Insects as food among hunter‐gatherers

Insects are the most abundant terrestrial life‐form, yet anthropologists on the whole have been little interested in insect life, although in recent decades with the emergence of ethnobiology and cultural entomology as sub‐disciplines, a growing interest has developed in insect‐human interactions. Thus scholars have been studying not only the practical uses of insects as food or medicine, but the role that insects have played in the cultural life of human societies ‐ with regard to literature, mythology, music, art, religion, folklore and recreation (Bodenheimer 1951, Clausen 1954, Hogue 1987, Van Huis 1996). Here I shall focus on the role of insects as food.