious counter example which
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: is humans right, as humans, we do help each other out.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Young men go off and die in wars to protect
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: other people. It's also one of the examples of a
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: species that maybe has less cannibalism than other species. Is
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: it because we've succeeded to help each other out so
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: much and work together as a society. Is that why
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: we have a stigma against cannibalism? Or are you going
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: to tell me that people eat each other just as
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: much as other species.
• 27:22
  Speaker 10: So I'm not an althropologist, but it's like when we
• 27:26
  Speaker 10: so I looked into some of this, we kind of
• 27:28
  Speaker 10: got into the anthropology literature, and I will say, like,
• 27:32
  Speaker 10: for most of the human history there's been an element
• 27:35
  Speaker 10: of cannibalism, and they're linked back to Neanderthal it's different cultures.
• 27:39
  Speaker 10: The point at which all societies, as far as we know,
• 27:43
  Speaker 10: stop cannibalism is actually pretty recent, like and some of
• 27:46
  Speaker 10: Papua New Guinea you still have cannibalism, and they're like
• 27:49
  Speaker 10: the nineteen fifties to nineteen seventies somewhere around that. So
• 27:53
  Speaker 10: for modern humans, right, twenty first century humans, that's definitely true.
• 27:58
  Speaker 10: But in the past cannibalism has been pretty much part
• 28:01
  Speaker 10: off like many different cultures, like across all the different continents,
• 28:06
  Speaker 10: and that ranged between you know, like some ancestral ritual.
• 28:09
  Speaker 10: It's about now ensuring that you ants live on to
• 28:12
  Speaker 10: like getting the powers of your enemies and these sort
• 28:15
  Speaker 10: of different commonents. So humans have definitely engaged in cannibalist
• 28:20
  Speaker 10: activities in path societies for sure.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: You mentioned that in the nineteen fifties cannibalism was still
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: happening in Papua New Guinea and that group became fairly
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: famous because of a disease that they got through that practice.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And when we come back from the break, we're gonna
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: go ahead and talk about that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So everybody finished cooking up your dinner and get ready
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: to hear about it. Kelly, do you have a snack
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: in front of you? Are you ready to talk about cannibalism?
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Somemore, Oh, you know, I always have snacks.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I've got my cheese and crackers in salami, and I'm
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: just not thinking too hard about it. And you know,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: as a person who studies parasites, I never think too
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: hard about what are meeting or maybe I.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Should, but anyway, it would be a good diet strategy.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: We talked about the folks in Papua New Guinea who
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: were engaging in cannibalism up until the nineteen fifties. And
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: another area of research that you focused on is disease
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and how it maybe makes cannibalism less beneficial. So can
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit more about Kuru and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: then about disease transmission from cannibalism in the non human animals.
• 29:33
  Speaker 10: So Van Koura got famous because it's like it's a
• 29:35
  Speaker 10: prime disease that's in some way you can think of
• 29:39
  Speaker 10: it like creterrali arc up disease, another prime disease that's
• 29:42
  Speaker 10: like an alternative disease.
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: And it's interesting about it that it.
• 29:45
  Speaker 10: Often can take a long time for it to come up,
• 29:48
  Speaker 10: like in a several years.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us real quick what are prion diseases?
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Because I think a lot of people don't know.
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: About this, right, it's a prime disease.
• 29:56
  Speaker 10: Is diseases that are called by infectious proteins, which actual
• 30:00
  Speaker 10: proteins the normally in your body, but they're being inspired
• 30:04
  Speaker 10: to change their shape and that shape then.
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: Is not as functional, can cause various diseases.
• 30:11
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 30:11
  Speaker 10: There's like I mentioned critrial yaka disease, which is like
• 30:14
  Speaker 10: a new generative disease. There are several equivalents that we
• 30:17
  Speaker 10: know of, like an animal disease is like make out disease,
• 30:20
  Speaker 10: a few other ones.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: So if prions are proteins, it means they're not alive, right,
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: there's like little bits of stuff. They are little molecular machines.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: What makes it a disease and not like a poison?
