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A Perfectly Natural History
by Bill Schutt
Eating one's own kind is completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans.
Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mother's skin; why sexual cannibalism is an evolutionary advantage for certain spiders; why, until the end of the eighteenth century, British royalty regularly ate human body parts; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of Neanderthals.
Today, the subject of humans consuming one another has been relegated to the realm of horror movies, fiction, and the occasional psychopath. But as climate change progresses and humans see more famine, disease, and overcrowding, biological and cultural constraints may well disappear. These are the very factors that lead to outbreaks of cannibalism - in other species and our own.
"Starred Review. With plenty of examples of cannibalism in humans past and present, Schutt's well researched and suspenseful work is a must read for anyone who's interested in the topic - and can stomach the gore." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Schutt's writing is delightfully accessible, rarely boring, and utterly captivating. A must-buy for high school and public libraries." - Library Journal
"A fascinating exploration of a normally taboo subject." - John de Cuevas, contributing editor, Harvard Magazine
"Bill Schutt serves up a deliciously entertaining smorgasbord of scientific reality. He gives us a deeper insight into the way nature really works." - Darrin Lunde, Museum Specialist, Smithsonian Institution, and author of The Naturalist
"Butterflies do it. So do some toads, birds, and polar bears. Did dinosaurs do it? What about the Neanderthals? And what about us, for that matter? If you're hungry for a fun, absorbing read about which animals eat their own kind and why, read this book." - Virginia Morell, New York Times bestselling author of Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel
"A clear-headed, sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic - and always fascinating - compendium of one of Western culture's strongest taboos. From the Australian redback spider to the Donner Party, Schutt examines the evolutionary purposes that eating one's own can serve. But he goes beyond scientific explanation to show how deeply cannibalism is woven into our own history and literature." - Cat Warren, New York Times bestselling author of What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World
This information about Cannibalism was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bill Schutt is a former professor of biology at LIU-Post and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, he received his B.A. in Biology at C.W. Post, his MA at SUNY Geneseo, and a Ph.D. in Zoology from Cornell University. He has published over two dozen peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from terrestrial locomotion in vampire bats to the precarious, arboreal copulatory behavior of a marsupial mouse.
Schutt has written for the New York Times and Natural History magazine and his research has also been featured in those publications, Newsday, the Economist, Discover, and others. He is an active member of the North American Society for Bat Research.
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