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alt title(s): Carnivores Are Mean
Lisa! I thought you loved me! Lo-o-o-oved me-e-e-e!
Fish are friends, not food!
There's an unspoken awkward issue in fiction involving Talking Animals. If everyone can talk, and everyone at least implicitly has the same thoughts and feeling as everyone else regardless of species, does this mean predatory creatures are forced to engage in a form of murder to eat? Or is it more like cannibalism? And then what happens when human characters are added into the mix?
Works of fiction will address this in one of several ways:
- By far the most common approach, especially in older fiction, is the Predators Are Mean subtrope. All your heroes are herbivores. All the villains are carnivores à la the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs.
- A rare, but frankly bizarre situation can occur when your heroes are predatory animals, as in "The Lion King". In this case, carnivores are okay as long as they are predatory, which means that all the scavengers are now cast as the villains. Only a sick, evil weirdo would eat something that's been dead for some time, and if you eat other animals' leftovers or things that are already dead, it means you are too much of a coward to hunt down your own food. (The hypocrisy here is palpable — unless most writers never buy meat at the grocer. Ever) Even Opportunists (the more accurate ecological term) who are cute in real life fall into this, and will be drawn as intimidating as possible. And don't ever expect the fact that opportunists and predators aren't mutually exclusive to ever be acknowledged in fiction. If you grew up on The Lion King, you may be surprised to learn that lions scavenge off hyena kill more often than vice versa!
- A increasingly popular option in recent fiction has been to render the carnivore's prey in a realistic, non-cute manner that doesn't talk or act humanlike at all. Fish, in particular, are nearly always a viable mealtime option. (This may be based on the assumption that fish don't have any feelings. By human standards. So Yeah.) Indeed, the only times fish aren't okay to eat are the few instances where they are major characters - and even then... (Madagascar)
- Similar to the option immediately above, some works such as CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Spellsinger novels make it clear that only some of the animals have human-like intelligence. In some fiction, there are explicit differences between the anthropomorphic and normal members of the same species - bipedality, speech, clothing, etc. It's okay for a talking lion to eat a non-talking deer, but eating a talking deer would be tantamount to cannibalism. This can also get very awkward when Fridge Logic and Furry Confusion sets in.
- Establish that the carnivore is unlucky (Wile E. Coyote) or that their chosen prey is too fast or aggressive to catch (Jerry of Tom And Jerry) and thus essentially making the point moot since we never see anyone get to eat at all.
- Ignore untold centuries of natural selection and insist that the carnivore can choose to go vegan if they really want to. A common way of doing so is by rendering carnivorism as something similar to alcoholism. (An American Tail, Finding Nemo)
- Somewhat similarly, the solution in works with more of a science fiction bent is that the technology available has created meat substitutes that are readily available for humans and animal carnivores. ("Star Trek the Next Generation" explicitly pointed this out in an early episode.)
- Some works, such as "The Lion King" and "Happy Feet", will half-refer to this problem, but mostly avoid the issue entirely. So Yeah.
- And then there's the it's a fact of life, we have to deal with it approach taken by Kipling's The Jungle Book, the Dinotopia books and by the Webcomic Kevin And Kell among a very, very few others: Carnivorism happens, it's nature, and it may even be incorporated as a part of both the talking animal economy and social structure.
In particular, the Predators are Mean option has long been annoying to biologists. A surprising number of people assume that predators are mean, evil, and nasty, and all the herbivores are cute, cuddly, and friendly. It takes weeks to get biology students to actually look at what the animals themselves are actually doing. When they finally do, many people are shocked to discover that the meanest, most dangerous, surliest non-humans on the planet... are the big herbivores. (And the cute, happy, smiling hippo is the current holder of the championship belt for Non-Human Animal That Kills The Most Humans Per Year.) Cognitive Dissonance got nothin' on this situation, baby.
See also Super Persistent Predator, Lets Meet The Meat, Ascended To Carnivorism, and I Taste Delicious. Compare Furry Confusion, Cats Are Mean, Reptiles Are Abhorrent, and What Measure Is A Non Cute. As with What Measure is a Non Cute, do not expect to see realistic animal behavior taken into account. When it's between a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire and a human, it's Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere.
Examples
Comic Books
- In a Far Side strip, a chicken serves her bedridden husband a bowl of soup, saying, "Quit complaining and eat it! First of all, chicken soup is good for a cold, and second, it's nobody we know."
- Gary Larson seemed fond of exposing this trope. In two other strips this troper can recall, involving cows and hamburgers: One has a cow saying to her friends "Hey, we really DO taste like chicken" after trying a hamburger; the other has the cow's friends saying "You're SICK, Jessie! Sick, sick, sick!" while said cow is running a barbecue grill. Funny at age 12, rather disturbing now....
- This idea is used in the same darkly humorous fashion in a Robot Chicken segment, where two bulls munch slowly on hamburgers made from their friend and commend how good he tastes.
- The illustrated short story There's A Hair In My Dirt! by the same author, is an especially brutal mockery of this trope. The 'beautiful forest maiden' Harriet, on her way home from a stroll through the forest, encounters a snake attacking a mouse. She grabs a big stick and bashes the big bad vicious snake to death, then cuddles the poor helpless little mouse until it recovers, upon which she releases it back into the meadow. Good having triumphed over evil, the forest is now a safer place for all woodland creatures! Well...not quite. Turns out the mouse was carrying deadly diseases. As mice tend to do...which is why it's actually a good thing that snakes keep the population in check. And so 'one fine spring morning Harriet, delirious with fever, stumbled out of her little cottage, fell over, and died.'
- This troper remembers a series of full-page color strips from Cows of Our Planet, and every age of evolution includes at least one cow-thing, leading to the future, where the whole world is ruled by cows. And there's a burger restaurant behind a wax museum full of butchers.
- In the short-lived furry comic book, SpaceWolf (Not that one!), the characters are of intelligent furry species that still have the predator/prey relationship such a Wolf species raiding a planet populated by humanoid sheep. Eventually, the sheep rebel and a long war starts that is only resolved when the sheep develop soy-curd meat substitutes which satisfy the predator species' needs. However much later, a villainous Sheep monarch decides to seize power by first demonstrating the lethality of an awesome planet destroying weapon. As terrible as that is, that is actually the lesser of his two major threats to cow the interstellar population: he also threatens to cut off the flow of soya-cord food to any resisting planet and let it fall back into murderous predator/prey chaos.
