> Admittedly I am a well-fed city dweller, but I wouldn't want to eat
> the veal of a two-headed calf. Who knows what it would do.
>
> Perhaps a troll or dog (both of which are much less squeamish than
> humans) could, but I just don't think the question would arise.
I'm somewhat of two minds about this. We modern humans are not good indicators for this. The germ-theory of disease is a very important part of our psychology from earlies childhood. Not so that we all would automatically understand it, but the belief that unclean things are dangerous and bad for you is pretty clear. This is a recent development.
On the other hand deformities scare us on a very primal level, at least when they happen in people. We look for good genes in our mates, and thus symmetry is beautiful to us. This extends beyond sex.
The third aspect you mention, hunger, is import too. If the hunter knows by tradition that eating the deer-like bits of a chaotic deer is safe, and he has no better pray to take, he will take it and eat it. If he's hungry enough, he'll take it even if he doesn't think it's absolutely safe.
Powered by hypermail