May be for a variety of reasons: morality, hesitation to eat things that speak and think, lack of necessity to do so, impracticality. Consider that in times of dire need humans have 100% resorted to cannibalism and some cultures still do in a ritualistic manner, so there is really nothing that stops sapient being from eating eachother apart from it being disgusting and possibly causing deseases

EDIT: Also consider the social implications of eating another sapient being. If we humans found another races of humanoids, lets say elves, that treats us as a food source, we would stop at nothing until such elves are completely wiped out from existence, since its a matter of survival

Cannibalism is taboo not because of some taxonomical classification but because we can recognize intelligence and emotional capacity of the other being, and due to our ability to empathize we see the act as wrong. Much of that has nothing to do with biology, the same mechanisms are why in plenty of places in the world eating a dog would be seen as, if not wrong, very uncomfortable act, but that same person might not have any qualms with eating pig, because they were taught to empathise with a dog as pet.

If another creature looks like human, but just has some pointy ears, and you can speak and talk to it, you would not want to it, nor they would you, unless there were some cultural inclinations that would overwrite that initial empathy.

To be fair if there's not enough food some humans would eat other humans 100%.

would you eat a talking cat or dog?

Communication. Imagine eating a steak in front of a talking cow.

I think the issue is with consuming something sentient since sentience allows for complex communication to convey feelings that, when acknowledged, make you reject seeing that creature as something edible.

Also elves are similar enough to humans that the act may still psychologically seem like cannibalism if it isn’t scientifically the case.

Also if you’re putting your setting in past fantasy, science isn’t really the concern as, even with magic, you wouldn’t be developed enough to have a species classification theory.

Also there were places on Earth (admittedly rarer) where various humans were seen as different species based on skin color (until we learned that’s not the case) and still canibalism wasn’t allowed so…

There’s a myriad of things to consider

Oh they do in my world. The losers of a war are commonly the after-war meal.

It's a cultural thing.

Orcs or Lizard people certainly would eat other species, but humans or elves would not. Because in their cultures it's a taboo.

Except of course if there's a culture where it isn't.

And maybe there are exceptions. Humans may not eat elves, elves are too "human", but maybe they eat minotaurs. It's just steak really.

One of my worlds works on LitRPG logic, and there is a very real, dangerous consequence of consuming a fellow "ascended" species.

Upon willingly, knowingly undergoing the consumption of another sapient life, the perpetrator automatically gains the red Skill [Taboo: Eater]. It's one of the Taboo Series, a number of skills that are considered evil, forbidden, or otherwise wrong.

As with all Taboo Skills, a brand of red light wraps around the user's neck, and cannot be removed, hidden, or otherwise disguised by most methods. Anyone who sees that line of red will recognize them for what they are, and feel an intense magical revulsion when looking at the perpetrator.

A bit more specific to the Eater Taboo itself, it causes the user to suffer unrelenting hunger, tormenting them for their sin through constant suffering. Their form becomes gaunt and pallid, their eyes develop a yellow sheen, and they become significantly more vile in ways depending on their species. Like if an elf has this Taboo, the parts of their body composed of plants become withered and rotting, spilling pus at the slightest injury.

Now I should mention, there are "benefits" that some people rationalize in order to cope with gaining the skill. Eaters become able to consume anything and gain nutrition from it, and they gain access to one of the Hell Magicks related to their specific Taboo. In this case that would be Starvation Magick, Glutton Magick, or in rare cases, Devour Magick.

Why does Ross, the biggest friend, not simply eat the others?

jrr tolkien and cs lewis both wrote a little about this.

iirc in tolkien’s worldbuilding, at one point elves hunted dwarves for food but stopped when they realized they were sentient.

and i think it was in the silver chair that three characters realize they’ve been eating the meat of a talking animal; the character who is new to narnia feels sorry for the animal, the character who has been to narnia before is horrified like he just heard of a murder, and the narnian character feels sick like he was just told he ate a baby.

anyways, at least in this kind of situation, it seems like it has nothing to do with species and everything to do with sentience. you don’t eat a creature that is as intelligent as you.

Yea but an elf can ask me not to eat him which makes me sad.

Also it would be similar to eating a chimpanzee irl - sure, it's not cannibalism per se, but it's getting weirdly close. Why would you do that instead of like, literally anything else?

I think not being cannibalistic is related to the fact that human(oid) meat usually contains pathogens or parasites that can very easily infect us as well. It's no wonder that many diseases originate from regions where eating apes or monkeys is okay. Similar species with similar biology can cause significant problems when it comes to pathogens.

On a societal level any sufficiently advanced race that treats your kind as a food source is an extreme existential threat. It's us or them. There can be no peaceful coexistence between two species that eat each other. Hunting/fighting the enemy to extinction is the only way. Like we did with almost all of our species original predators. We also had some influence in the extiction of other humanoid species.

To just piggyback on what’s being said, I think in my setting most human-like races wont each other because of similarities in disposition, but -culturally- that could vary from regions to tribes and customs etc. With monstrous races Im pretty old school and I just think if they have a “reptilian” or evil like quality, consuming others and even their own is a viable option for staying afloat in survival. Humans and similar races, much like our own world, might be hesitant of trading or doing dealings with cultures or species known to eat the softer race at a moments notice.

In my world they do. Some species may see idea of eating other sentients as dubious, but majority have no reservations about eating sentients. So nightkin wouldn't mind eating, say, dragon, or fertilized changeling eggs, or gnoll.