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Is it because it replicates itself somehow.
• 30:32
  Speaker 10: Or it replicates itself in the body Because it's basically
• 30:35
  Speaker 10: so like a dynamic reaction where it's like you can
• 30:38
  Speaker 10: think of one protein that's like changed in the shape,
• 30:41
  Speaker 10: bumping into the normal shape one and like changing it
• 30:43
  Speaker 10: to that shape like with chain reaction.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: That's crazy. Proteins are amazing.
• 30:48
  Speaker 10: It was a long controversy to prove that they're actually
• 30:51
  Speaker 10: the cause of a disease because they're like normal parts
• 30:54
  Speaker 10: of your body and there's no like external infectious agent
• 30:57
  Speaker 10: that was initially identified. So they it's a really interesting
• 31:01
  Speaker 10: history about like how long it took them to figure
• 31:04
  Speaker 10: out what prime diseases are and what causes them.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're crazy, but so as you noted for the
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: folks who were suffering from this neurodegenerative disease. It was
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: really hard to figure out a cause because there was
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: this long delay between the activity and then the onset
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of symptoms.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us some more about that before I
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: derailed you.
• 31:21
  Speaker 10: The idea was that they found these diseases in certain
• 31:24
  Speaker 10: cultural groups and Papua New Guinea, and ultimately it was
• 31:28
  Speaker 10: tracked to some of their like burying rituals, which involved
• 31:31
  Speaker 10: actually so consuming part of the dead ancestor right so
• 31:34
  Speaker 10: like it handsome diseased, and they figured that this was
• 31:38
  Speaker 10: like the main source and how these things were actually
• 31:40
  Speaker 10: being transmitted. And that's kind of like the history of
• 31:44
  Speaker 10: how curu was linked to the cannibalistic practices in humans.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: Wait, so they would bury the ancestors and then eat
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: them or eat them and then bury them or eat
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: them and bury them. I lost track.
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: That's a good question. I've hard to remember how.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: Or maybe it's like that Swedish dish where you bury them,
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: you let them rode for six months and you dig
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: them up and eat them.
• 32:01
  Speaker 10: No, I think was before I remember the details. I
• 32:04
  Speaker 10: would have to look that up again. Listening about prime
• 32:07
  Speaker 10: diseases too, the extra very stable so sometimes even cooking
• 32:10
  Speaker 10: can kill them, right, which is another sort of thing
• 32:13
  Speaker 10: that mixed firing disease is weird.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: And so the connection to cannibalism is that if this
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: exists in the person you're eating, you eat the thing,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: now you have the protein in you, and so now
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: you have the disease.
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: Yes, So that's how it was like traced back.
• 32:26
  Speaker 10: It was tricky, but I mean they used to like
• 32:28
  Speaker 10: in the records of like previous infections or like weird
• 32:31
  Speaker 10: behaviors of people and other sort of stuff and trying
• 32:33
  Speaker 10: to trace it back to like where they came from.
• 32:36
  Speaker 10: But of course it's hard to trace a disease back.
• 32:39
  Speaker 10: That sometimes takes twenty plus us to establish and figure
• 32:41
  Speaker 10: out where's coming from.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so how common is this in non human animals?
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily pryons jumping back and forth during cannibalism, but
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: just like any disease, and what kind of diseases are
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: most commonly transmitted.
• 32:54
  Speaker 10: It's an interesting question because the things like in one way,
• 32:57
  Speaker 10: you can just think of like cannibalism being so like
• 32:59
  Speaker 10: a way of acting with members of your own species,
• 33:02
  Speaker 10: which can always increase the risk of infection.
• 33:05
  Speaker 6: Right, So if you.
• 33:06
  Speaker 10: Consume an individual that's infected just by like getting in
• 33:11
  Speaker 10: contact with infacted individual as a good chance that you
• 33:14
  Speaker 10: pick it up.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: What are you saying you're more likely to get a
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: disease if you eat somebody from your own species, then
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: if you eat somebody not from your species. Is that
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: because you're more likely to be susceptible to the same diseases, it's.
