I was developing a setting when I had a strange thought train

what ridiculous drivel

see

Kuru is a meme.

I actually really, really want to be eaten after I die. I think if my family would eat me after I die, that would be the best and most efficient burial. The only moral issue is specifically killing people for food.

Anyway, looks like its time to take on the parrots that always parrot about Kuru without even trying understand anything!
SO! Cannibalism does not *intrinsically* do anything bad. In fact, it is a great source of nutrients. You can pretty much guarantee that anything needed to make and maintain a human is already inside a human.

However, we tend to have a taboo against cannibalism for a few reasons.
- First, the taboo obvious to any idiot: you generally need to kill or injure someone to eat them. If you make a habit of eating people this inevitably will result in people getting killed or injured, which is threatening.

- Second, the pleb tier taboo: Eating people who are already dead is counter to our instinctive animistic beliefs that assign moralistic value to the dead. Even lower animals can be seen to 'mourn' the dead, or much more likely simply fail to appreciate that they are dead. In terms of appearances, there's not much difference between killing someone to eat them, and eating someone as soon as they die for other reasons.

- Third, getting a bit closer to the Kuru problem:
Assuming you only eat people BECAUSE they died, people generally die because of reasons. This leaves open that if a disease or poison was what killed them, anyone who eats them will also suffer that disease or poison. I'm not sure what the prevalence is like in pre-modern societies but I suspect these would actually account for a majority of deaths. Death from malnourishment is at the very least going to degrade the value of a person's meat.

>Cows
>Intilgent
For you maby.

I'd eat a dolphin, a dog, ants, octopus, or even a monkey. Animals are just animals they hold no value other than physical. Or personal, but personal value on an animal is a personal problem.

I guess if it was a more human like alien thing I night think twice about eating it.

- The final, and actual reason that Kuru exists and cannibalism is taboo (and is only relevant to a society where cannibalism is routine): It allows for parasites and diseases that were otherwise isolated to re-enter the population. Some of these have trouble spreading, but spores may be able to persist in meat. Cooking the meat will severely reduce this risk, but even then, just from chance and mutation you'll eventually get something that takes off using cannibalism as a vector. Kuru is similar to Mad cow disease in that it is a prion disease that spreads through ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs. Once someone catches a disease like that, keels over and dies, everyone who eats them will get it as well. And that will be a lot of people!

After all, it's quite consistent in incidents of cannibalism in the past that you can get around 30 man - days of food out a person when you eat them. That is substantially more than one person can eat before the meat spoils. Ergo, each victim with a disease that CAN be spread via cannibalism spreads it to around 10 people. That is an enormous magnitude of spread per generation, more than you would expect from an airborne disease even.

TL;DR cannibalism in a society where you can't tell if people are sick is bad, don't eat sick people.

Back to the OP, eating a totally unrelated species is good for avoiding disease, although there are still plenty of creatures in nature that make a habit of swapping between two unrelated host species that eat each other, like Toxoplasma, Schistosomiasis, that one with the hypnosnails and birds, etc. You'd want to be really careful.

Morally speaking, as long as species A isn't actually killing B and they are just eating B once they die on their own, it's totally fine, there is no issue. Ultimately, burial rites serve to provide closure for families by getting rid of the body with finality, and there's no reason that "being eaten by a grue" is not a valid burial rite.

Aren't prions sitting in the brain?

You either have a prion disease or you don't. Prion diseases tend to hit the brain pretty hard, but runoff will contaminate the rest of your flesh as well.

As far as "avoiding eating certain bits" of people there's a lot to take into account. Gotta avoid the liver if they died of vitamin A poisoning, etc. It all really depends on how they died.

Since eating them is a burial right would that mean I ought to say some last words and have a moment of silence?

Morally wrong for who?
let's say it's a dead human astronaut that got eaten by say a Zlaxor. To other humans, it's probably morally wrong, because most of humans do not condone eating each other.
But what about Zlaxorian culture? Would eating the deceased a common thing there? Maybe even religious, because it lets them remember the deceased or something like that? Maybe even reserved only for the highest honor?
Even in some human cultures, it might not be seen as morally wrong. Maybe the Nepalese crew thought it as a form of sky burial, where the dead body is chopped up to bits and offered to scavengers - are the Zlaxorians scavengers? Could they be viewed as such?

Maybe they're both stranded, and both have made a pact to let the other survive should they perish. In a matter of absolute survival, this is acceptable, but still morally dubious, at least to the human.

tl;dr: depends on how you build the aliens' culture, and on a larger scale, depends on the setting.

The best, most efficient burial? Are you going to make them eat EVERYTHING down to (and) the bone, or what?

Eating humans is bad because any prion, helminth, protist, bacteria, virus etc. adapted to humans will immediately infect the eater if there is a fuckup in food preparation.

Using the bones to make stock is probably fine in place of directly eating them.

Species A ought to show some 'respect' by the standards of Species B, if any members of Species B are still alive, yes. A moment of silence is pretty specific rite, but saying a few words of some kind about the meal would probably be appropriate.

If Species B are literally all dead and frozen, which I'm beginning to suspect might be OP's suggested scenario, probably still a non-dick move to do so but it isn't exactly a moral imperative to do anything except shovel them down your gullet. Notably, you are removing the evidence that their civilisation existed, so it might be morally preferable to be producing your own cultural works and immortalisation of them to replace what you are removing by eating their dead bodies. Finish their unfinished projects, make sure their philosophies live on to be discovered by races that can appreciate them, etc.