- Of course, that raises the question of what the hell the wolves were eating before they invented spaceflight.
- In Garfield, Garfield has eaten (or tried to) birds
 , fish, and flowers that are often shown to be as intelligent as he is even after holding conversations with them, and also has no compunctions whatsoever about squashing talking spiders (and their grieving families.) For the most part, Garfield will eat anything but mice, established within the first week of the strip's creation. ("Show me a good mouser, and I'll show you a cat with bad breath.") He also abhors spinach (especially cooked spinach) and raisins (even in cookies). A certain strip has Garfield facing the ghosts of all the animals he's eaten, including what looks like a cow or a horse. (It's probably meant to be a cow [beef lasagna], given it's got split hooves, although if he's ever actually eaten cat food, a horse might be possible as well.) Meanwhile, the protagonists of U.S. Acres are herbivores, with predatory animals appearing only as villains, unless you count Booker's fruitless pursuit of a worm which sometimes appears more intelligent than he is — although, in "The Worm Turns", Sheldon the ambulatory egg mentions that he's planning to have quiche for dinner...
- The front cover of Vol. 4 has Garfield about to have two eggs sunny-side up (truly a meal of epic proportions), when he sees that Booker, wings crossed and glaring at him, is standing there with Sheldon. The back cover has him running with his plate as Sheldon chases him, Booker riding on top and brandishing a fork...
- The straight version is played deliberately for laughs in the newspaper comic strip Shermans Lagoon, as part of its championship of 'uncute' critters: the two starring sharks eat other anthropomorphic fish regularly, usually after chatting for awhile. They also frequently go after humans — which they call "hairless beach apes" — as well, 'fishing' for them using lines cast onto the beach. Numerous strips discuss the best baits for the various types of human.
- Fables takes the "only some animals can talk" route. The Big Bad Wolf, sending his children out for some hunting practice, tells them to be sure to chase the animal long enough to make sure it isn't sapient before they kill it. Not all the carnivores will do this though. There are some that have no issues with eating talking animals and even Bigby himself used to be like this, so this is more an issue of personal ethics. The problems seem to come when the prey are recognized citizens of Fabletown and so protected by its laws.
- Played straight in Pearls Before Swine...except that the predator crocs are altogether too stupid to catch their prey, Zebra, even though he lives right next door. They survive in the meanwhile by devouring fried chicken and other fast food.
- They doubled the fun when some lions moved into the house on the other side of Zebra and the wives are very competent hunters. Fortunately for Zebra, the lions went trough a divorce and the husband scored big in the settlement. Got both the house and the wives have to ship a crate of meat each week.
- Pig apparently really likes bacon. He was kicked out of the Pig Fraternity for enjoying BL Ts, which gave the first Pearls collection its title.
- The DC Comics series Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew takes place on Earth-C, a parallel Earth populated solely by anthropomorphic animals. The series presents the world's populace as being vegetarian (though eggs are acceptable, and vegetarian versions of burgers, hot dogs, etc. exist), including carnivorous-in-real-life species such as felines. The comic explains that while their prehistoric, uncivilized/unevolved ancestors did eat meat, animal-kind ceased doing so once it became "civilized". A villain in one story attempts attacking the Zoo Crew with fierce prehistoric animals brought from, as he describes it, "the age of the flesh-eaters." The idea of eating another animal is viewed among Earth-C's populace as cannibalism, as seen in one story where a "wuz-wolf" — a friendly wolf who, under a full moon, becomes a feral human — attempts to eat a pig.
- The French comic De Cape et de Crocs, which is set in a Lions And Tigers And Humans Oh My world, plays with this trope. In one book, the main characters are taken prisoner by a tribe of savages who, at first, seem to be your average Cannibal Tribe: they bind them, dump them into a cauldron of boiling water and vegetables, the usual works. The heroes manage to free themselves and befriend the tribe leader, who is confused when they complain to him about the barbaric custom: his tribe, he says, have never been cannibals. That's when the characters seem to remember that they are, actually, an anthropomorphic fox and wolf. And the savages, while not cannibals, definitely have no problems with eating dog meat. (That's only one way in which the comic parodies and subverts the heck out of various adventure tropes.)
- Which doesn't mean that Carnivore Confusion isn't played straight elsewhere in the comic. The galley of the pirate ship definitely contains pork, when one member of the crew is a talking pig.
- The newspaper comic Tom the Dancing Bug parodies this in a strip called, I think, "Anthropomorphic Antix." An anthropomorphic dog is walking a dog on a leash when an anthropomorphic pig holding a bag walks up. The pig says, "I don't get it. Aren't you both dogs?" to which the dog replies "Isn't that a pork chop in that bag?"
- Douwe Dabbert features an animal kingdom populated by FunnyAnimals. Every single one of them is vegetarian, including normally predatory ones, such as the wolves. Two human villains then entered the kingdom. Not knowing that the animals were intelligent, they slaughtered and roasted the innkeeper, a chicken (the inn as empty at the time, and quite isolated from the rest of the kingdom). When the wolves arrive, they eat along, not knowing it's the innkeeper. When they realise it afterwards, they decide that they like the taste of meat, and proceed to conquer the kingdom with the human villains. They go back to being vegatarians at the end of the story.
- [1] doesn't really fit the "talking animal" topic, but it notably avoids the "carnivores are okay as long as they are predatory" bit. For the Wolfriders (a tribe of elves), it is normal to leave the bodies of their dead to the wolves.
Disney Animated Canon, Pixar, and misc Disney animation
Film
Theatre
- Taken to the extreme in Thorbjörn Egner's Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen (The Animals of Hakkebakke Forest), one of Norway's most popular children's plays ever. By popular vote, the animals pass a law banning carnivorism. One of the animals who supports the law is the alpha bear, while one of the animals who opposes it is a hedgehog (as Egner seems to be under the impression that hedgehogs are great mouse hunters).
Literature
- Turned on its head and parodied with the Lets Meet The Meat scene in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The cruelty, Galactic culture decides, is not in eating animals. The cruelty comes in eating animals who probably do not want to be eaten. So they breed livestock that is intelligent enough to know what's going on — and is also disturbingly eager to be devoured. The animal even goes so far as to recommend cuts of itself to the diners. (By the way, Vore Fetish Fuel?)