• 33:24
  Speaker 6: More likely to go to susceptible to the same diseases.
• 33:26
  Speaker 10: In fact, there spends like some theories and experiments like
• 33:29
  Speaker 10: Dave Finnick who was like testing that and so that
• 33:32
  Speaker 10: I was like, are you more likely to get infected
• 33:34
  Speaker 10: by your own species?
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: They did that actually in tadpoles.
• 33:37
  Speaker 10: Believe it or not, they also cannibalistic, some of them
• 33:39
  Speaker 10: spayed for tadpoles actually, and they found that like when
• 33:43
  Speaker 10: they consumed the conspecific that was infacted, they get more
• 33:47
  Speaker 10: likely to be in facted and if they ate another species,
• 33:51
  Speaker 10: And so they used that as like an idea of
• 33:54
  Speaker 10: selecting against cannibalism. And they did find that they were
• 33:57
  Speaker 10: more likely to discriminate against their own species than any
• 34:00
  Speaker 10: other unless likely to eat them. And so there was
• 34:03
  Speaker 10: the idea that disease could select against cannibalism because there's
• 34:06
  Speaker 10: a higher risk of infection.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Does it depend on the kind of diseases? So, like,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you know, if someone's not sneezing anymore because they're dead,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: they're probably not going to give me the cold or
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the flu. If I eat their brains, I might get
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a pry on disease. So is there certain kinds of
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: diseases you're more likely to get or is it not
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: that easy because it's ecology.
• 34:25
  Speaker 10: I think ultimately there is not a lot of research
• 34:29
  Speaker 10: on this specific topic. You might be surprising, but them,
• 34:33
  Speaker 10: I was like there, for instance, I have like an
• 34:34
  Speaker 10: insects and others, Like it's pretty common there. When the
• 34:37
  Speaker 10: individuals become infected, then the jest can lead to another infection.
• 34:42
  Speaker 10: But there's also this scenario where like if it's a
• 34:45
  Speaker 10: disease that for instance, needs to be inhaled to get
• 34:47
  Speaker 10: any respiratory tract or like go a certain route and
• 34:51
  Speaker 10: you eat it and they're just go in your stomach
• 34:52
  Speaker 10: and get digested, They're not going to actually become infected, right,
• 34:56
  Speaker 10: So if you consume the individuals before it's an infectious state,
• 35:00
  Speaker 10: especially then you know, like you could actually remove sick
• 35:04
  Speaker 10: individuals from the population. So it really so depends on
• 35:08
  Speaker 10: how much the infection relies on you actually come in
• 35:12
  Speaker 10: contact with it, or whether it relies on you being.
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: Ingested by the individual.
• 35:16
  Speaker 10: I think there are no hard facts on it, but
• 35:18
  Speaker 10: I think it comes down to the transmission mode of
• 35:20
  Speaker 10: the disease.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: And in general, most of these diseases are killed by cooking, right,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: So if you cook the creature, you're most likely going
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: to kill the disease, except for preons, which is why
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: they're so terrifying. Right, Yeah, I guess in the natural world,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: temples don't usually like grill each other before eating.
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: There's not a lot of cooking going on in the
• 35:36
  Speaker 6: natural world.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: But is there zero, like I mean, is there really
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: zero use of fire by any other creature other humans?
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: Excuse my completely naive question.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think chimpanzees are Bonobo's cook over fire. They've
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: got other ways of trying to remove parasites that folks
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: have postulated, but they're not cooking their meat beforehand.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: And so are there other species where cannibalism seems to
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: be sort of disinclined or suppressed the way it is
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: in modern humans or is it really everywhere in the
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: animal kingdom?
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: I would say it's almost everywhere. It's like I always
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: call it ubiquitous.
• 36:12
  Speaker 10: I'm not saying everybody is cannibalistic, but a lot of
• 36:15
  Speaker 10: them are.