Within practicality. I don't want them to waste a shitload of time on it, saving them the effort of acquiring a few meals is part of the underlying idea, so demanding they leave behind nothing is a bit wasteful in itself. Just cook up any meat that's an acceptable cut, broth whatever can be easily taken apart, and then dump the rest under a fruit bearing tree or something.

>In principle eating another sapient isn't morally wrong
*please insert a silly joke about vegans right here*

Oh, and this prompted me to remember something: In many scenarios where a civilisation dies out, the last few intact bodies may have been left preserved so that some technologically ascendant civilisation with the ability to revive them may come past and do so some time in the next couple million years.

In that case, eating well preserved specimens COULD be seen as having some equivalency to killing them by virtue of preventing their resurrection at a later date.

Pretty sure that at its core the vegan argument is that we are unable to set up a situation where we eat animals that doesn't incentivise us to enslave and/or eat animals. I mean, I'm sure that actual vegans will say "NUH UH I DON'T EVEN LIKE THE TASTE OF MEAT BLEH DO NOT WANT" but deep down their actual philosophical argument is that animal products exist for the benefit of those animals and we are unable to negotiate an exchange for them under informed consent or without driving ourselves to subject animals to conditions that are morally unacceptable.

I think a vegan would find it hard to object if a cow that could talk, had a higher IQ than a human, and came from its own civilisation of such cows with distinct social norms from ours chose to sell its own milk at a fair market price in exchange for goods and services it desired.

...

>A lot of assuming and implying about a Vast and diverse group of people's thinking.

Like that is a lot of assuming with less than 0 base to it. Like 100% pure assuming and implying is Shar your wrote.

This.
It's not like you can analyse the objective true morality of any situation and then assume the aliens have it figured out to.
It's all a relationship of power and sentiment. First you need to have the psychology of a species figured out before you can do their morality.

Are you trying to imply that your picture is a member of another species than yours, user ? Because, even if that's a disapointing specimen, I should inform you that it is indeed a human.

Is a wolf the same species as a Yorkie?

>Assuming this hard.
What makes you think that user is a human? Maby he is dragonkin or foxkin? Or a literal spider or something.

New question. Is it morally acceptable for a Gorilla to Eat a chimp?

Well, gorillas don’t eat meat. But chimps cannabilise other chimps - even other chimps that were once part of their familial tribe, so I guess chimps don’t go in for morality much.

>New question. Is it morally acceptable for a Gorilla to Eat a chimp?
Gorillas are veggietarians, user.

>I actually really, really want to be eaten after I die. I think if my family would eat me after I die, that would be the best and most efficient burial.
I'm a vorefag and I find that creepy user

You're probably talking to a fellow vorefag who doesn't want to let his mom's feelings about having to prepare and eat her dead son get in the way of his fap session.

It's because of the concept of the sanctity of human life. Canibalism was rampant in some of the less civilised parts of earth in the past.

As for aliens, it would probably depend on whenever or not they recognize humans as individuals and what their own society is based on.
A hivemind spiecies will might not have a problem with cannibalizing individuals or eating aliens they run into for the greater good.

TO: Cannibals and related
FROM: Darwin Lorence, Death Invigorator, Bureau of Necromantic Investigation and Biomagical Studies
SUBJECT: RE: Consumption of Intelligent Life

Thank you for the submission of your query to Bureau of Necromantic Investigation and Biomagical Studies (BNIBS). As a Death Invigorator, it is in my professional duty to ask any persons participating in acts of cannibalism and the consumption of higher intelligent life (inhuman) to cease their actions according to the Victim Recovery and Death Interrogation Act (purpose of intent in SA 05127.1) following SA 05127.2, SA 05127.3, SA 05127.4 with additional clauses for specially-identified intelligent life as specified in SA 05127.5 and non-intelligent flesh-effects not to be consumed under SA 05127.6.

Consumption of higher intelligent life, hereby referred to as "cannibalism" is illegal and punishable by 5 years in prison.

As for why...

- It inhibits investigation of criminal activities within the state through the destruction of evidence. This is considered separate crime in and of itself, please refer to evidentiary laws.
- It inhibits Invigoration and all of the positive results that it brings. Where we are to gain information through Death Interrogations, reenact scenes of crimes, finish pre-death legal concerns and possible recruitment back into the workforce.
- It is NOT your body. SA 03022 allows the government to take possession of a body and to release it to the proper agencies to oversee disposal. It is released to family members if the body passes investigation and is sent to the Bureau of Familial Affairs and into familial custody.
- We do NOT want you to contract disease. One of the purposes of government possession is to act as quarantine for possible parasites and diseases.

These are some of the more important reasons as to why we cannot permit the practice of cannibalism within our state. I hope you will understand.

Sincerely,
Darwin Lorence
Death Invigorator, BNIBS

Can they breed and create viable offspring? Then yes, although biological classifications are descriptive, so there's a bit of wiggle room.

dogs have been recategorized as a subspecies of canis lupus you know

It's worth pointing out cannibalism was at the very least a common, if not regular, occurence in very early HS populations. Humans, in general, are far easier to kill than the megafauna or even stuff like deer.

>For you maby
clearly more intelligent than you

Prion disease.

The biggest reason Species A probably wouldn't eat Species B, assuming they are from different planets, is that they probably aren't made of the same protein structures. If you eat an alien who doesn't store energy in glucose you're really better off eating dirt, nutritionally at least.

I would be suspicious of any species that thinks I'm delicious but doesn't come with all inbuilt don't kill me things.