Everything You Could Ever Want to Know About Cannibalism

Author and zoologist Bill Schutt answers our burning questions about cannibalism, from what human flesh tastes like to why people once consumed powdered mummies (yes, seriously).

If you’ve ever watched Yellowjackets or The Silence of the Lambs, you’ve probably wondered, “What does human flesh taste like?”

Luckily, most of us will never get a firsthand answer to this question, but in 1884, four unlucky sailors found out the hard way. Lost at sea for nearly three weeks aboard the lifeboat of the shipwrecked yacht Mignonette, with no provisions and no hope of rescue in sight, Captain Thomas Dudley and his small crew faced an impossible choice: should they kill and eat their cabin boy Richard Parker, the youngest and weakest among them, or let all four men starve to death? Dudley and his crew did the unthinkable, killing Parker by sinking a pen knife into his neck; then, they drank his blood, consumed his organs, and ate his flesh. All three sailors agreed that they were “different men” as a result. In his forthcoming book, Captain’s Dinner (out November 18, 2025), Adam Cohen lays out every grisly detail about this shocking act of violence at sea—and the sensational, paradigm-shattering trial that followed.

For those of us learning about these gruesome events over 140 years later, the story turns the stomach—and it also raises questions, thanks to our nagging human sense of curiosity. Questions like, “What’s the nutritional value of eating human flesh?” And, “Can drinking fresh blood really provide hydration?”

To answer all these questions and more, we brought in an expert: author and zoologist Bill Schutt, who researched cannibalism exhaustively to write Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History. Schutt is an emeritus professor of biology at LIU Post and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, From Hagfish to Humans.

Author and zoologist Bill Schutt

As Schutt explains, cannibalism is perfectly natural in the animal kingdom—and it’s perfectly natural that human beings can’t stop wondering about it. In the conversation below, Schutt takes us beyond the Mignonette lifeboat to offer an informative look at cannibalism in science, history, and culture, from the shockingly normal practice of medicinal cannibalism to the time he ate a human placenta (yes, seriously).

ADRIENNE WESTENFELD: In your view, what’s the biggest misconception about cannibalism, in both the animal kingdom and the human race?

BILL SCHUTT: There are two different animals that are infamous cannibals: praying mantises and black widow spiders. When I went into this book, I didn’t understand that cannibalism was so much more widespread across the animal kingdom for reasons that have nothing to do with what we know about praying mantises and black widow spiders—perfectly natural reasons, in fact. For example, parental care. There's a black widow spider relative called the black lace weaver spider. It lives in Australia, and when it lays eggs, when the babies hatch, they literally consume their mother. She gives up her life so that they can have nutrition.

With birds like owls and egrets, sometimes what happens is that they’ll lay three eggs. Two will be laid first, then the other follows a couple days later. There are more hormones in the first two eggs, so when the hatchlings arrive, they're bigger and they grow faster. The third hatchling is often smaller, and if they run out of food, that baby gets eaten. That's the lifeboat strategy. There are many other examples, and they all blew me away. It quickly became clear to me that cannibalism is extremely common across the animal kingdom, especially in invertebrates, and especially when you get into the vertebrates like fish—more fish are cannibals than not. As you get into things like mammals, it's less so, and primates, not much. But the real misconception is that cannibalism is rare.

As humans go, I went into the book knowing that cannibalism is the number one taboo in Western culture. Given that we have this knee-jerk reaction against cannibalism, it was a real surprise to learn that for hundreds of years, beginning in the Middle Ages and right up until the early 1900s, human body parts were used for medicinal purposes, to treat everything from epilepsy to dizzy spells. This was something that I had no idea about, especially given the fact that cannibalism was a big taboo.

AW: Why do human beings have such an aversion to eating one another? You say it’s perfectly natural in the animal kingdom, and we human beings are animals ourselves, so what led to us developing such different sensibilities about cannibalism?

BS: I keep going back to this idea that culture is king. It all comes down to what the individual culture decides is right or wrong, good behavior or criminal behavior. In the West, you can trace this cannibalism taboo back to folks like Homer and Herodotus, who determined that cannibalism was just about the worst thing you could do. For Herodotus, it was that this is what the others did. The non-Greeks, the “savages”—they consumed other people. From there, that idea spread to the Romans, and from the Romans to folks like Shakespeare and Daniel Defoe, then from them to Sigmund Freud, and so on. Ultimately, the practice became the worst taboo possible in the West. In order to show that it’s about culture, I had to go, “Well, what are instances where people didn't get the memo about this taboo?” Certain parts of China and certain Indigenous groups who didn’t have contact with the West never learned that cannibalism was the worst thing you could do. So they began to incorporate it into their cultures, whether it was during warfare to terrorize their enemies or in funerary rites, where instead of burying someone, you would consume them.

AW: Tell me about the concept of medicinal cannibalism, and the surprising history of treating ailments with concoctions made from human body parts. Did people know what they were consuming?