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: And there's of course a gradi end, right.
• 36:19
  Speaker 10: It's like some species are highly cannibalistic and some species
• 36:23
  Speaker 10: may not be cannibalistic.
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a full spectrum, I would say.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: And is there any organization to that spectrum. Is it
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: like the more you're fish, like the more cannibalistic you are,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: or you know, the larger your number of offspring or something.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: One of the.
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: Patterns, well, Kelly is like list digress.
• 36:39
  Speaker 10: So I always thought about it, and it's like I
• 36:41
  Speaker 10: don't think there is a general Somatan land list that
• 36:45
  Speaker 10: I can pull that out. I think part of that
• 36:47
  Speaker 10: is because I don't think cannibalism is sufficiently reported in
• 36:51
  Speaker 10: most organisms.
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: Sometimes I remember reading like papers.
• 36:55
  Speaker 10: About food webs where it's like, oh, like in this
• 36:57
  Speaker 10: food web, there's like, you know that no cannibalistic link
• 37:00
  Speaker 10: in it, And like I looked at it and like
• 37:02
  Speaker 10: pulled out ten spieces that are known to be cannibalistic.
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: There's a strong under reporting.
• 37:06
  Speaker 10: That makes it difficult to go out there and say, okay,
• 37:10
  Speaker 10: are the general patterns are like certain taxa or certain
• 37:12
  Speaker 10: functional groups and more cannibalistic than others.
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: I don't think we even have the data to test
• 37:16
  Speaker 6: that right now.
• 37:18
  Speaker 10: That's why I say, like, I do think like most
• 37:20
  Speaker 10: prosit cannibalistic, But then after that it's very hard to
• 37:25
  Speaker 10: make more generalization about which ones are more likely. I
• 37:29
  Speaker 10: think there's certain like if your species with parental care
• 37:32
  Speaker 10: or certain social structure, it's a lot less likely or
• 37:35
  Speaker 10: even selected against it. So there should be some patterns,
• 37:39
  Speaker 10: but I'm not aware of any analysis it'll look to that.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And when you say underreported, that makes it sound like
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: it's you know, stigmatized or something people who don't want
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: to talk about it. Is it just that we don't
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: have the data because there isn't enough funding, or because
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: it's difficult to gather for some reason, or.
• 37:53
  Speaker 10: I think it's because for like decades people stigmatized it.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: Right So if you think if.
• 37:58
  Speaker 10: You go back to like Bibil apples Felt was a
• 38:01
  Speaker 10: famous behavior psycologist, and he was the one that I
• 38:04
  Speaker 10: was talked about like they're good for the species, whereas like, oh,
• 38:07
  Speaker 10: we don't do that, and cannibalism was immediately linked into.
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: This where it's kind of like, oh, that's just a
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: freak of nature.
• 38:13
  Speaker 10: It only happens, you know, like maroond On and Alan
• 38:15
  Speaker 10: and have nothing else to eat over the airplane crashes
• 38:18
  Speaker 10: in the Arctic or something. Right, I was definitely considered
• 38:20
  Speaker 10: as non normal interactions, and I still think to this
• 38:25
  Speaker 10: day it's like it's lester in other interactions.
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: Also, it's a lot more than it was let's.
• 38:29
  Speaker 10: Say, like in the nineties or the early two thousands,
• 38:31
  Speaker 10: So I was like, so it's getting a little bit
• 38:33
  Speaker 10: more attention. But because of the stigmatization, there was very
• 38:36
  Speaker 10: little research for law, and I felt every time I
• 38:39
  Speaker 10: publish it on my paper at first to argue and saying, actually,
• 38:42
  Speaker 10: this is everywhere, we just don't talk about it, right,
• 38:46
  Speaker 10: So I was like I had to justify why we've
• 38:48
  Speaker 10: been doing this, and then it's not weird and and
• 38:51
  Speaker 10: just you know, like an unnatural behavior, but it's like
• 38:54
  Speaker 10: pretty common.