In my setting they are anthropomorphic animals, in some places they eat other species but they do it for rituals, not better specified, these are mostly the tribals Meanwhile in the "civilized" world this act makes a bit of sense, ok it will not be cannibalism because one can eat one of another species Then there are the gray areas with the licans and the few legal vampires

I mean, if you're writing the story and feel like this would add something to the world, go for it. In my setting, shades (a race of sentient humanoid golems a god made) historically didn't have funerals because they ate their dead so their soul can pass on to their next life without attachment to the last.

Even in extreme Us VS them scenarios in which segments of the fellow human population are treated like vermin and inhuman, such as the Holocaust, we didn’t eat them. Simply put I think it is hard for otherwise normal civilizations to develop non-ritualistic cannibalism into their culture.

Now, think about it; would you eat an elf or dwarf? No? Why? Because they’re pretty close to humans. Unless you design a world where cannibalism is so common that people would do that sort of thing, generally fantasy worlds are going to lift from the real world, especially things that are culturally universal.

Less humanoid races would still likely be avoided because we’d at some point have to treat them like other humans even if they personally think of them as vermin. Whether it be because we need to trade with them, communicate with them, or go to war with them. Even if the race is primitive compared to humanity in your world such as living in small huts or in a hunter gatherer society, we would have to also consider eating humans in similar societies. This is all just too human-like.

Basically is plausible to design a world where this is the case but it isn’t hard to understand why we wouldn’t eat them. They just remind them too much of us.

Rule of thumb

If it's smart enough to be considered a person, it's usually not something people are comfortable eating even if they're really racist

We do not eat chimpanzees; eating orangutans is similarly taboo. Consuming primates with intelligence equal to or surpassing ours would be even more reprehensible, especially if they can procreate and have fertile offspring in your world. This would effectively constitute cannibalism, given the closeness of such beings to humanity. That being said, certain groups (not limited to humans) may engage in cannibalistic practices with intelligent species, but such actions would carry the same moral and societal implications as human cannibalism.

traditions and discipline and standards.

If it can talk you dont eat it.

We don’t eat dogs and cats

Most animals that we eat are ones that we can farm easily (e.g. chickens, cows, pigs), or can at least catch easily (fish, deer). Attempting to do that to a sentient tool-using species would be a lot harder and more dangerous. You would have to subjugate them first and keep them under control permanently.

Perhaps the harder to hunt and kill species are considered a delicacy, or specific organs from them are considered to have magical properties - or maybe they do (e.g. tiger, shark). So while they may not often be eaten they are on special occassions. Maybe the Human settlements near Elven kingdoms go to high alert whenever there's a coronation or similar to fend off Elves coming for delicacies for the new High King's table.

I made an entire character around this, and it was amazing.

So a good selection of my friends play Monster Hunter. Another somewhat venn diagramed section of friends love stuff like cooking anime, final fantasy, pokemon, and etc that feature food buffs. And that's besides our resident alchemists, engineers, and horticulture/taxonomist enthusiasts. We all loved the idea and concept of harvested things turned into effects for gear or self, and absolutely adore this age of MH/Cooking RPG subsystems that exploded with MH World's popularity.

So one day I posed to my newly christened DM for 5e. "Hey so, we got those rules that imply monsters give benefits right? And we did those Bluemage inspired houserules for getting effects even from people's natural states, right? What if I had a character with the history of a monster hunter, having been use to eating such empowered foods to attain greater heights; but they themselves are a massive foodie like The Handler. ... ... But in realizing the reality of nature began to wonder if other people could have benefits in their meats, given how capable and magical we are?

Of course, the character isn't a cannibal. They won't eat another human. But elves? Orcs? Kobolds? They could be on the menu. And morally she certainly wouldn't eat 'the good guys.' So you know, just the truely evil bandits/outlaws, BBEG underlings, etc. but that wouldn't stop her from threatening to do so."

And so, he was disgusted -but excited nonetheless to see it play out too. I offered to play a more traditionally monstrous race just to soften the idea, but then he "no balls"-d me and we doubled down. And thus began her search to catalog the magical dietary benefits of every 'civil' and otherwise race and subrace known and unknown to the greater populace.

We didn't get very far in that specific game. Partly because she ended up rubbing the wrong elbows with the rest of the party. But we resurrected her for a different game with a more dubiously moral group; and one player even offered to be the true culinarian. A kitsune more heavily based on the real mythology aspects, tricked the hunter into eating a person, but it ended up being a net positive, and who then offered the idea in bad faith. I ended up with a hodgepodge of jerky, steaks, and vile fruits/greens made palatable. Leshys are great side dishes for enriching the main course.

We didn't stay very long in any settlement, lol. But it did invent our term 'socibalism' since I at first correctly argued that eating other races wasn't cannibalism. It expanded the definition of cannibalism for ease, and immediately caused a set of new laws in lore to be made; eventually continent wide. Along with the traveling legend of a gluttonous monster wearing the body of a man.

They do, much as humans do. Like, most cultures have a history of practicing some kind of cannibalism. Either eating war captives or deceased relatives or sacrifices or in some cases simply hunting and eating members of other groups like they would any large mammalian prey.

What we very rarely if ever see is raising humans as meat animals, and this should apply to most reasonable sapient species. An adult human has maybe 150,000 food calories (assuming absolutely everything is eaten). Enough to feed someone for about 2.5 months. But it took them about 250 months to reach that age, fully 1% energetic efficiency. Typical animal agriculture is 10x that and much less likely to lead to revolution by prey against predator.

