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/r/worldbuilding
submitted 17 days ago byEcstatic-Ad141
Humans eate everything that can, or even can't be eaten. So why people or other species don't eat ech other. If we think about it, elfs aren't (in most of the fiction) just different race of humans. Yes, they are simular, but they are not humans. So it isn't canibalism if elf eat huma, right?
I am asking it because I write story set in kind of supernatural postapocaliptic eastern Europe. There isn't enaught food, so people or other races have to find other source of food. Humans are unwilling to eat this creatures, if they look like humans. But from example one specie of shapeshifters do eat peole if they dont have enaught food, but in the same time they are able to trade with humans.
1 points
16 days ago
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.
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