BS: Absolutely—they used to wait around during public executions for the bodies. Fat was used, and flesh, and anything else you can think of. The most interesting example has to do with a misinterpretation of the Arabic term for this tar-like substance that the ancient Egyptians used to bind wounds. When the Arabs occupied Egypt, they called this substance “mumia.” But when the Europeans came across that word, they thought, “Mumia, like mummies. They're talking about using mummies for medicinal purposes.” So there became this cottage industry of stealing mummies and making them into powder for medicinal purposes, to the point where the Merck catalog still had “mumia” listed as a medicine as recently as 1908. I was completely shocked by this, given the strong taboo around cannibalism in the West. It wasn’t just the rich or the poor—everybody was doing it, and it was widespread for hundreds of years throughout Europe.

AW: Were these concoctions actually medically useful?

BS: I’ve never read of any positive effects from using medicine composed of human body parts, except maybe the placebo effect, which is a very real thing.

AW: In what ways have history and culture selectively shaped how we define cannibalism? It’s interesting to think that while Europeans were consuming remedies derived from human body parts, Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella enslaved cannibals in the Caribbean. How did they square that circle?

BS: When Columbus came to the New World on his first voyage and he met the natives, the report that went back to Queen Isabella was, “There are good people here, and it looks like we're going to be able to make them into good Christians, and everything is going well.” What Queen Isabella said was, “You need to treat people well. Unless they’re cannibals—then all bets are off.” When Columbus didn’t find any gold and slavery became the number one obsession, these “good people” he met were suddenly cannibals. Now they could do whatever they wanted to these people. So in a sense, his expeditions changed from voyages of discovery to pest control. The idea was, “We're taking care of business here; we're getting rid of these sub-humans.” Columbus and other flag planters throughout the age of discovery used this defense. Whether it was in Central America or South America or Africa, it was all the same thing. If you could say that these people were doing something so abhorrent as cannibalizing their dead, then you could do whatever you wanted to them. Then they needed to be enslaved. Then they needed to be eradicated. You could steal everything they owned, you could destroy their cultures, and that's exactly what happened.

AW: I wonder if we can draw a direct line from that to someone like Kristi Noem claiming that a cannibal was eating his own arm on one of the Trump Administration’s deportation flights. It seems like the exact same othering of people using cannibalism as the boogeyman.

BS: It makes perfect sense that she would try to get people riled up this way. When you think of cannibalism, you think, “horrible people, subhumans, monsters, criminals.” Who would eat their own arm? That's not human. A human being would never do that. The rationale makes perfect sense.

AW: What’s the most fascinating example of cultural cannibalism you came across in your research?

BS: There’s a whole bunch of them. I’m thinking of the story about when anthropologists started to explore the wilds of Brazil, where they encountered a group of people called the Wari’. The anthropologists soon discovered that the Wari’ consumed their dead, because they thought that once they were consumed, they would then be part of their descendants forever. The European anthropologists were horrified by this, saying, “That's the most awful thing you could do. You need to stop that behavior immediately.” And the Wari’, of course, said, “Wait. You put your dead in the ground to rot and be eaten by worms? That's horrible!” They were completely mortified by the idea that Westerners buried their dead, where they had this rich culture based on the fact that when their loved ones died, they were incorporated into themselves. That’s an interesting example of how culture is king.

AW: Walk me through what happens when one human being consumes another. What does human flesh taste like, and how does the human body digest it? What’s the nutritional value of human flesh, as compared to animal flesh or plants?

BS: In some ways, you've got to take a step back and stop thinking of it as eating a human being. You need to think of it as the equivalent of eating another mammal. And in starvation conditions, all of the fat has pretty much been burned off, so you're not going to get a lot of nutrients from fat. What you're going to get is primarily fiber, which is not digested, and protein. I know this sounds horrific, but it would be the equivalent of eating a lean piece of pork or beef. Same thing, as far as nutritional aspects of it go. There’s nothing about eating human flesh that makes it any different from eating a chimpanzee. Not that I would condone that, of course, but it’s all mammal flesh. Now, if it’s not starvation conditions, you're dealing with things like fat, carbohydrates, proteins, and some fiber. If you're eating organs, it’s mostly protein.

AW: Is it true that if you drink human blood, it can be hydrating?

BS: Only because there’s water in it. Though blood coagulates fast, so you’d have to drink it right away.

AW: On the Mignonette lifeboat, they killed a man and drank his blood right away.

BS: Oh, how fun. Maybe that's why I didn't write about that one. There's certainly some hydration possible, but only because of the fact that blood is primarily water. That’s another place where there’s nothing particularly special about eating the human body. If you're consuming any raw piece of meat, you're getting water, as well. So, I guess there's a hydration factor there.

AW: What do people report about what human flesh tastes like?