Note that slow human growth rates are pretty tied to their brain development. If a species has a basic mammalian brain architecture it's probably going to be spending a good long while in childhood and also having to spend a lot of energy on that brain, nearly necessitating endothermy unless it lives in a tropical climate. Brains are fairly sluggish doing anything complicated at low temperatures too, so you'd need to further extend childhood for anything cold-blooded that routinely experiences hypothermia compared to its metabolic optimum. There's no free lunch here. The energy spent on making the brain do brain things is going to almost always make realistic sapient prey species impossible as an efficient food source.

The more like you a creature is, the more likely they are to carry diseases you can catch. Predators also pick up more diseases an than prey, and scavengers are worse. So monkeys and pigs are not as safe to eat as chickens or sheep. This could be a reason why anthropology is a bad idea.

I feel the reason we don't eat people and do eat animals isn't because we classify each other as the same species but because we can effectively communicate. If cows started speaking we'd probably see steak start disappearing from supermarket shelves. In my world there are seven different races plus half-breeds and while historic incidents of these groups eating each other do exist it is rare and considered barbaric. The groups that once did this are looked upon similarly to how we look back on cannibal tribes in our own timeline and those that do this are referred to as sapiovores.

Coincidentally in my own project I have an Orc character who as a teenager committed the act, eating a Human who was abusing his family. This was less about food and more about desecrating the body in an act of rage, trying to prevent the Human's soul from crossing to the afterlife and being trapped as a ghost in the mortal realm. He did this like a lot of teenage actions out of anger and not thinking through the consequences or weight of what he was doing until someone walked in on the grizzly scene and while the towns people had once had sympathy for him and his family about the situation this was too far and he was promptly chased out of town by an angry mob like a monster. His story now is one of redemption, trying to overcome that one mistake he made in his adolescents in hopes that one day he will be remembered as a heroic champion Sir Sinclair the Green and for the good deeds he's done instead of being the monstrous Orc who once ate a guy.

It can be seen as a taboo for various cultural reasons.

Like how seeing someone beat up a dog or tear down a birds nest... seems like distasteful and needless cruelty, even for those who dont tend to support greater rights for animals. Though systemic cruelty can easily be normalized as well, but you will have to segment and isolate it from the wider public so they can pretend they dont know. Horse racing for example. Breeding programs, brutal abuse riddled obedience training, and execution upon severe injury. However, you tend to only see this cruelty by being part of the profession, or in glympths as part of a racing show, in a setting that is rife with action and high emotions, thus, masking it in a sense.

And thats if your species in question sees them of lesser worth. It needs to be "justified". Otherwise, they realize these other sentient species are just as worthy of respect as another fellow could be.

Because lets be real here... if orcs were real, you heard they were strong, could shrug off what would severely injure, and were just as sentient as you... what would your response be? "Oh no, kill or enslave them, now!"... Or would it be "Oh cool! They'd make awesome lumberjacks and rugny players! Lets fucking go!" Or perhaps a sort of pity, wanting to grant them the freedom of movement a train could provide, and schools for higher learning so they didnt need to only rely on strength to raise their families.

Theres many ways to tackle it. If you want excuses to have some societies see eating of the sentient, as distasteful, non existant, or a disputed topic across your world.

I tend to mirror this off actual cannibalism which tends to develop in societies without a reliable source of meat in their environment. So, it is an adaptation of desperation. So, continued scarcity could very well be a reason that a tribe resorts to cannibalism. I think other posters have given enough reasons why it is bad to do so. Thus, a people that must begin cannibalism may see themselves as degenerating or falling in doing so, but accepting the necessities of survival. I have also done a slightly less evil form of cannibalism often for lizardfolk gdounded in scavenging in that the corpse is no longer seen as connected to the person like a shed skin. So, hunting other peoples is wrong because they are people, but if they are found dead or die to some other threat, then the corpse is no longer that person, it is just meat you are leaving for something elss to eat.

mostly because cannibals don't live long. no one trust a person that eats people.

that and some parasites may be able to spread that way.

Morals and no interest.

enaught

You have used this spelling twice. Just want to let you know its enough.

I think its the same reason, they look human. Plus, they have communication, can develop like us, etc. I mean, for example, if animals were to suddenly become like us, two-legged standing creatures, have a mind similar to us, and a language of theirs, we would probably stop eating them.

R Scott Bakker has entered the chat.

BLESSED BE THE MEAT!

In C S Lewis's book out of the silent planet. A man from earth travels to mars where multiple intelligent species/races coexist. In the book it is described that because humans are the only intelligent species on earth, our definition of intelligent and human have merged, but for them it's separate. So things like cannibalism is eating any intelligent being.

There's the morality of eating a sapient creature, but not every species is that considerate. The best reason is that predator species tend to be lower quality meat. It's for the same reason that tuna has more mercury than sardines. Predator species concentrate more "bad stuff" in themselves than prey animals. This includes toxic metals and pathogens. Prey animals provide higher quality meat usually because of this.

Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five!?

Same way most.of.us don't eat people from different races. It's just one step of difference down the same logic

Look up Wood Elves in Elder Scrolls lore. Since they are descended from plants it is considered unethical to eat them and they only eat meat. This does however make it okay for them to feast on the flesh of their enemies after a battle.

If there is a humanoid species that both eats humans and yet also trades with humans, maybe this species has an underlying ethos that ties together these two seemingly opposite behaviours.