- The above-mentioned Dinotopia, which takes place in a land where only about ten percent of the population is human and the rest are Intellectual Animals of all imaginable species, has a relatively clever approach to this problem. All carnivores have switched to a diet of fish and it's implied that those who can (most notably humans) have gone entirely over to veganism. The twist is that some animals refused to make the change and have exiled themselves to the Rainy Basin and Backwood Flats, where they live as their wild ancestors did (similar to The Wild in Kevin and Kell). Interestingly, this is treated by the major characters as more of an alternate lifestyle choice than a break of the rules and such characters are not vilified as one would expect. (At least, not in the book. The movie is another story...)
- In one of the not-quite-Canon spin-off novels, a city-dwelling herbivore was shown journeying through the Rainy Basin as she was about to die, providing the carnivores with food. This act was referred to in almost religious terms.
- To be sure, the assurance that fish are kosher becomes a bit troubling when it becomes increasingly clear in Journey to Chandara that any species with more brains than a sponge can communicate with each-other...
- Additionally, leathers, skins, and furs were seen in use by the Dinotopians. Readers had to wait until Journey to Chandara for the explanation: Arthur Dennison is given a new journal bound in the skin of an Intellectual Animal "whose dying wish was to donate his body to science". Um...
- Gets even Squickier when you realize that, until the 1800s or so, books bound in human skin were not entirely unheard of...
- Spellsinger takes the approach of making all the reptiles (save turtles) non-sapient and therefore "kosher".
- However, the books suffer a Continuity Drift when in one book the intelligent owl eats mice but a later book has them as intelligent. Either that or the owl didn't care that he was eating an intelligent creature.
- And one book features humans from our world eating a talking parrot. They didn't know better.
- Not particularly avoided in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book due to perspective, as most of the major characters are carnivores. Any distaste animals have for each other has more to do with not following the Laws of the Jungle. There is a scene set during a "water truce" in which Bagheera the panther wishes he could eat branches. A young fawn agrees with him, and Bagheera is so amused by this that he agrees not to hunt the fawn once the truce is over.
- Arguably the animals in Jungle Book are an imitation of the Indian caste system and each species follows the rules specific to their caste because "It's in the blood". Thus predators eat meat and herbivores eat plants, just like warriors fight and rule, and peasants work and pay taxes.
- Note that the Disney film pointedly avoids the issue, even though most of the main characters are carnivores. There is a scene in which the tiger Shere Khan is hunting a deer, but fails to catch it.
- On the Discworld some animals have human-like intelligence, due to magical effects, but it's very rare. In Moving Pictures, the cat half of the Tom and Jerry parody has sworn off mice since "Jerry" started talking, and in The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents, the titular cat always offers his prey a chance to speak before eating it. Although when he was a normal cat, he ate a talking mouse because he didn't know better. That's how he gained the ability in the first place.
- What's very rare for animals to be able to speak. Werewolves and talking dogs can both talk to normal dogs, who have been shown to be intelligent. I don't know about other animals, but I do remember once when someone mentioned to Death something about humans being more important then chickens, he responded that that's a distinction commonly made by humans. Also, dogs aren't treated particularly well. For example, in Making Money, a dog became the chairman of the mint, but they just did what his owner said, rather than using an actual translator.
- Because everyone knows dogs can't talk. And also, as established in The Truth, they are basically still dogs (with exceptions for special cases) and can't really think outside the kennel.
- How "intelligent" ordinary dogs are is very up for debate: "Good boy Laddie!"
- It's also sort of implied that everyone resorts to the "legal fiction" that the owner in question is acting according to the wishes of the dog - in other words, the owner effectively IS the translator. Of course, everyone knows this is a lie, but everyone also ACTS like it's the truth, because admitting the truth would be in bad taste.
- Mr Slant says to Those Two Bad Guys in The Truth that via the Watch werewolf, a canine witness would be acceptable in a court of law.
- Though it's clear that legal precedent isn't the same thing as "sane" in this setting.
- Redwall gets very confusing on this issue. The heroes are mostly mice and for the most part, all the villains (though we never actually see them eat anyone) are mouse predators (see also Cats Are Mean). The confusion sets in when it turns out that animals who eat mice (a lot in some cases) are also found amoung the heroes. There's one especially strange book where the mice fight an army of ravens by teaming up with an owl and a hawk. Now if you're a mouse, is it really corvids who keep you constantly anxious rather than raptors?'
- Not to mention that in the same book we meet a completely non-anthropomorphic Horse that pulls the Cart Cluney rides on. Can you say 'Huh'?
- Naturally, it's fine to eat fish.
- Redwall has always been rather inconsistent on vermin's eating habits... in the first book, villainous rat Cluny regards two young rabbits with hunger (fortunately, there isn't time to stop and eat them) and then later his horde seem eager to devour a family of dormice. Then later, in the book Salamandastron a band of fox bandits hanker for "roasted dormouse — ages since I tasted that." However, in most other books vermin seem horrified at the concept of eating other mammals. (Although to be fair, this is usually when they're the ones in danger of being dinner.) In the book Rakkety Tam, a horde of bloodthirsty barbarian vermin make a habit of eating their enemies, and this is seen as particulary mosntrous, indicating that this isn't normal vermin behavior. The only things set in stone are that woodlanders (good guys) don't eat birds and eggs, while vermin love them. And of course, as pointed out above, everyone enjoys fish, who can't talk. (Though as I type this, it occurs to me that if fish can talk, the other creatures couldn't hear them, and they wouldn't be able to talk out of water because they were gasping for breath...)
- Scarily enough, there's been one eel (Snakefish) in the books which did talk. Yet the good guys have been shown hunting and eating baby eels. It's probably better not to think about this too much.
- Even worse, what about the otter in The Legend of Luke who, having been tortured by vermin develops a charming habit of hunting and eating rats we actually see him kill one by tearing out it's throat. Of course, he gets better, but I still don’t think I would be quite as comfortable as the protagonists are in letting him babysit the kids.
- On an unrelated note that doesn't really go anywhere, where do they get the milk for all the cheese they're always eating?
- Noted in Outcast to be "greensap milk", the juice of a (somewhat DeusExMachina, but much better than the alternatives) plant's roots. The first book mentions goat cheese, but that's pretty much been retconned out.
- Said deus ex machina may also help to explain their fondness for cheese at all, considering that recent scientific studies have suggested that mice generally DON'T like cheese all that much, (the household food they're the most fond of is peanut butter) and that it tends to be harmful to them anyway (the reason why people with pet mice may be discouraged by vets when it comes to feeding them cheese - it increases their body temperature, and large enough amounts ultimately cause them to die in a similar way to a human who has taken Ecstacy and overheated). One assumes that their version of cheese overcomes both problems.