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: So if I had to summarize your entire academic career
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: in one sentence, would it be fair to say cannibalism
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: is everywhere? And actually it's usually good.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: He does a lot of other stuff too.
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: But yes, I think it's.
• 39:08
  Speaker 10: Fair to say that it's really a part of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 10: natural ecosystem, and in many ways it can be good.
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 39:13
  Speaker 10: For instance, cannibalism in predatory species can really stabilize predative
• 39:17
  Speaker 10: predynamics and in fact help natural ecosystem do not cyclis much, right,
• 39:22
  Speaker 10: or it can promote coexistence, so it actually plays an
• 39:25
  Speaker 10: important role in natural ecosystems.
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: Test we haven't appreciated.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: I didn't expect we were going to end up being
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: pro cannibalism, but here we are.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: We jumped around, which is totally great. But we were
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: talking about parents eating their kids. I feel like it's
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: much worse for kids to eat their parents because like,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: how can you not appreciate all the effort your parents
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: have put in there?
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: But does that happen? Yes, what could you give us.
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: Some exp.
• 39:53
  Speaker 10: I mean in those cases, well, as if you think
• 39:54
  Speaker 10: about it's like there's subspecies out there, they are pretty
• 39:57
  Speaker 10: much just reproducing once in their lifetime, right. It's like
• 40:00
  Speaker 10: we often think about like these repeated reprodactive events where
• 40:04
  Speaker 10: during a lifetime you have multiple babies and so on.
• 40:07
  Speaker 10: But for many species it's a one time thing. Right,
• 40:09
  Speaker 10: It's like they put all their eggs in the basket
• 40:11
  Speaker 10: that reproduced and in those instances actually is like there
• 40:14
  Speaker 10: are some species. I'm trying to think of it. I
• 40:16
  Speaker 10: think there's at least like a spider species. As essentially,
• 40:19
  Speaker 10: the idea there is that the parents would die anyway,
• 40:22
  Speaker 10: and it's kind of like parent nourishment position.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: Right, It's like they give their kids.
• 40:27
  Speaker 10: More food and in this case it's just their last
• 40:29
  Speaker 10: donation and it's them man.
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: Right, it's like all in investment, the ultimate parenting.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Kids, they're always taking taking.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: All right, Well, I feel like I have to connect
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: the obvious dots here. You're telling us that cannibalism is
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: actually pretty widespread. It even existed in human society for
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: a long time. It's often beneficial, and it's probably a
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: good idea to eat your parents. So would you advise cannibalism?
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Were you saying, like, hey, you're putting your parents to rest,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: your options or like cremation, burial or sate. Is that
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: something we should have?
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: And I'm really shocked you're going there, Daniel, But.
• 41:04
  Speaker 10: Okay, yeah, yeah, I feel like I should be answered
• 41:07
  Speaker 10: that question at all.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Look, when the aliens come, they're going to ask us
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: this question, and we need to have an answer. You know, you.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Complete the fifth.
• 41:15
  Speaker 10: I always go back to like what Kelly says, like
• 41:18
  Speaker 10: with parasites and all items, like that's just an iffy thing.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: God, yeah, we're not going to think too hard about that.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: So I'm trained as an ecologist. I love hearing about,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you know, ecological systems. And I was going through the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: like titles of papers that you've published, and I got
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: really excited about the bulgie frogs and so tell us
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: about why salamander cannibalism results in bulgie frogs.
• 41:45
  Speaker 10: So the frogs is the tadpoles that are bulgey, right,
• 41:49
  Speaker 10: So now that people think of like giant blobby frogs,
• 41:51
  Speaker 10: so they're actually tadpoles and they like get bulger by
• 41:54
  Speaker 10: getting these like out of jelly layers that really make him.
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: Way bigger than they normally would be.
