Cannibalism occurs across the spectrum of the animal kingdom. Cannibalism is defined as the act of eating the flesh of one animal by another animal of the same species. It is practiced by many species for a variety of reasons.

Surviving members of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 that crashed in the Andes in 1972 have started a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation in Uruguay and around the world. These 16 crash survivors were forced by lack of food and a lengthy rescue operation to resort to cannibalism in order to survive their 72 day ordeal.http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25956009-401,00.html<ref>

Charles Taylor the former President of Liberia, while facing charges of war crimes, denied a witnesses account of his participation in a secret society gathering called Poro the witness recalling that Taylor had eaten human flesh. He has called the charges of cannibalism "total nonsense" while acknowledging the existence of cannibalism in Liberia. It has been suggested that the possible cannibalism by Taylor was in an effort to terrorize the citizens of Sierra Leone and go for their wealth of so called "blood diamonds".http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/07/200972715185232635.html<ref>

Perhaps of the most well known examples of human cannibalism in history is the Aztec people from the area of Central America now known as Mexico. In some cases Aztec people were Endocannibals, eating the sacrificed, believing the flesh was blessed and would enable them to commune with their Gods. In other cases Aztec people were Exocannibals, eating the flesh or organs of slain enemies to spiritually gain the strength of the vanquished.

http://www.plu.edu/~arnoldwp/motivation-cannibalism/home.html<ref>