- In John Dies at the End, the two main characters are able to see ghosts. While explaining the source of this ability and its ramifications to a client and prospective love interest, John mentions a hamburger that mooed when he ate it. His business partner and longtime friend, David, silently recalls how it didn't moo, but scream:
- This confuses the heck out of this editor, who would assume that being put through a meat grinder (which necessarily would have occurred in order for it to become a hamburger) would be significantly more painful. Except for possibly the stomach acid part of the eating.
- IT STILL FEELS THE PAIN. It could feel the pain from being butchered, ground, and cooked, and still feels the pain that comes from being a ground-up, burnt lump of meat that's being bitten and chewed.
- Subverted in the children's book-turned-anime Stormy Night (Arashi no yoru ni). The story features an unlikely friendship between a wolf and a mountain goat, and the wolf being a carnivore is actually one of the main points of the story (he is always fighting down the urge to eat the goat, while the goat is painfully aware of this). In the anime the wolf gives up goat meat, but keeps on preying on (sapient) animals such as mice; the goat is not happy about this, but accepts it as inevitable, knowing full well that his best friend would starve to death if he stopped eating meat entirely. In the book they die together.
- The Katurran Odyssey by Terryl Whitlatch is a wonderfully illustrated, underrated, and highly recommended illustrated novel that has but one flaw. It is really confusing about this issue. It doesn't even stick consistently with what generally appears to be an attempt at the usual "Carnivores Are Mean" (only herbivores can talk) with a "What Measure Is A Non Cute" chaser (well, some carnivores can talk - if they are cute) approach. Birds can't talk or act human-like at all... except when they can. Similarly, none of the carnivorous mammals talk or act any differently than their real-world equivalents... except when they do. In the very, very beginning, there's talk of "Pred-folk" and "Prey-folk", indicating that all animals can talk, but this is dumped almost as soon as our hero leaves the big city. There is also a Fossah worshipped as a god by the Lemur tribe and a mention of an ancient menagerie of fierce monsters. Plus, the Golden Monkey kingdom seems to be built on Furry Confusion.
- The Chronicles Of Narnia first mentions this in Prince Caspian, when the heros kill and eat a bear but mention they were worried it about the possibility it may have been a talking bear (it wasn't). Later, it becomes a plot point in The Silver Chair, where the heroes suddenly become repulsed when they learn that the venison that the seemingly friendly giants have served them was once a talking deer who begged for mercy. Fortunately, Narnia has dumb animals as well as talking animals, and the latter consider the former to be more different from themselves than humans are from dwarves.
- There are interesting distinctions raised during the Talking Stag scene — Jill, who's never been to Narnia's world before and hasn't really absorbed the idea, just feels sorrier than normal for the stag and thinks the giants are "rotten" for killing it; Eustace, who has a little more experience with talking animals, including as close friends, is "horrified" in the way "you would feel about a murder"; but Puddleglum, who's native to Narnia, considers himself to have been made a cannibal and takes it as a curse from Aslan for messing up their mission so badly.
- Puddleglum almost seems to think that there's no way to atone for what they've done, even though it was accidental, without ending their lives.
- Watership Down takes the "fact of life" approach without flinching: all animals can communicate (although not all that well in some cases), but predators nevertheless hunt and kill prey. They aren't portrayed sympathetically, but that's not because they're inherently evil - it's just because the heroes of the book are rabbits.
- Interestingly, dogs are portrayed in a far more negative light than cats. Aside from a character in a folktale - who is a drooling idiot compendium of every distasteful canine trait going - they are vicious monsters who don't talk. The cat is a right bitch, but at least she gets to speak her mind intelligently.
- This might be justified, actually. In Real Life canines tend to be far better hunters than felines when rabbits (and rats) are involved, for the simple reason that it's dangerous to hunt something that's as big as or sometimes bigger than you. Dogs, which are (usually) much bigger, don't have that problem.
- This is a major issue in the Brazilian Just So Story "The Deer and the Jaguar Share a House". Not only does the jaguar commit the dreadful faux pas of bringing home a dead deer for dinner, but the deer hunts and kills another jaguar(with the help of an anteater).
- In the Obernewtyn Chronicles most of the humans who are aware that animals are sapient (they can only communicate telepathically) become vegetarian. The animals, however, seem to accept the predator-prey relationship as perfectly natural.
- The protagonist in The Beasts of Barakhai runs into this problem when the first thing he does when he's sucked into an alternate universe is kill and eat a rabbit. To his horror he learns that all the denizens of Barakhai involuntarily spend 12 hours a day shapeshifted as sentient but mute animals, and he just ate a "sweet old woman". This troper can't recall exact what the people of Barakhai ate, but cannibalism when in beast form was a symptom of insanity and the highest crime in the land.
- Tad Williams' novel Tailchaser's Song stars cats and matter-of-factly has them eating smaller mammals that can also talk without portraying them as villains. He still gives into Cats Are Mean a little bit, though: the one time when a cat is about to eat a squirrel, the hero-cat saves it and reunites it with its squirrel lover. Through this act he forges a temporary truce between squirrels and cats, which he realizes is unnatural and unsustainable. In the end, the cats designate a section of the forest where the squirrels will not be hunted, but warn them that everywhere else they'd "better watch their tails."
- The Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and others in The Wizard Of Oz tend to be examples of "the carnivore can go vegetarian if he really wants to."
- In "Wicked", "The Wizardof Oz" from the (not quite so) Big Bad's perspective, there are animals and then there are Animals, who talk. Humans and Animals eat animals and use them as beasts of burden.
- Daine, the main character in Tamora Pierce's Immortals books, suffers from Carnivore Confusion. She's a "wildmage" who, among other things, can turn into any animal she wants. Before she started to learn about her magic, she grew up eating meat like anybody else, and continued to hunt and eat meat for a long time after discovering it — she says at one point that she doesn't see why this would surprise anybody, since animals kill and eat each other all the time, and it's not as if she kills for sport or uses her magic to lure prey towards her. This changes, however, after a bad experience or two when she herself is pursued in animal form by hunters — game meat becomes Nausea Fuel for her, and she can't stand to eat it anymore, having felt what the animal went through. She doesn't object to it in principle or try to stop other people; she just literally can't stomach it herself. It's mentioned that she gets by okay with domesticated meat by never bonding mentally with any farm animals, and how she feels about fish or insects isn't mentioned.
