INSECTS AS HUMAN FOOD

INSECTS AS HUMAN FOOD

An Arunta woman in the scrub of Central Australia with her child, in search of food, such as grass seeds, roots, insects, etc. She carries a pitchi on her head, a digging stick in her right hand and supports the child on her hip with her left arm. From Sir B. SPENCER, Wanderings in wild Australia. l-ondon. 1928 I, fig. 33.

INSECTS AS HUMAN FOOD A CHAPTER OF THE ECOLOGY OF MAN BY F. S. BODENHEIMER Prrifessor r.if Zoology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y. 1951

ISBN 978-94-017-5767-6 ISBN 978-94-017-6159-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6159-8 Copyright 1951 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Dr W Junk Publisher, The Huage in 1951. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1951

PREFACE Insects as human food have often provoked CUriOSIty. But only recently has this topic been recognized to be of major importance in the nutrition of primitive man, especially in tropical countries. In the tropics the insects often fill gaps in the one-sided vegetarian diets of food gatherers, and they even do so in the regions of highly developed monsoon agriculture This in fact is the key to the true interpretation of the puzzling results obtained by a number of physiologists who have studied the diets of tropical races and found them to be deficient in animal.proteins and fats, and yet the people were fit and obviously adequately fed. The constant eating of termites, caterpillars, locusts, etc. in substantial quantities was not taken into account. Either insects were not included in the questionnaires used or their consumption was ignored and they were considered as providing minor additions to the diet of negligible significance. Primitive man and his cousins, the monkeys, have never at any stage shown any aversion to entomophagy. The factual material on this subject is so enormously scattered in journals and books on travel, ethnology, geography, medicine, zoology, etc., etc., that it is an almost impossible task to aim at gathering all available facts in this essay. Numerous short notes offer nothing but an almost endless reiteration of the facts reported here. Yet we hope that the material presented in the following pages will amply suffice to convince the reader that entomophagy is more than a mere curiosity. The large number of insect totems and their survivals emphasise the great importance of insects as food of primitive man throughout the tropical regions of the world. The writer wishes to point out that apart from a few personal observations on mannas and locusts, all the reports gathered here are the original work of the authors quoted. The value of this material depends on their reliability and common sense. In fact only a very few facts have been quoted which have not found ample

confirmation by cross references or by independent observations. The writer is fully aware that very many interesting and important first-hand observations, both published and unpublished, have not been included in this short book and will be very grateful, indeed, for the communication of any additional facts, sources or photographs for inclusion - with proper recognition, of course - in a possible later edition. It would be impossible to enumerate all the many colleagues and librarians who have given help to the writer in collecting this amazingly scattered material. Acknowledgement must, however, be made to the following who, without exception, have added important information: Prof. TH. MONOD (Paris), Dr. CHINA (London), Dr. THl~.ODORIDES (Banyul), Dr. LEEFMANS (Amsterdam), Dr. BRYGOO (Tonkin), Prof. HOEPLI and Dr. FEN (Peking), Dr. NICHOL SON (Canberra), Dr. McKEOWN (Sydney), Dr. TINDALE (Adelaide) and Prof. FAURE (Pretoria). To all these named and unnamed helpers our sincere thanks are due. We acknowledge with gratitude the permission of Messrs. MAC MILLAN & Co Ltd. - London for the reproduction of 19 figures from the books by Sir B. SPENCER, and to I. F. A. N. - Paris for putting at our disposal a number of photographs from French East Africa. The other figures are all duly acknowledged in their proper places. The author also wishes to express his gratitude to the publisher, his friend Prof. W. WEISBACH, and to Miss I. WEISBACH, for the keen interest they have taken in the publication and the production of this book, and to Mr. KENNETH SPENCER for his editorial corrections to the style. 6