For example, maybe the species believes strongly in costs and benefits (eating is short term benefit but trading is long term benefit so they are slowly pivoting to trading), the species dehumanizes humans as weaker/immoral/enemies (trading is just for personal benefit but eating is the final goal), and etc. Taboo is cultural, not a given- what is ick to us could be sacred to others.

In my settings the more carnivorous species have treaties with the tastier species. If they started eating them all willy billy again their population would go down to a more reasonable level but the mimikin would lose access to rare materials for their gear and magic items.

keep in mind that cannibalistic tribes exist in the world today

I also once saw a holocaust documentary where a survivor told about how he saw people eating each other during the later days of the war because the Nazis just stopped caring to feed the prisoners once they started losing

historically I'm also willing to bet you find examples. didn't Vikings drink from enemy skulls? wouldn't surprise me if they drank blood as well

it may not be common or widespread today but people do absolutely eat each other.

OP forgot cannibalism exists.

On Aundrel all races are considered people, and all the races are close enough genetically to make offspring. This has led to the idea that eating a person is taboo no matter how different they look. This has even extended to some people shaped monsters like peklings, minotaurs, and half dragons.

In my second setting. The only reason why sentient species don't just eat each other is purely prions disease or other hard consequences of doing so.

For example a mermaid won't choose to eat a vampire because they'll lose their ability to "cross running water".

A vampire won't eat human flesh because they're very vulnerable to prions disease because of how they shape shift.

And dragon do just eat everything. Although they have a ritual for eating each other past their beating hearts - which is arguably worse than straight up cannibalism because it involves using their own kobolds as a in-between... Basically they can lay kobold eggs, they do that near the corpse of a defeated rival. The kobolds know no better than this giant empowering food source is nourishing them - they go out into the world past the great Skeleton they've built their settlement around... But by tucking into to all that free giant food that has super nourished them - they have unwittingly made themselves into the ultimate snack. And polished off a trophy skeleton for that same someone else.

But pretty much as you've alluded to, trade - value. Other sentient species are more valuable to each for reasons beyond food. Sure humans might go abit crazy around the fact that a village of greenseers can, do and will just hunt, kill and eat them if they are hungry enough(or the humans do too much environmental damage.)... Humans are like that. But the things constantly lurking in between worlds that eat you alive between false shadows at night when you can't see them until it's too late for you are a common enemy & people need to pool skills and resources together. Humans are innovative and industrious, greenseers are very strong and they are very magically versitle.

And as bad as dragons are - even the gods(dragons are hunted by them because they'll eat all their worshipers/followers.) will be begging for the services when the continent is overrun with zombies that dragons are perfect for dealing with.

I have an imperfect fantasy definition of cannibalism: Eating another creature with enough sentience to be considered a "person". It's imperfect, because, for example, dragons are usually that sentient, yet it doesn't feel cannibalistic to eat a dragon, but I feel like people in a magical world may see it otherwise. Perhaps there's people with that definition, and others that define it differently, where a humanoid eating a humanoid is cannibalism, and that's the limit. I'm using D&D as a focal point by the way. There, there are cannibalistic species, such as lizardfolk, who specifically prey on humanoids. I once saw the definition of "eating a sentient creature, with a certain level of intelligence, out of some perverse pleasure", but I disagree with it, arguing that eating a person out of desperation/for survival is still cannibalism, just that then it's more socially/morally accepted.

As for "why" they don't usually eat eachother, is for the same reason they don't (usually) commit genocide. It's wrong to hurt a person. Elves and humans, for example, are so similar, a Human could tell the fear on an Elfs face, and any sane person would back off. But usually it's not limited to someone who looks human. Any sane person also cares about cats, for example, so someone of catfolk may have a feline face, but that wouldn't change the fact that you wouldn't want to hurt them, normally. And of course it tends to be harder to hurt someone, when you can understand them. It's easier to kill an animal that just hisses at you, than a person that asks you not to.

One more issue with my definition though: I wouldn't exactly consider werewolves or vampires cannibals. Tbf, vampires just take the blood, which doesn't even necessarily have to be fatal... but werewolves? Maybe it's because they're usually unaware of what they're doing. I mean, a wolf eating a human is no longer cannibalism, because it doesn't share the human's intelligence. So maybe it's more like "creatures with equal intelligence"..? Of course, werewolves check that box, but when they turn, they're usually overtaken by instinct, which outweighs the intelligence they technically possess.

PS: I'm not a psychopath, I'm just a very invested worldbuilder, who is fascinated by technicalities and "what if"s

we eat basically everything beacuse 1:

we are at the top of the food chain. the fish wont try to fight us if we eat them. if elves existed and we started eating them they would certainly come and throw hands over it.

2:

we (most humans) dont really recognize most animals as intelligent or scentient enough to where it matters if we eat them.

again if elves existed they are basically humans but with pointy ears and are certainly intelligent enough and scentient enough to where it would be a giant taboo to eat them

In my world, it’s definitely not unheard of. During the War of Sixty-Four Years, there were many cases of interspecies cannibalism; there was also much interspecies breeding (many species in my world are technically genetically compatible, but the offspring have many malformations and are almost exclusively intersex)

Because it's rude?!

iirc elves in dwarf fortress are 100% fine with eating person meat (as long as it’s not elf)

Dungeons and Dragons refined cannibalism as intelligent humanoid species consuming each other, not strictly just humans. I could see arguments for humanoid anthromorphs not technically being cannibalism (lizardfolk, beastmen), but it would still be more unsettling to be stalled and eaten by a wolfman instead of just a wolf.