- The Medieval work the Roman de Renard (the stories of Reynard the Fox) are an early example of this, and probably the major inspiration for Redwall. Although No Cartoon Fish applies, most other animals are sapient and you have a situation where they are ruled by a Lion and other nobility are carnivores but others are herbivores. The logic seems to be that since Aristocrats Are Evil in the real world, it isn't that odd that characters would be perfectly willing to kill and eat their fellow subjects.
Live Action TV
- Subverted, handwaved and lampshaded a lot in various Muppet productions, usually involving the Swedish Chef:
- In an episode of The Muppet Show the Chef tried to make a Thanksgiving dinner. Trying to make turkey doesn't work since the turkeys can talk; trying to make pig stew is as bad, with pigs in the cast. He goes for "veggy weggy stew" but the vegetables can talk and fight him. In the concluding scene the Thanksgiving dinner consists entirely of vitamin pills.
- In another episode he tried to boil a Lobster until the Lobster's brothers rode in Mexican-Bandito style, shooting up the kitchen with their revolvers and rescuing the main course.
- He had a similar problem making Christmas dinner for A Muppet Family Christmas. The Chef invited the Turkey (from Dorchester, MA) for dinner. The Turkey convinces the Chef to roast up Big Bird instead. Big Bird unwittingly saves his own life by befriending the Chef, and in the words of this reviewer, "The Chef ends up preparing shredded wheat and cranberry sauce, which is terrific. Until the cranberries start singing 'Silent Night'..."
- In A Muppet Christmas Carol, Rizzo the Rat is about to eat some vegetables prepared by the Swedish Chef... but they join in song, and he shakes his head and relates his mother's advice: "Never eat singing food."
- Then there was the frog's legs skit, the duck soup episode...once his spaghetti tried to crawl away from the plate while he was checking on the tomato sauce, and ended up attacking him when he slapped it back. Another time, bread dough started inflating and finally took him over. And each and every time it was absolutely hilarious.
- In Muppet Treasure Island, Mrs Bubberidge the innkeeper announces tomorrow's special is "roast suckling..." and when the appalled pigs turn to her, she concludes "...potatoes". And then she has to apologise to a talking potato...
- In the Julie Andrews episode numer The Lonely Goatherd, one must wonder what the lonely goat herded (especially since no flock was shown on screen).
- In Dinosaurs, everyone (except, ironically, humans) acts like people, which means the characters will frequently have conversations with their meals.
- There was a Tales From The Darkside episode called "Your Weight Is Over" that took this concept to the very extreme. A malevolent "diet company" gave a woman the power to hear food talking. Any food, vegetable or animal. So whenever she bit in, it screamed. She starved to death in the end.
- Puzzling, inasmuch as fruits (and many so-called vegetables, such as tomatoes and eggplant) are not whole organisms; they are in effect fertilized ovaries, deliberately cast off by a plant in order to facilitate its reproduction. Even if you pluck an apple from a tree instead of waiting for it to fall, you're not killing (or indeed hurting) anything. The seeds are designed to pass through an animal digestive tract unharmed and viable.
- If you think about that too hard, especially in the context of sentient apple trees, you get a whole different kind of Squick (see EqualRites).
- Processed meat certainly wouldn't be able to speak, either, so both must just be a trick.
- An especially odd example: During one of his Headlines segments, Jay Leno showed a newspaper article with tips for a fun camp-out. The picture for the article showed three anthropomorphic marshmallows roasting an inanimate marshmallow over a fire. Nightmare Fuel, indeed...
- Possibly the most disturbing (and, yes, Nightmare Fuel) variation of this trupe; TV Funhouse. The whole show is basically a satire of kid's shows. Except for one human, most of the cast are animals. Some of the animals are played by puppets, others by actual animals. In one episode, all the animals went to this resturant where the hole gimic was that you eat what you are. The cats can eat cats, lobsters eat lobsters, and so on. Get ready for this, because I'm leading up to the disturbing part, which will be the very last three words of this entry. Remember, some of the animals were played by puppets, and others were played by real animals. And the them of the resturant was that you eat your own species. Well, they had a a real life pig, and real food, and they showed the pig eating bacon.
- Pigs are omnivorous and happily eat anything. It's not disturbing that they fed a pig bacon, as non-sapient creatures have no morals to have qualms with cannibalism, anymore than the rest of the scene is disturbing.
- Also, in case you weren't aware of this, there are plenty of animal farms that feed suet (leftover bonemeal and unedible or unwanted animal parts) back to the animals. In some countries this is illegal or at least restricted (I.E. feed cow suet to the pigs, pig suet to the cows, or somesuch). The main reason to avoid this (like cannibalism, aside from the moral implications) is that same-species feeding makes it easier to contract diseases from the food.
Tabletop Games
- AD&D Planescape Kings of the Wild accessory: The creatures of Beastland hunt and eat each other - c'est la vie. Because the possibility of being devoured by Owl is just part of what it means to be Mouse. Moreover, to kill an animal without subsequently eating it is "the ultimate insult" to the whole species (and possibly all other species under the same Beast Lord's rule). "Predators Are Mean" was invoked once, and even this ultimately was the stupid mortals' fault. Initially at least the Beast Lords themselves (who can assume humanoid form) were exempt from the menu, but times changed. On the other hand, Mouse Lord, being the ultimate "sneaky rodent", is so good at hiding and escaping that only Owl Lord can hunt him down.
- Unknown if it's been retconned since or not, but the Beastlands had a sort of 'Valhalla-esque' vibe - anything that died there(whether eaten or not) would revive the next day. Thus Mouse Lord being eaten by Owl Lord isn't so much utterly destroyed as inconvenienced for a few hours, maybe a day.
- The Lunar Exalted in Exalted have the innate ability to assume the form of animals. They acquire new forms by killing an animal of the appropriate species (presumably after hunting it down themselves) and drinking its fresh blood in a very literal case of "you are what you eat". And given the right charm, they can use this trick with humans as well...
Video Games
Web Comic
- In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventure, all critters fall into three groups, non-sapient animals, Beings and Creatures, with the ones higher on the hierarchy eating the ones lower. Causes clashes every now and then, especially due to some Creatures taste for sapient Beings. And did we mention the cow character whose favorite food is... hamburgers?
- In a Nightmare Fuelerrific, pre-Art Evolution panel of the Webcomic Fur Will Fly, an anthropomorphic rooster is pictured eating regular chicken legs. It is later attested that there are "evolved" and "non-evolved" versions of animals, but still...