• 42:00
  Speaker 10: And so that's a species in Japan and like one
• 42:02
  Speaker 10: of our collaboratives that came across and it's a defense mechanism,
• 42:06
  Speaker 10: but being bigger, they can't get eaten by salamanders potentially
• 42:11
  Speaker 10: because they don't fit in their mouth right, So it's
• 42:13
  Speaker 10: like blow yourself up like the popper fish, so you
• 42:16
  Speaker 10: don't fit in somebody else's mouth.
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: Which means you survive too big to fail, and so and.
• 42:21
  Speaker 10: So these researchers found is like so cannibalism in these salamandos,
• 42:25
  Speaker 10: which actually cannibalism in salamandes is really common. I've seen
• 42:29
  Speaker 10: one species so far that it's not cannibalistic, but everybody
• 42:32
  Speaker 10: else have worked with all the other species.
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: We're all cannibalistic to some extent.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: But they're so cute.
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: They are very cute. I agree.
• 42:40
  Speaker 10: Salamanos will leave whatever fits in their mouth, right, It's
• 42:43
  Speaker 10: kind of like if it moves, they'll try to shove
• 42:45
  Speaker 10: it in.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Their mouth like toddlers. I'm convinced if your parents would
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: fit in your mouth.
• 42:53
  Speaker 10: They probably would just shove it out there. It's like,
• 42:55
  Speaker 10: if you don't think about it, right, it's just like food,
• 42:58
  Speaker 10: exactly more food and so in salomon is. Sometimes you
• 43:03
  Speaker 10: get so like different courts betweens, Like some parents lay
• 43:07
  Speaker 10: their eggs earlier and then maybe like a few weeks later,
• 43:10
  Speaker 10: another egg laying events, right, and these guys hatch and
• 43:14
  Speaker 10: they're smaller than the earlier ones. And for those early
• 43:18
  Speaker 10: ones they often get eaten by the older salamon the larvae,
• 43:23
  Speaker 10: and because of that, they actually grow a lot faster
• 43:26
  Speaker 10: and get bigger, like way bigger than they would without cannibalism. Right,
• 43:30
  Speaker 10: So there's the clear beneficial roll of like you now
• 43:34
  Speaker 10: eating it con specific to get bigger and stronger, and
• 43:37
  Speaker 10: that's like accelerates growth for a few individuals, as like
• 43:40
  Speaker 10: the cannibolts in the system, and they are the ones
• 43:43
  Speaker 10: that then also pose the biggest risk for the tadpolts
• 43:47
  Speaker 10: in the system because that's the other main food source.
• 43:49
  Speaker 10: And so when you have those giant cannibals in the system,
• 43:53
  Speaker 10: that select for balgy tadpoles. And so that's kind of
• 43:57
  Speaker 10: how to get the feedback.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: So why aren't the tadpoles all is bulgi? Is it
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: just like hard to move around if you're always bulgy,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: So you only do it if you have to be bulgie.
• 44:06
  Speaker 10: I think there's a big investment cost in doing that,
• 44:09
  Speaker 10: and they don't have to they don't do it. So
• 44:12
  Speaker 10: it's kind of like an antipredator response, like once the
• 44:14
  Speaker 10: predation is clearly happening, they're like, oh crap, like I
• 44:18
  Speaker 10: better get boldry fast.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: So it's expensive, but it saves your life. Yes, but
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: you don't do it unless you have to exactly excellent.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: So this is something at the cutting edge of understanding cannibalism.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Can we zoom out and understand like what are the
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: big questions remain? Like you're a researcher, your professor, you're
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: doing research right now in a cannibalism What is like
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: a big question you would love to know the answer
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: to about cannibalism, or what are we going to know
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: about cannibalism in twenty years that we don't know today?
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: Thanks, I get for me.
• 44:47
  Speaker 10: What's something we're working on and we currently actually have
• 44:49
  Speaker 10: a grant they'd just like submitted to look at this more.