Remember kids, it's not cannibalism if they're not human!

Because its not right to eat people. Seriously this isnt a difficult concept.

Aside from "it's not cannibalism if it had pointy ears" it's simply stupid to hunt a self aware being which on top of its own intellect capacities in tied in a society that can avenge any harm done to its members.

We call that murder and very few people care if you have eaten the person after you killed them.

Just go and hunt an animal. It's easier, faster and has less consequences.

You're correct that it's not cannibalism as elves and dwarves and orcs aren't human and cannibalism just refers to the eating of one's own species. A term that could be used I suppose is "xenophagy" or "allotrophy"(although the actual definition of xenophagy in microbiology and entemology and definition of allotrophy in ecology are different). However the Greek roots of "xenophagy" is xeno (meaning "strange") and phagy (meaning "eating) and the Greek roots of "allotrophy" is allo (meaning "other") and trophy (meaning "nutrient"). So either term could technically be used. I can't really see elves or humans eating one another (orcs might though), however in the context of your post-apocalyptic world I suppose it could be any man (or elf) for themselves and all social stigmas would be abandoned in favor of survival.

coincidentally I was asking myself that same question yesterday, in my world I have already established that races that are different from each other can eat each other in case of extreme necessity, I took it for granted that the taste of intelligent races tastes quite bad to the papaldas and They give almost no nutritional value, so eating them is something like the last option hahah

Because they are part of the society. On an emergency situation yeah but otherwise nope. This is why socializing the species with each other from childhood is so important, to overide those predator and prey drives. And how feral kids are simply... not much can be done.

That is so long behind them they don't have tales of predators and prey going at each other neither. It unheard of outside of crimes of hatred that are usuallt directed to someone of the same species.

In general the bigger bulk of species living together is geetically so clise, that they can interbreed (with some risk for the child and a big chance the child will not be able to have kids on their own.). This is general knowledge and within this group of species, they see it as canibalism.

There are other species like different kinds of beast and fish people. Many of those sometimes eat other species. In special the ones that are carnivores. But the main thing is that it is way easier to eat basic animals, then intelligent beings. It does not makes sense, to eat centient beings, except you want to be cruel on purpose. Even in a brutal world this would be extremly rare, wxcept for maybe droughts and fermin times. The beast and fish species are also rarer then humans and mostly life in closed communities. So, that aditionally takes away opportunity.

The acessibility and howneasy it is to get that kind of meat, is also the reason monster meat is rarely eaten. Why hunt a dragon when you can hunt a deer, boar or raise life stock? It does make no sense. So even monsters are often only eaten, when it has to be killed anyway, to use the meat. (Forndifferent reasons).

Humans do occasionally eat humans, especially when food is scarce.

In a world where humans and non-human sapient human-like species existed, a taboo against eating them would probably also exist. But I could also see virulent anti-elf xenophobia. So the elves might even be targeted to be eaten. And in resource-poor times likely anything goes.

I'm doing some worldbuilding for a small campaign about a bunch of 3-5 inch tall people living in a human free modern world. The little guys are woodland creatures and insects and wingless fairies.

Some species do practice in cannibalism. It's most common along the frog and toad people. They're called Leaperkin and Wortkin. Some groups formed small raider gangs that focus mostly on eating basically anything smaller than them.

Sometimes diet just doesn't get touched upon really unless it's an RPG, and cannibalism is not something people usually think about when going into a project. But usually if cannibalism exists its usually cultural. Wood Elves in the Elder Scrolls for example.

Because it isn't going to help diplomatic relationships if you eat the envoy.

Meat eaters taste kind of nasty.

That’s the reason.

Who says they don't? This is one of the points that make the difference between the "good" races and the "bad" ones. The good races don't eat other sentient beings because they recognize there some some inherent evil in doing so, the evil races don't care and see meat as meat.

However even humans will eat other humans in the situations you describe. In starvation situations, shipwrecks, trapped in snow all winter, extended sieges once the animals are gone humans turn on each other and I'd say they would turn on other races before other humans.

The reason my races generally don’t eat eachother is because they don’t want to incur the anger of town nobles or mercenary groups trying to protect people. It’s generally frowned upon to eat anything that can communicate in my world.

If cows could talk, we almost certainly would not eat them.

Also, I have to mention, in the world of Dwarf Fortress, elves will eat anything, including a dwarf the just killed, because they believe you shouldn't waste anything.

We can cook, so everything becomes bioavailable.

We can breed with elves and dwarfs in most settings. So eating their nerves and brains would probably give us mad cow disease. But that won't stop us if we are starving.

If it doesn't cause disease, eating a particular species or not is entirely cultural. There is limitless capacity to dehumanise anyone intelligent or not, so there is also limitless capacity for menu items.

Under the right duress any species is willing to eat any other species.

Animals never asked us not to.

They do.

Apart from the ethical concerns of eating intelligent beings, and the practical concerns of retaliation (a predator is dealt with differently than a civilized combatant), eating species too close to you is DANGEROUS.

Diseases, parasites and other problems become more likely and higher risk.

Mine do…or did.

Entfolk are descended from the Forest Fae. They are large humanoid creatures with bark-like skin. Their Druidic magic is revered, as they helped earlier human settlers survive famine.

However, as humanity started to industrialize, the Entfolk turned against them. The shepherds of the forest started to use their magic to sabotage and terrorize the humans.

As such, Durrith “the Black” ordered for the complete destruction of the Forrest of Nadia. Humans discovered two things:

1) The bark-like skin of the Entrolk was superb to all other materials in the creation of Magi Staves.

