Did AIDS come from eating monkey?
This question has been discussed for years, but I found a recent article about new research on the origin of the HIV virus. From CNN: Research into wild chimps backs theory people got virus eating them.
The theory is SIV may have transfered to humans as HIV, and possibly from humans eating monkey meat, and that this may have happened on a number of occassions. WeirdMeat.com has always felt a little iffy about eating monkey -- seems a little too close to home, ya think? And eating stuff that's close to home like that, well, maybe there's a problem with it, like cows going "mad" after eating beef. I guess in the name of science, we'd need to test all that properly to see if there's something naturally wrong with cannibalism ... feed pork to pigs, chicken to chickens. Are there animal species that do this as a matter of course?
posted by Michael @ 11:14 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Mammal species tend not to eat their own, as far as I can tell, but it's very common in the insect world, and among many fishes as well.
If under stress, mother mice have been known to devour their children.
Many snake species will eat their own,
and pigs in general will eat anything if they can get their snouts on it.
Chimps have also been recorded as eatig their own kind, and there is even some genetic evidence supporting humans having consumed eachother somewhat frequently.
Link to story
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s828800.htm
Infact, you may be consuming human bits and not know it, as the cheapest source for food grade L-cysteine is from the processing of human hair.
Info on L-cyseine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-cysteine#Production
and for those that have dared to ask "What does a human taste like?" the answer appears to be rather underwhelming: veal
http://food.oregonstate.edu/ref/culture/taboo_allen.html
in addition to what everyone else has said, alligators eat each other.
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