• 44:52
  Speaker 10: It's trying to understand kind of like what limits cannibalism because,
• 44:57
  Speaker 10: like what I've seen work with a bunch of different spieces,
• 44:59
  Speaker 10: there a range of cannibalistic behavior, like I said, that
• 45:03
  Speaker 10: goes from like the super cannibalistic, right, it's like they
• 45:07
  Speaker 10: see another conspasy, they will eat them.
• 45:10
  Speaker 6: I merely was one where like it's prutty uncommon.
• 45:13
  Speaker 10: Even within the same species, you can find populations where
• 45:16
  Speaker 10: some or more cannibalistic than others, and it has a
• 45:19
  Speaker 10: genetic component to it, so it's not just like some
• 45:22
  Speaker 10: environmental media one. It's like it's an inherited trade, where
• 45:25
  Speaker 10: like some are more cannibalistic, some or less, and we
• 45:28
  Speaker 10: don't really understand why. And I always like to think
• 45:32
  Speaker 10: of this, whereas I said before, catalysm is a form
• 45:36
  Speaker 10: or the ultimate selfish behavior. And kel I mentioned before
• 45:40
  Speaker 10: that for like decades people were really interested in kind
• 45:43
  Speaker 10: of like, Okay, when should selfish behavior move to altruistic behavior?
• 45:47
  Speaker 10: And we spend on like decades on like figuring out
• 45:50
  Speaker 10: when vidualism antalism should happen.
• 45:52
  Speaker 6: But we don't really have a rule.
• 45:54
  Speaker 10: It tasts like what should stop being extremely selfish?
• 45:58
  Speaker 8: Right?
• 45:58
  Speaker 10: Why isn't everybody as cannibalistic as they can possibly be?
• 46:02
  Speaker 6: Right? There has to be something that's limited.
• 46:05
  Speaker 10: And so what we're trying to understand is like, what
• 46:07
  Speaker 10: are the environmental conditions that can do this? Is this
• 46:09
  Speaker 10: something that really can go in different ways? And they
• 46:13
  Speaker 10: are like multiple behaviors that can mitigate the cost of cannibalism.
• 46:18
  Speaker 10: We talked about like one big of the cost of
• 46:19
  Speaker 10: cannibalism is eating your own offspring, right, your own children,
• 46:23
  Speaker 10: because that's a big loss of fitness. You can mitigate
• 46:27
  Speaker 10: this by recognizing your own offspring, and you can still
• 46:30
  Speaker 10: be as cannibalistic as you want, right, because then you's
• 46:33
  Speaker 10: like set off the cost of fitness loss, but you
• 46:36
  Speaker 10: can still remove your competitors.
• 46:38
  Speaker 6: You can still get extra meals and all that stuff.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: And your kids competitors. Right, if you eat your neighbor's kids,
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: then your kids are like top of the class.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Right, So many lessons here.
• 46:49
  Speaker 10: So there are many different ways of like mitigating the
• 46:52
  Speaker 10: cost of cannibalism. And it's more like so like a
• 46:54
  Speaker 10: behavioral multidimensional space where you can like just recognize them,
• 46:59
  Speaker 10: or could be that your kids just get the genes
• 47:02
  Speaker 10: to get the hell out of here, right, leave your
• 47:04
  Speaker 10: parents as fast as possible and walk.
• 47:05
  Speaker 6: Away from them.
• 47:06
  Speaker 10: And then also like the parents can just continue to
• 47:09
  Speaker 10: be cannibalistic. Right, So the different behaviors that can play
• 47:12
  Speaker 10: a role with it, and understanding how they're all interact
• 47:16
  Speaker 10: with the jail that to really drive the evolution of cannibalism,
• 47:19
  Speaker 10: and then see how that can like explain a lot
• 47:21
  Speaker 10: of the variation that we see within and across PCs.
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: I think that's a big question for us.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So you said, you've been like beating the drum that
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: like cannibalism is common, this happens all the time. We
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: need to understand it more. Has that message gotten out?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Are ecologists over the stigma? Are more people studying this now?
