Cannibals die fast

1992/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

Eating people is not only a bad habit, but can be very harmful to health, according to a group of American biologists.

Researchers at the University of Arizona, David Pfennig, Michael Loeb and James Collins, analyze the ravages to discover cannibalism. They say that the reason for having so little cannibalism is that it is the right way to transmit diseases.

The cannibal animal can accumulate energy in the eggs when the food is abundant and when it is insufficient can eat these eggs. Even when adults of some species eat their young people, they acquire food that they could not get directly.

Cannibalism is sometimes seen in coplos. If they eat their companions, they grow faster and arrive earlier. Therefore, they stop being larvae before and have more chances to survive.

If cannibalism has the aforementioned advantages, why has it not been extended more? One of the answers is the risk that cannibals will assume their prey. But this problem would be that of most carnivores.

Pfennig and his friends say that animals who practice cannibalism have many possibilities of assimilating dangerous viruses. Some pathogens can only live in certain species. Therefore, animals that eat animals of the same species are at risk of acquiring harmful pathogens. The intake of animals from other species reduces the risk of infection.

Pfennig and his friends analyzed the tiger arrabio, species in which are found those who eat and do not eat. The cannibal tiger arrabians, as could be seen in the laboratory tests, ate fragments of their members. Later, many animals died with diseases.

The conclusions drawn from these investigations also serve as human beings. In some tributes of New Guinea they feed on the bodies of their enemies and, therefore, they die with a disease called kuru. The evil Kuru is a disease that causes the weakness of the body and is more widespread in women than in men.