- The Webcomic Jack plays it extremely straight. All the furries are concidered herbivores. Eating meat is explicitly equalled to canniballism. dwelling on sick meat-related fantazies and later giving in to them earns two characters a demonic rank of Sin of Gluttony
- The above-mentioned Kevin And Kell, for those who aren't familiar with it, is about a "mixed marriage" between a rabbit and a wolf. As such it addresses this issue with surprising frequency and from several different angles. Kell, the wolf, actually works for HerdThinners Inc., a predatory corporation that hunts other animals and sells the meat. Young carnivores are specifically taught not to talk to their prey, as it may result in befriending them. However, you need to eat the animal that you kill, otherwise it's murder.
- There's also a rule that states that predators are unable to track down and eat specific prey, meaning they can't kill an eat anyone they know.
- In a post about a Gender Swap comic for April Fool's day of 2007, Holbrook mentions that there would be a considerable power imbalance if "Kelly" was the predator and "Kevina" was the prey. He admits that George and Danielle are a couple with a female prey species and a male predator, but notes that they're secondary characters (It probably helps that Danielle was originally a human, meaning that she's not instinctively scared of George and she eats meat).
- In P.S.I., the only non-sapient land animals are insects. This has obvious implications on the food supply in the comic's universe.
- The Suburban Jungle follows the 'fact of life' approach. Except in specific situations, such as the workplace, or a specifically 'No Predation Allowed' bar, it's basically A-OK to eat each other. Although you might expect a girl to get cross if it turns out you accidentally ate her date.
- The Web Comic Shivae has this as an important, if not main issue: most characters are non-anthropomorphic animals, the protagonists are predators, and all carnivores seen so far are sapient (and mostly sympathetic). Herbivores seem to be split between sapient and non-sapient within each species, and sapient herbivores show little respect or concern for non-sapients, even those part of their own herd, and allow predators to hunt the latter. It is considered taboo to kill another sapient animal, but since they can all communicate with each other, it's easily avoided. Then the very anthropomorphic colonists show up, and for some reason can't communicate with the non-anthropomorphic cast members, who they consider to be all dumb beasts... Oh, and did I mention their society is advanced enough to have guns?
- A variation occurs in in this Schlock Mercenary strip, which takes place after a very near tragedy occurred between two species who didn't recognize each others' sentience. But, hey, "Food that talks is not food". Schlock looks for loop-holes. Sometimes, he doesn't even bother with the pretense.
- Tropers and Schlockites beware: ordinary animals (and for some time, a computer on Luna) are sentient, but humans, aliens, most A Is, and special animals are sapient.
- On a previous arc, the mercs dealt with a species that was illegally selling their own (non-sapient) young as delicacies. In their defense, they are quite delicious.
- The Cyantian Chronicles: Due to genetic engineering done by a long dead alien race, ALL sapient anthroporphic Cyantians are omnivores. Only non-sapient prey species are consumed and an anthro wolf eating an anthro rabbit is still cannibalism. It is notable that a rabbit that eats mostly meat will have digestive troubles and hormonal imbalances. The same applies for carnivores that eat too much veggies.
- this is essentially the same set up for the Antreyki in Triquetra Cats.
- Suicide For Hire features a Lampshade Hanging when Arcturus and Hunter, a mouse and a fox respectively, discuss milk: "You know of any wild animals that continue drinking milk not only after infancy, but from a source not even of its own species?" A caption in the border between panels reads: "To anal-retentive assholes like myself: You know what I mean. STFU."
- In Faux Pas all animals are non-anthropomorphic, but as they have grown up in a studio animal training center, they have learned to see each other as friends instead of prey; besides, there's plenty of chow for the foxes and cats (the origin of which they refuse to think about). However, some confusion ensues when the wild vixen Cindy joins the gang, and when her cousin Dusk seems to have eaten one of the (named) rabbits.
- This is a plot point in Digger, who tells the Shadow Child that it is wrong to eat anything that can talk: Hyenas, meanwhile, do not share this belief and this literally ends in much confusion.
- One of the filler strips of SSDD shows why this would not happen if there were sentient versions of animals as well as non-antropomorphic ones.
- In TallyHo the main characters are a fox and a hound. The fox is a carnivore but is only ever shown eating human food he has obtained somehow. He even points out to a frightened rabbit that thinks she's about to be eaten that he prefers his meat "batter-fried in 30 herbs and spices and served in a paper bucket".
- In Gene Catlow, Word Of God says that all meat comes from donors — furries who donate their mortal remains to be processed as food, much like Real Life organ donors.
- 21st Century Fox originally had the carnivores eat meat (A Fox, for instance, once took down a lion), but when a law was passed that made it illegal for people to eat other people, they had to rely on S.P.A.M. When said law was repealed,
there was mass panic in the streets, pandemonium, PURE CHAOS people were quite pleased with the good-tasting S.P.A.M.
- This◊ strip from Perry Bible Fellowship.
Web Original
Anime
- Kimba the White Lion has played a bit with this problem (despite being guilty of this trope itself in early episodes): after all anmals make piece under the new "lion king", they are suddenly facing a situation where no-one is allowed to eat anyone else, thus reducing their entire carnivore population to live solely on insect (and even THAT gives them moral qualms; lucky that a man who's been trying to invent "artifical meat" eventually comes along...)
- Pokemon brings up this trope sometimes, albeit rarely. In the series, all animals -and even several plants- are Pokemon, and all Pokemon are intelligent. The cast has indeed been seen eating meat and the early games directly address this at points - Farfetch'd and Lapras are said to be near-extinct due to overhunting, and Gold/Silver has you rescuing Slowpokes from Team Rocket... who are harvesting their tails for sale as delicacies. (They grow back, but...) In the first season, curiously, there were a few non-Pokemon fish, but they've been pretty much retconned out of existance. Most of the characters seem to prefer to never talk about such things and enjoy the meal, including the Pokemon.
- In one episode, James has a Magikarp, which is basically a very big koi. They narrowly escaped a sunken ship, and are starving on a makeshift raft in the middle of the ocean. Even the non-villains want a taste of the juicy Magikarp, except Misty who has a soft spot for water types. The only reason Magikarp survived was because its scales were too hard to bite through. Nobody seemed to care that Magikarp was probably sapient.