• 47:35
  Speaker 10: I think there are more people studying it now. It's
• 47:37
  Speaker 10: like I'm not sure that this is because of me
• 47:39
  Speaker 10: or whether that's just well, actually, I'm pretty sure it's
• 47:42
  Speaker 10: not because of me.
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: I'm sure there's nothing to do with it.
• 47:45
  Speaker 10: I think that the stigma is like seeded in is
• 47:48
  Speaker 10: just by having more and more studies over the time
• 47:51
  Speaker 10: to like look at this. I know that there's been
• 47:53
  Speaker 10: like a popular book on cannibalism that came out a
• 47:56
  Speaker 10: few years ago that it was just on like talking
• 47:59
  Speaker 10: about the misconception behind and how that's pretty common. I
• 48:01
  Speaker 10: don't think it was actually a scientist necessarily who works
• 48:04
  Speaker 10: on it that wrote it, but they just thought it
• 48:05
  Speaker 10: was a cool topic or something that probably helped too
• 48:08
  Speaker 10: to like get it more out and then like public's mind.
• 48:10
  Speaker 6: But I think for researchers it's funny.
• 48:12
  Speaker 10: Whenever I gave this talk and then talked about cannibalisms
• 48:15
  Speaker 10: and other things, and people would.
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: Always come up and say, yeah, I see this all
• 48:17
  Speaker 6: the time and just never thought about it, or like
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: what are the consequences?
• 48:21
  Speaker 10: And so right post people that work in natural system,
• 48:24
  Speaker 10: unless they're work on plans, probably have seen cannibalism at
• 48:27
  Speaker 10: some point, Like you said, like or at home, I
• 48:29
  Speaker 10: do you see you fish getting eatings and you're like, oh,
• 48:31
  Speaker 10: how Colm, I'll never get you know, more guppies.
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: And it's like they're eating ill got eaten up. Yeah.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: One books that cannibalism have the best titles I've got
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: is Eating People Wrong, which I found on my husband's
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: table the other day and I got fairly nervous. So
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the children and I you know, went on a vacation.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: But it turned out it was not about us, just
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: for research, just for research.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: Well, what about portrayals in popular media? You know when
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: I watch a show and they talk about particle physics
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: and often cringing because they get all the details wrong.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: If you watch Silence of the Lambs or you know
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: that TV show Hannibal was very popular, are you cringing
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: because you're like, oh my god, that would never happen
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: that way, or are you just glad to hear people
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: talking about cannibalism since it's your position that more people
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: should do it.
• 49:21
  Speaker 10: They both of this is nolla, right because like all
• 49:24
  Speaker 10: the human cannibalism is nothing that I do.
• 49:26
  Speaker 6: It's all really like a psychological, mostly weird behavior that it's.
• 49:32
  Speaker 10: Not in line with like the natural cannaalistic behavior that
• 49:35
  Speaker 10: we see like in these ecosystems. So no, it's like,
• 49:38
  Speaker 10: I don't think they get it wrong because to me,
• 49:41
  Speaker 10: it has nothing to do with what I see out
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: in nature.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: All right, So Folka is not saying that any of
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: us should engage in cannibalism. No, And I think that's
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: where we need to end this conversation.
• 49:54
  Speaker 10: I feel like we pushed you to like brace it
• 49:56
  Speaker 10: and adorse it, but like, no, we should study it more,
• 50:01
  Speaker 10: not actually do it.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: That's right, right, all right, the lawyers have gotten to
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: you both. You're so afraid to say the truth, all.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: Right, all right, Well, thank you so much for being
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: on the show.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: You might have noticed I've avoided saying your name the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: whole time because now I'm convinced that I'm doing it
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: wrong and I'm super.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Embarrassed about it.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: But anyway, this has been a ton of fun. Thanks
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: for being a good sport about all of the jokes
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: that we made and the weird human references that we
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: insisted on shoehorning in. And we look forward to having
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you back on the show in like a decade to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: tell us about what you've discovered.
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: All right, it sounds good.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Thanks for the delicious conversations.
• 50:44
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