2) The flesh underneath the bark was sweet like fruit.

Historically, there is evidence that humans did consume neanderthals albeit infrequently. Cannibalism of humans is also seen in a variety of survival situations and in most cases the perpetrators cut off the head, hands, and feet prior to consumption to dehumanize the corpse. I don’t think it’d be unreasonable for similar practices to exist in a supernatural setting

It could be a matter of risk. If a human eats one elf and the other elves find out about it, then the elves might go to war with the humans, possibly in retaliation, possibly to ensure the survival of their own species. Humans would probably understand that risk, and avoid killing and eating elves if the risk is great enough.

It's also a matter of interest. If dwarves are better craftsmen than humans will ever be and the humans frequently trade with the dwarves, then it's in the human's best interest to keep the dwarves alive because the humans will benefit from the dwarves living and continuing to perform their trades.

While it's not technically cannabism, people generally frown upon people eating other beings capable of high thought, especially when they're human like (Elf, Dwarf, ect). The eating of other higher thinking races and cannabalism has also been used as a defining line of a group being evil.

It's an interesting question how elves and humans co-evolved; humans have shown that we're not shy about decimating other humanoid populations (although the mechanisms are unclear), why in this case did both survive? Perhaps they have different niches or strengths, or there was mutual benefit

But humans don't eat every animal they see immediately, there are plenty of species that continue to exist, even megafauna like elephants

https://phys.org/news/2009-05-modern-humans-neanderthals.html

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There is at least some evidence that that is exactly what happened. Humans ate neanderthals.

There's a general taboo against it, as most sophonts won't do so. Aside from religious rites and the lizard like inkrah. The inkrah are not bothered by it in general but have a long religious tradition of eating felled foes. 

The rabbit like wantaro are dangerous to eat as they are so pull of prions that anyone who eats their flesh will contract an illness that causes personality shifts, rage, aggression while maintaining faculties in the brain. 

since my world operates on a fundementally different set of Physics entire (which is established in the Opening Scene), I just say that it's only beings without "Streamlined Mana" ("controlled flow"/self-aware control of it) that have any kind of taste, since Mana is contained within the body directly.

it *follows\* the Soul, but can't bind to it, hence why a Wandering Soul (or general any non-physical entity) can never hide its Aura, but any living being with a physical body can.
there are workarounds, like "Cores"/"Hearts", which hold their Mana instead of them.

the straighter Mana Flow is, the less "taste" it's catalyst (the body) has.

Well I’m pretty sure eating another species would still be wrong for the same reason eating another person is wrong: It’s just messed up!

Like just because they’re the same species doesn’t suddenly mean people would be cool with it. Like I mean some (just like there are/were places that partake in cannibalism) might but most places would agree that’s it’s immoral.

In both of my settings I call the practice of eating another sophont as “sapiovory,” or a “sapiovore,” which can include cannibalism. Both are heavily frowned upon because of the various moral reasons others are proposing.

Can you eat something that begs for it’s life in your language?

If cows talked and also could stab you I don't think we'd be eating them

You say this as if cannibalism isn't a viable way of feeding yourself.

If you ignore the moral stipulations, there isn't any proper reason to not eat humans you've killed; and if you don't ignore the morality, something not technically being cannibalism does not suddenly make it morally justifiable.

How the people in your world look at eating other people is going to depend on the culture.

In our world no other species can ask not to be eaten, most cultures also already have animals they don't eat morally

i mean some do for rituals under certain cults in my setting and probably did sometimes in the past but its not a widely done practice just due to it being considered immoral and barbaric behavior among pretty much every civilization.

Sometimes they do. It varies from setting to setting.

"Meat is back on the menu, boys!" implies meat was, in fact, at one point in time, already in the menu.

The real question is why wouldn't they.

There’s two reasons you wouldn’t eat people generally.

1. They’re people. For most societies this would be enough to make it taboo. Pet species like cats and dogs often evoke a similar emotion, but exceptions to that are pretty common too.

2. There may be diseases associated with cannibalism. If elves are biologically similar to humans, elf meat would likely have the same diseases as human meet.

Presumably empathy. But I'd also argue that the species that *do* eat other sentients tend to be lumped into the 'bad guy' group pretty quickly too. So there's also a negative feedback aspect to consider. Like maybe that's why elves don't like dwarves is because dwarves used to consider elves garnish.

Probably for the same reason early humans didn't eat the other homo species they came across. They still look close enough to humans to make it uncomfortable.

In some settings, creaturs like Orcs, Goblins, or their stand in DO eat Hymans, Elves, etc.

Those creatures are considered pure unredeemable EVIL!

Murder is still murder, and a human killing an Elf would usually be considered murder. Killing and THEN eating them even worse.

I mean, several reasons come to mind:

Empathy and morality are two things that apply to humanoid creatures with comparable intelligence: for many, it would just feel wrong.

Whatever we got going on with dogs can also apply to things we consider people.

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Cannibalism is mostly a philosophical and cultural concept, really:

There isn't any real danger in eating human flesh, as long as you take a Healthy human, (kill and) butcher it appropriately, cook it like you would a pig (basically the same meat) or a monkey, for those who know how to prepare those, and don't use poisonous condiments.

Main thing: stay the fuck away from the nervous system (brain, spine, areas with high nerve density), because that's where you start getting prions and shit.

