Cannibalism is humans eating the flesh of other humans. The eating of human flesh is also known as anthropophagy, from Greek: anthropos, "human being"; and phagein, "to eat".The term is further extended outside of biological fields and used in a metaphorical sense, such as in aircraft maintenance when parts are "cannibalized" from an already broken plane in order to fix another plane. In the past in Europe, Africa, South America, New Zealand,North America, Australia, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, New Guinea, India, Sumatra, and Fiji, usually in rituals connected to tribal warfare. Fiji was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles'. Evidence of cannibalism has been found in the Chaco Canyon ruins of the Anasazi culture. There are fundamentally two kinds of cannibalistic social behavior; endocannibalism (eating humans from the same community) and exocannibalism (eating humans from other communities).

A separate ethical distinction can be made to delineate between the practice of killing a human for food (homicidal cannibalism) versus eating the flesh of a person who was already dead (necro-cannibalism).