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A few of the older Pokedex entries The games and cards specifically cite references of Pokemon eating each other; Ekans have clearly been stated to eat other Pokemon eggs, according to Pokemon Silver Furrets eat Rattata, and according to one of the TCG cards Omastar is a predator that cracked open Shellder's shells and sucked out their insides. Sneasle specifically targets the eggs of Pidgey, who in turn love to eat Magicarp, Wurple developed poison to fight off Swellow, that still manage to eat many anyway and there are probably more examples.
- Metagross, despite being one of the smartest, and probably closest to sentient of most Pokemon, is described as a brutal predator which may eat anything smaller than its mouth(actually seeing its mouth in 3D was a let down). Diglet scavenge off of Onix's catches.
- Some dex entries do refer to Venonat eating bugs, but this is probably due to their being no Pokemon small enough for it to eat. Other types can like Gengar can simply feed off of emotions like fear, but its a Ghost
- It's hard to find at least one Pokedex for a species that doesn't mention the word "prey".
- I was reading a manga version of the Pokemon series where the main character, Red, goes on a Pokemon Safari ride and gets captured Victreebel. They take him to where they perform an evolution ceremony where they drain the fluids of other creatures to feed the Bellsprout and Weepinbell to make them evolve into their next forms. The real bizarre part comes when they are seen draining the fluids from what apparently look like real world animals! http://www.onemanga.com/Pokemon_Special/22/03/ and http://www.onemanga.com/Pokemon_Special/22/04/.
- Arashi No Yoru Ni (One Stormy Night) is a heartwarming anime movie about a clumsy, mangy wolf named Gabu making friends with a sweet (if somewhat androgenous) goat named Mei. The wolf repeatly had to suppress the urge to eat him and his kind, which his goat friend is blissfully unaware off (unlike his more wise nervous friends). For example, while going out on a picnic, Gabu loses his meal and (delirious with hunger) thinks about gnawing off Mei's ear under the assumption that friends should make others happy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH5gaQMpOcw
- Dream of the Crayon Kingdom has an odd situation. The Crayon Kingdom has several neighboring kingdoms, such as the Hamburger Kingdom and the Rice Ball Kingdom. When dignitaries from all these kingdoms were invited to a banquet, we couldn't help wondering, "What do the hamburgers eat?" The question was answered: they eat smaller, non-sentient hamburgers.
Western Animation
- The Flintstones has a weird case with their animal appliances. The animals talk and are apparently sentient. There's also non-intelligent animals as well, though, such as Dino.
- Subverted very nastily in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures: The gang spends the episode hung up on the moral quandary of eating hamburgers and other foods made of meat (all the major characters are animals). In the end, they resolved to simply become vegetarians. This works out fine until Buster sits down to eat a carrot. The carrot suddenly sprouts a face and limbs and begs not to be eaten. Buster, realizing there's no way to win here, just sighs and eats the carrot anyway.
- Another episode (or was it the same one?) had Plucky show what Thanksgiving is like at his home. Yes, the whole family, Ducks all, is shown about to have turkey.
- Overcome in The Animals Of Farthing Wood by the Oath of Mutual Protection, where the animals promise not to frighten, bully or eat each other during their journey to White Deer Park.
- However what happened before and after they got there is depicted as a brutal fact of life; in the cartoon series when we first meet the leader of the group, Fox, he is asked a question by a group including a rabbit and has to put down a dead rabbit he is carrying in his mouth before he can answerer. And when they get to White Deer Park, whilst the Farthing Wood animals continue to uphold the Oath amongst one another, the other animals of White Deer Park are not bound by the Oath and as such many of the smaller Farthing Wood animals are killed and eaten during the series.
- And, as Adder is quick to point out, the Oath doesn't apply to eating the animals of White Deer Park either.
- In some stories, human/ animal shapeshifters angst over eating meat. Beast Boy in the animated series Teen Titans said it best: "I've been most of those animals!"
- ...And then later he threatens to eat some talking tofu. Because he's a vegetarian. So Yeah..
- Coming at it from another direction, there are characters who pointedly avoid transforming into livestock...
- All animals in Nagasarete Airantou can talk, so humans eat fish instead. Eggs are still fair game, though, making it a little awkward when a hen has a friendly chat with the male lead before handing over a basket of hers...
- Well remember that domestic Chickens lay eggs even when they're not fertilized. We'd give a better analogy, but frankly, that's just as disgusting.
- The Futurama episode, "The Problem With Popplers" has addresses this several times. First, there's a bunch of hippies trying to enforce vegetarianism. Leela points out eating meat is a part of nature, and the hippies point to a lion they taught to eat tofu. It's sickly and looks like it'll fall over dead at any second. Also the main characters casually bring up a few animals they eat in the future that are not usually thought of as food here in the present, such as parrots.
- The real meat of the episode however focuses on popplers, which resemble popcorn chicken, and are apparently delicious. Everybody happily devours the things until one hatches, and they realize that popplers are the eggs of the Omicron Persei 8 people. For some reason, the fact that those guys are mean and kinda deserve to have their young eaten is never brought up.
- They're sapient, no one has a right to kill children because their parents are mean.
- "When my species grows up, we eat our moms!"
- Interpersonal relationships in some children's series sometimes get a little... odd... if adults think about them too long. For instance Franklin, where the cute turtle and goose and rabbit are bestest buddies with the equally cute bear and fox, or Little Bear, in which the titular hero hangs out with a duck and a chicken... and a cat, and an owl. (Also a human girl, but that's a whole 'nother story...)
- While the characters are anthropomorphic to an extreme, it's still rather odd to realize that, in Arthur, Sue Ellen, a cat, is taught by Ratburn, a rat. But they seem to get along just fine.
- The excellent Looney Tunes short "Birds Anonymous" may be the earliest example of the "predators can just quit eating animals" trope. Sylvester joined the titular group, then suffered hard while going cold turkey due to lack of bird flesh. In the end, the president of Birds Anonymous ends up chasing Tweety as well.
- Brandy & Mr. Whiskers handles this in a surprisingly brutal way for a Disney TV series. While predators are usually handled as villains, not all of them are entirely bad. Some are just annoying or indeed just doing what they were born to do. Even more startling is that some of them actually succeed. In a particular unexpected example, an entire rodent family is eaten by a crocodile in a slightly anvilicious aesop - but it's still played for laughs.
- In both his SatAM and Archie comics incarnations, Sonic The Hedgehog has a prominent fondness for chili dogs. As non-sapient animals are rarely portrayed in the series, where the meat comes from is a bit of a mystery.
- As far is I recall, "non-sapient animals" is limited to Muttski. Who's a robot now. Possibly this explains where the meat for his chili dogs comes from.