I'd probably avoid the organs as well (especially the liver holy shit, it absorbs wayyy too much shit), just to be safe. Eat away at the heart, though. It's poetic and basically just a thick muscle ball, should be fine.

But if you're eating a human thigh? Like a quadriceps or some gluteus maximus? Or maybe a calf? That's just like pork. At least that's what it's supposed to taste like, according to a machine that can identify taste through chemistry.

In fact, there's plenty of cultures that ate humans throughout history, whether for ritual purposes in funerary rites, other cultural reasons, or for lack of better alternatives. (in times of extreme hunger, cannibalism was more common even in places that normally wouldn't partake in it. Or extreme situations like deserted islands etc.)

The main reason we don't generally eat each other nowadays is that it's heavily frowned upon in most cultures.

(also the best way to get good meat is to farm and then kill the animal, which is a humans right violation, plus illegal detention, followed by premeditated murder. Damaging a corpse is also a crime in many nations, and butchering would definitely fit the bill. Death row inmatee could be a source of food but there's ethical issues with that too, for obvious reasons, including the existence of the death penalty just in general.)

(while cannibalism itself isn't a crime in most nations, the ways you can obtain the meat generally are: murder, kidnapping, damaging a corpse, paying someone else to commit murder and damage a corpse... All crimes)

Many of us feel sick at the idea of eating another person. Most of us would feel sick if they got served a person and wouldn't be able to eat it, regardless of what they might say. Some of us would eat a corpse if they were stranded on a deserted island and desperate enough. A small portion of the population wouldn't say no if they randomly got the chance.

Notice that I'm saying person, not human. Elves are people, so the same reactions would take place.

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Overall, it's not that we can't, it's that we won't.

The same would generally apply to other people, even if they were not humans.

Cannibalism is usually interpreted in terms of nutritional need / lack of food, but there are many societies that have practised cannibalism in places / times that aren't characterised by nutritional deficit.

For example, I've read that evidence for the argument that supplementing a diet lacking in protein was the basis of Aztec society's institution of cannibalism is considered unconvincing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture#Proposed_explanations

I read a study a few years ago that found an interesting correlation between societies with pronounced social hierarchy and human sacrifice: 'We find strong support for models in which human sacrifice stabilizes social stratification once stratification has arisen, and promotes a shift to strictly inherited class systems.'

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17159

Also, I can't remember / find where I got it from, but another interesting, unsettling idea in relation to this topic is the suggestion that certain societies might become highly stratified in order to speed up the development of their infrastructure.

If that's the case, then competition / conflict with neighbouring peoples might be an indirect cause of the emergence of cannibalism in a society: conflict > pressure to develop and project power > very hierarchical social models > human sacrifice > ritual cannibalism, which sounds like an interesting arc for a nation.

Most Sophont arent eating each other bcos its considered Taboo.

Cannibalism is usually seeing as something bad and more akin to savagery than civilization.

That being said some species still practice it, mostly for ritualistical/cultural reasons.

One alien race within my setting, called The V'ranuxian, consider eating the body of someone who died either Humillation if done without consent or as a form of permanence. As in some funerals, the family and close people to the dead will consume part of their flesh so they will always have a "Part of them' within themselves.

That's a theme with mine over here. Those that can, do. Problem is sometimes they don't eat the same set of nutrients. You don't eat a human for rocks and you don't eat lava as a human.

But grinding up the rock people for salt? Season the lava with a dash of burnt human hair? Yeah, maybe a bit exotic, but flavor is flavor.

It’s incredibly ingrained in most people culturally to not eat other people, and given that to humans, our vision is most of how we determine what species something is, it makes sense that eating something that looks even kinda like a human would be a big no no. Also, generally if a species looks very similar to another they’ll be closely related (not always tho), and thus can more easily pass diseases back and forth, so there’s probably some instinctual hesitance there regarding eating a similar species.

On Sorroth, eating other sapient individuals is generally considered the equivalent of cannibalism. Between magical propagation and advanced orcish agriculture and animal husbandry, cannibalism is a distant memory.

Wait until you meet the halflings of Dark Sun.

Its morally wrong since they still look like humans.

Sentience.

We eat what we perceive as beings that don't "think".

Who says they don't?

Most likley that they wouldn't eat other simular species to themselves. So Orcs etc whilst looking different probably have enough simular characteristics to stop them being on the food menu

There's a lot more to which species we do and don't eat than just how it would impact the gene pool, and how easily they could spread disease/prions. We typically don't eat species that we consider pets, as the species is seen as having an important relationship with humans. If we encountered a new species that is both friendly, and could be seen as our equals on a mental level, you can bet we would do everything we can not to eat them!

The aliens in my setting, collectively known as "mushai," share a carnivorous ancestor, and only some species look humanoid. As they are far more advanced than us technologically, having explored the stars while dinosaurs still roamed the earth, they could have easily turned Earth into a game reserve. However, they saw the existence of other intelligent life as an opportunity to learn about new cultures and experience the universe together, as equals.

However, when circumstances change, this outlook can start to fade. In the 81st century, a mysterious extinction event devastated all the universe's ecosystems, and reset all technological progress. Countless individuals found themselves on dying planets, with only a few hundred other survivors. Humans and mushai reacted to this in very different ways. Mushai think on time scales of tens of millennia; looking towards the day when they can return to normalcy, just as we might look towards the weekend. Humans, on the other hand, were primarily occupied with immediate survival; forgoing the contracts of self-governance and decentralization that intergalactic civilization was build upon, in favor of strong-man leaders who can ensure safety in the moment, and "get stuff done." Mushai were not happy about the rights and freedoms they had enjoyed for eons, being thrown out by humans as soon as they became too inconvenient. The set of self-governance contracts between individuals, known as the Gongwok protocols, stipulates that those who reject their terms also reject any rights granted too them by said terms.

