Science: Monkey Meat

To New Orleans last week returned Dr. Franz Blom from seven months in Central America and Mexican jungles. His party had been hunting Mayan vestiges. Their best find was cloth 1,500 years old. Interesting was evidence of a game quite like squash played by the aborigines.

Disgusting, however, was the food they were obliged to eat when their civilized provender gave out. Edible berries abounded, but often resembled poisonous kinds. They gingerly tried armadillo meat, scooping the flesh from the bowl-like shells. It had a faint herby taste. In extremity they killed small monkeys, skinned them, put the little, human-like heads out of nauseating sight, gutted and boiled the creatures. Monkey meat they found pallid, tasteless. Spices thrown into the soup pots made the meat palatable.

Testimony indicates that unorthodox foods can be made appetizing. Snake and chicken are much alike.* Like white meat of chicken too are frog legs. Horse meat is sweet, dog steaks flat. Rat and cat are little different from tame rabbit. Snails fried alive in butter have a quaint taste, are tough to chew. Human flesh is sweet. Toasted grasshoppers have a nutty flavor. Earthworms, washed clean and gently stewed, have a tangy tartness.

* Each summer freshmen at the Pennsylvania State College summer forestry camp are made to eat a dish of rattlesnake. African Negroes relish boa-constrictors.