Small Things
According to the essay “Small Things” by Marvin Harris, in some cultures, the act of eating insects is encouraged. Most of these cultures are part of third world countries where the source of meat such as cows, pigs, and poultry are not as easily found but rather scarce. This being one of the reasons why the people of these cultures go directly to eating insects. When certain food sources become scarce, the human body still needs to find a way to consume necessary ingredients in order to survive. That being said, these particular cultures are discovering that they have to find a new source of food when, what is natural food in first world countries, is scarce. If this ever becomes an issue in America or Great Britain, we might have to use some of the same tactics.
“Chimpanzees, our closest relatives among the great apes, pursue insect game as avidly as they pursue baby bush pigs and baboons. In their eagerness to dine on termites and ants they even manufacture a special tool” (Paragraph 4). I find this interesting because the chimps are one of our closest relatives and it is in their nature to search for these creatures to consume. Even though insects are not their top choice of cuisine, they do what they need to. Over millions of years, the apes have evolved and discovered new ways to stay alive. In the jungles, where most apes are found, you aren’t going to see a wild cow running around or a wild boar small enough for chimpanzees to take down. They then realize that if a certain food is nowhere to be found, then they need to find other sources of food. I feel that if certain consumable resources were either depleting or completely wiped out, we as intelligent life forms will have to migrate to something else, which if it happens to be insects, will then become a natural food source for us.
“A possible drawback of insects is that they are covered with a hard substance known as chitin, which humans cannot digest. The thought of having to...