TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Brain-eaters prove that human evolution is continuing
A group of people who ate human brains became immune to several deadly diseases, scientists said
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A
group of people who ate human brains became immune to several deadly diseases, scientists said. The astonishing report was shown to me by a gourmet who took offense to an article I once wrote about an East Turkestan restaurant in Shanghai where the signature dish ' this is not a joke ' was 'Cold Raw Sheep's Brain'.
'I bet you feel stupid now,' said the gourmet, a 42-year-old foodie who did not want his name, weight or waist measurement printed.
At the time, I strongly advised the restaurant manager to present his menu only in French, so that Cold Raw Sheep's Brain would become: 'Froid brut cerveau de mouton.'
(Everything's better in French. Google translates 'Inedible stuff that tastes like garbage' into 'Choses non comestibles qui goûte comme des ordures', which sounds pretty good, right? I'd order that and probably thoroughly enjoy eating it.)
But the restaurant guy totally didn't get my point, replying that if I thought it sounded horrible and disgusting, I could have his other specialty: 'Cold Raw Horse's Brain.'
A workmate reading over my shoulder put in her penny's worth, saying: 'If brains are good for you, this proves the zombies were right all along.'
I was about to tell her that zombies only existed in bad movies but stopped myself, not wanting to trample on her deepest spiritual beliefs. Anyway, since zombies only eat brains, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, she should be fine.
But I did look up the original abovementioned science report (in the journal Nature) and found that what it said was that members of the brain-eating Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea are now immune to mad cow disease ' because only those with an immunity mutation survived. In other words, some tribe members now cannot get brain diseases, which in health terms is a Very Good Thing, while the other members are stone dead, which in health terms is Less of a Good Thing.
In truth, the scientific discovery is actually an excellent reason to avoid eating any deadly foods while actively encouraging everyone else to do so, so that your genes survive. We interrupt this column to remind readers that burgers and fries are delicious, mmm-mmm-mmm.
A scientist quoted in the report said that the finding, because it was about mutations leading to survival, proved that human evolution was continuing at high speed. Amazing thought. If that's true, it can only be a matter of time before mothers have eight arms and teenage girls have phones where their right hands used to be.
One friend says that the strongest argument against evolution is the continued existence of the people who write comments under YouTube videos, which is a pretty powerful point, I admit. I'm thinking particularly of the girl who wrote 'your stuped' under one of my videos, misspelling both words.
When I was at school, my brainy biology teacher explained how we had all evolved from apes, and then he looked at me, and added: 'Except for one or two of us who clearly evolved from sloths, and did not evolve very far.' I comforted myself with a nice thought: He's got more brains than me so the zombies will eat him first.
___________________________________
The writer is a columnist and journalist.
