Food taboos and animal conservation: a systematic review on how cultural expressions influence interaction with wildlife species

BACKGROUND: Human societies have food taboos as social rules that restrict access to a particular animal. Taboos are pointed out as tools for the conservation of animals, considering that the presence of this social rule prevents the consumption of animals. This work consists of a systematic review that aimed to verify how food taboos vary between different animal species, and how this relationship has influenced their conservation. METHODS: For this systematic review, the search for articles by keywords took place in the databases “Science Direct,” Scopus,” “SciELo” and “Web of Science,” associating the term “taboo” with the taxa “amphibians,” “birds,” “mammals,” “fish” and “reptiles.” From this search, 3959 titles were found related to the key terms of the research. After the entire screening process carried out by paired reviewers, only 25 articles were included in the search. RESULTS: It was identified that 100 species of animals are related to some type of taboo, and segmental taboos and specific taboos were predominant, with 93 and 31 citations, respectively. In addition, the taxon with the most taboos recorded was fish, followed by mammals. Our findings indicate that the taboo protects 99% of the animal species mentioned, being a crucial tool for the conservation of these species. CONCLUSIONS: The present study covered the status of current knowledge about food taboos associated with wildlife in the world. It is noticeable that taboos have a considerable effect on animal conservation, as the social restrictions imposed by taboos effectively contribute to the local conservation of species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13002-023-00600-9.