BS: I've heard that it tastes like pork. Personally, I think it depends on what you're eating. If you're eating muscle, it's going to taste like eating a piece of pork or beef. If you're eating an organ, like someone’s liver, it’s going to taste like organ meat. It all depends on what it is—and how it’s cooked.

AW: Is it true that eating human flesh can cause disease or madness?

BS: There’s a disease called kuru that was first discovered in the 1950s by a group of anthropologists who went into New Guinea and encountered an indigenous group called the Fore. 1% of them were dying every year from a horrific and incurable disease that basically broke down their nervous system—mostly women and children. Over the next two decades, a group of really sharp scientists and researchers determined that the disease was caused by the Fore consuming infected loved ones after they died. Anthropologist Shirley Lindenbaum and her husband determined that the women and the children were the ones consuming the dead, which explained why they were the ones getting sick.

AW: In your book, you describe being invited by one of your sources to come over for dinner and eat her placenta. Can you tell me more about that experience?

BS: I was a college professor at the time. It was two weeks before classes started, and I had my book pretty much finished. In the New York Times Magazine, I saw a graphic image of a placenta floating in a soup pot. I was like, “What on earth is this?” So I looked it up and contacted a few people, and they explained that eating placenta is one of the last vestiges of medicinal cannibalism, at least in the West. It’s rare, even if the media makes it sound like everyone is doing it.

Someone put me in touch with a midwife who collected placentas from her clients and prepared them. Her husband was a chef, and together they would cook it up in all these interesting ways. They’d powder it to put it into pills, or they would dry it and make it into a jerky. They'd even make a Slurpee out of it if the midwife came to your house. When I interviewed this woman over the phone, she said, “It’s too bad you can't come down here to Texas, because I just had a baby and you could eat my placenta.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She said that her husband could even make a taco out of it.

Classes were starting soon, but when I went home and talked to my wife about it, I realized, “You know, if it's ten years from now and I've written this book about cannibalism, but I passed on the chance to eat this woman's placenta, I’ll be kicking myself in the ass.” The next thing I knew, I had tickets to Dallas, and she contacted me to say, “Our babysitter called in sick, so the kids will be here when you arrive.” She had ten homeschooled kids that ranged in age from this newborn to a teenager. They were into the fact that I was there to eat their mother's placenta. She said, “My husband’s a chef—how would you like it? He can make it like osso bucco.” I’m Italian, so I said that would be fine. He and his son went to get all these organic vegetables, and he put on his chef’s uniform. All the kids were pulsating at the doorway, trying to see what was going on. He defrosted a piece of his wife’s placenta from the freezer, cooked up these vegetables, then chopped up the placenta, cooked it with the dish, put it on a plate, and lo and behold, I ate it.

AW: What did it taste like?

BS: Everyone wanted to know that. Like I said before, it all depends on how you cook it, and this was clearly organ meat. The consistency reminded me of liver or veal—really tender. The taste reminded me of when I was in college, and on Sundays, when my friends would get together, we would take chicken gizzards and throw them in the frying pan with butter. It was cheap, and it was what we could afford as broke college students. The taste reminded me of chicken gizzards, but the consistency was much more tender.

I ended my book with a story about how I had to bring a bottle of wine to this dinner. There I was at the liquor store, a snarky New York type, and I found the most Texan-looking Texan to help me out. Cowboy boots and everything. I said, “I need to match a wine to what we’re having for dinner tonight.” She said, “What are you having?” When I said “placenta,” she literally turned and ran. So I decided I would just grab a nice Italian red, and it turned out to be the perfect choice. It’s a wild story, but I couldn't have made up something so interesting and weird and wonderful. She was great; her kids were great. They were really kind to me.

AW: Culture is king, right? It had meaning to her, so while it might seem weird to someone else, she was giving you a strange and beautiful gift.

BS: That’s exactly right. This is the last vestige of medicinal cannibalism that I know about. The midwife herself admitted that the placebo effect is very powerful. I interviewed her about it beforehand, and she brought up this historical reference indicating that consuming placenta had a benefit—it was a way to control the baby blues, so to speak. If you lost your placenta, there were hormones that the mother was now not getting that would lead her to various stages of depression. By consuming the placenta, you could replenish these hormones.

A study came out of Poland saying, “Yes, this interpretation makes sense, and eating placenta works.” That study was completely torn apart by subsequent researchers who found no benefit at all. Think of a raw egg. You have albumin in an egg, right? You cook the egg, and you've now changed that albumin into something else. It's not an active protein anymore. It’s the same thing with any medicinal benefit you might get from hormones in a placenta. When you cook it, they're fried. They change into something else. They're denatured. So there's no reason to believe that consuming your placenta has any positive benefit, except to make you feel better—which, there's a lot to be said for that. But I don’t condone any of this, because if this woman had some type of blood disorder, I might have gotten sick from eating her placenta. I would try it one time in the name of journalistic experience, but I would never condone eating your placenta. It makes no sense from a health and safety standpoint.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.