Question: Anthropologists Studying a Tribe on an Island in the South

Question: Anthropologists studying a tribe on an island in the South Pacific ask you to help them with an intriguing health problem: the chiefs of the tribe keep dying at a much more rapid rate than other members of the population. You travel to the island to observe the tribe, and you find that each time an animal is killed during a hunt, the body of the animal is shared communally among all of the members of the tribe. However, one part of the animal, its brain, is reserved exclusively for the tribal chief. The chief consumes the brain raw because it is believed that this allows him to assimilate the animal's knowledge of the island. What would you suggest is causing the death of the tribal chiefs, how is it killing them, and what is the mechanism of transmission?