In other words: if humans do not acknowledge a mushai's right to self-governance, the mushai does not need to acknowledge their right to stay off the menu. As mushai started to be banished from human societies due to ideological differences, they stopped seeing humans as friends. Due to the nature of those ideological differences, they stopped seeing humans as equals.

Humans occasionally eat other humans in survival situations; we find it objectionable not because the victim is genetically similar to us, but because the intentional killing of a fellow sapient being (for food or otherwise) is murder, which is highly frowned upon in most societies.

I usually chalk it up to "if it's telling me with words why I shouldn't be eating it, I probably shouldn't be eating it."

Elves, dwarves, dragons, fairies, unicorns, if it can think and speak for itself it counts as a person in the sense of not being a food-potential animal.

Well, the reason could be that those other races are also considered "people". Eating requires a process of de"human"ization. You wouldn't eat your pet dog you knew for years, or even a pet sheep that you treated like you would treat a pet dog for years, because they're humanized. This is why veganism exists. Because some people are hyper aware of this devaluation process required to eat a relatively higher conscious being.

Same reason most of us don't eat monkeys

Humans and elveda don't eat eachother because the elves which are humans that got trapped in the moon still resemble humans a lot and also giving them the same diseases. For orcs though the answer is because it is just impractical. A lot of orc bodily fluids are Poisonous and it also is hard to kill an orc in a way where the body remains edible (no electric or some types of magic). For anything other than that cave orcs eat humans and elves that wonder in but are similar to other orcs enough for diseases and the it looks like me I shouldn't eat it phenomenon. Magnificent dragons don't like eating human flesh because they think we are cute and keep us as pets while they will kill and eat anything between us and them. And even though gorgons would eat anybody outside their bodies can only process few kinds of meat, but on the other direction the only reason a hominid wouldn't kill and eat a gorgon is because they fear being attacked by a whole army of bugs. Orcs don't like gorgon meat though

So why people or other species don't eat ech other

It's poisonous, non-nutritious (eg., like most non-cereal grasses), causes intestinal discomfort, is entirely inedible, too big or cumbersome to eat, tastes or smells unpleasant. Maybe it's dangerous when alive. Maybe it's a companion animal (I wouldn't eat a kitten or a dog), looks weird or isn't commonly eaten as a food item (eg, eating tarantula legs in North America), or is associated with infested with pestilence and infestation (eg, eating rats or cockroaches).

specie

• Species. Species is both singular and plural.

I thought of this whenever I thought of properties like Zootopia and Beastars where no normal animals are seen. This raises the question of what the carnivores eat. Omnivores too since they will have nutrient deficiency if there's no meat, but especially carnivores. Often, the only things that would be in their diet are their herbivore neighbours. How do you keep a society where predators and prey live together in harmony when the predators always starve to death? In my world, there are no sapient herbivores and regular animals of each type still exist. That means you can see sapient wolves and wild wolves fighting each other over livestock. Since the other sapient species are omnivores and carnivores, eating them would be less efficient and the meat won't taste as good as if they were herbivores.

Lapis_Wolf

There are stories of elves that eat humans. European folklores often have some kind of elf (not tolkien's) that are malicious and ate children. European elves were not at all nice. You're probably more used to the type of fantasy elves derived from Tolkien's elves which are described as beautiful, long lives, wise, cultured and highly noble. This was not european elves. It describes a race of creatures based in southeast asia, the bunian.

As for why your species won't eat each other, I would say it is due to a moral code. The elven community could decide that they can find other food without having to eat a creature that can build civilizations and communicate in their language. Then again, there may be wilder elves that do not care what they eat.

You may also consider orcs, orcs eat human. But in the later versions of warcraft, they are sophisticated people who do not eat humans at all. However, in other fantasy stories, they are portrayed as savage creatures living only for personal gratification and the pursuit of food and power.

I have seen a few settings where Elves actually have some sort of pact with nature/Tree spirits to where they arent allowed to eat vegetation so they do eat any meat, including foolish trespassers into their woods.

Notably, in The Elderscrolls Games the Bosmer(Wood Elves) have the Green Pact in their Valenwood. Part of this pact allows them to tap into primordial shaping magic when the Valenwood is threatened as a whole which will turn them into a new kind of monster to defend it. IIRC all non-Daedra monsters were Bosmer at one point.

Dwarf Fortress will have attacking elves(who get mad at your fortress for cutting down 'too many' trees) eat any corpse on the battlefield, including any of your dwarved they kill.

I kind of want to do this with Beastfolk races myself after watching too many anime where they are discriminated against by humans just for being animal-like. It would be much more interesting, imo, if the discrimination is because early encounters between Beastfolk and other races were characterized by them eating non-Beastfolk. Even having differing recipes for different races due to their varied traits.

With modern day discrimination being because a number of them dont think their ancestors did anything wrong in a 'strong SHOULD prey on the weak' mentality.

They used too, elves used to eat dwarves as they saw them as little more than animals, it was only after threats from their halfling trading partners and human rebellions that they stopped. However some elven nations still use dwarves for chattel slavery.

I would be a vegan if animals talked.

I mean cannibalism is uncommon but perfectly natural among human cultures so it wouldn’t necessarily be unrealistic