- Father of the Pride plays with this. The main character is a lion who's best friend is a Gopher who's name is "Snack". At one point, Snack's girlfriend (also aptly named "Candy") dumps him, and to protect his feelings, tells Snack that he ate his girlfriend instead.
- In an episode of Cat Dog, Dog tries to answer the question of where meat comes from. He explains how there's a guy who plants meat plants — meanwhile, Cat just explains slaughter. Of course, Dog goes crazy at the idea of eating sapient beings, who he thinks are friends, and turns vegan. Then, Dog starts to become delusional as he imagines that vegetables are his friends. After all that, Dog then tries to eat Cat, because he's not his friend but his brother. Fortunately, the guy who plants meat plants appears and solves the problem.
- Not enough Nightmare Fuel? Cat and Dog share bodies, so if Dog eats Cat, he eats his own body.
- Addressed in a rather interesting manner in one episode of the new George Of The Jungle cartoon series; George proclaims himself to protect the animals of the forest, which frequently results in the a "Predators are Mean" approach, with them being beaten up by George. However, in one episode he rescues a bird from a snake that was strangling it, causing the bird's family to reward George by carving his face on the mountainside. However, near the end of the episode, we hear the snake's side of the story, and it turns out that the bird was going to steal and eat the snake's eggs, and the snake's actions were thoroughly justified. The bird family promptly reverses the carving and flees once their facade of innocence is ruined.
- On another occasion, George helped the carnivores give up meat, turning them into hippies. By an unfortunate coincidence, Ursula and Magnolia were teaching the herbivores to stand up for themselves, turning them into a vicious gang. Luckily, when it's pointed out that there won't be enough vegetables for everyone, the carnivores snap and the food chain is restored.
- Averted in Wolf's Rain, where in spite of the wolves' ability to replenish energy by sleeping in the moonlight, it's clearly no substitute for actual food. Kiba mentions having gone a month with only moonlight to sustain him, and subsequently is much thinner than the others. They find a decomposing deer carcass in one of the early episodes (which everyone but Hige turns down, generally because it's rotting). After Toboe's Crowning Moment Of Awesome where he kills the giant walrus, they eat the walrus—and in a surprisingly dignified acknowledgement, the walrus says something along the lines of, "You may have killed me, but I have saved you all."
- The ending of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving has Snoopy and Woodstock, the latter of whom is a bird, sitting down to have a turkey dinner. The bonus feature on the special's new DVD release has Bill Melendez admitting even he thought that scene was rather morbid.
- Wonder Pets tends to go out of its way to avoid this issue entirely. No matter what animal the Pets save, they are given a gift of celery, implying that everyone eats celery. It got to the point where, in the Circus episode (which was already plenty weird) a lion cub was seen eating nut cereal and celery.
- In Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, Spiderus is the only spider that is known to have eaten other bugs. He seems to have dropped the practice after getting married to Spindella. Additionally, the kids encounter a frog named Felix who refuses to eat bugs and enjoys eating berries. Though Felix's parents, particularly his father, are not happy about this ("Bugs are food!"), they eventually settle things with the community of Sunny Patch, the father even agreeing that he might try some of those berries.
- The Goode Family subverts the vegan carnivore subtrope. Rearing the family dog on a soy-bean diet has made it so starved for meat that he takes to eating all of the neighborhood pets.
- Confused? Not if you're watching the new Jim Henson series on PBS Kids, Dinosaur Train. This series seems to go out of the way to talk about the differences between herbivores and carnivores. The dinosaurs that are carnivores, however, do seem to have come to an unspoken agreement to not eat fellow dinosaurs.
- An episode of "Krypto the Super Dog" involves the same dolphin confusion as in the one in Shark Tale. When Krypto and his cat friend Streaky (who also has the same powers) are exposed to red kryptonite, they turn into fish versions of themselves. Not only are the sharks portrayed as being mean bastards preying on innocent fish, there's actually a DOLPHIN who is APPALLED that Streaky eats fish, and even has the nerve to call him (along with a bunch of other fish who find out the truth) a "fish eater". Both carnivore confusion AND you fail biology forever since both dolphins and whales are treated as if they are related to fish.
- Back at The Barnyard - the fact that some of the cast of barn animals include a dog and a ferret, tends not to bother the others at all. However, Freddy the ferret does very frequently fantasize eating his best friend, Peck (who happens to be a chicken), but tries to maintain a vegetarian diet (the producers seem to disregard the fact that ferrets are obligate carnivores and completely lack the ability to derive nutrition from plant matter). In one hilarious scene, Otis the cow is seen EATING A HAM SANDWICH, but later turns out it's just meat substitute.
- The fact that the entire cast are intelligent, talking animals raises the further question about the morals of human meat consumption, and why other equally intelligent barn animals don't try to avoid this fate.
Real Life
- Truth In Television. Most animals don't give a damn how we classify them, and will gladly eat other animals that are under similar classifications. Raptors eat smaller birds, fish will eat fish, and yes, most bird will peck whatever left over food you leave lying around, even chicken. Mammals eat other mammals all the time. Most humans eat pork and beef, which are both mammals similar to humans.
- There's also the insidious bushmeat trade... Which can include monkeys, Gorillas and Chimps. Yes, even our closest animal relatives are not safe.
- Chicken farmers have to check the hen houses everyday because if a egg sits too long and doesn't hatch, the hen will eat them, and like the taste so much she will eat every egg she lays form then on in.
- The "carnivores are mean" subtrope is so damn pervasive, wildlife centers and nature magazines are often deluged with calls and letters from hysterical bird lovers (really?) asking what can be done about the mean hawk eating all the poor little house sparrows. Seriously. For the record, backyard hawks and cats (don't forget that Cats Are Mean too) mostly go after Eurasian House Sparrows anyway. House Sparrows, for those not in the know, are an invasive species in the Americas who have wreaked havoc on native species. Fortunately they're so used to living around human houses for safety that they're almost too easy for predators to hunt.
- Speaking of backyard birds, this article, recently published in Audubon magazine, theorizes that one painting (this one) brought the Blue Jay of all animals under the Carnivores Are Mean banner. This isn't anything new for Corvids (poor crows; they're like the hyenas of the avian world), but it's weird that the one member of the family generally agreed to be the prettiest is under this big tent too.
- Paleoartist Mark Witton has brought this subject up for discussion in his online portfolio/blog. The discussion, which has been rather lively so far, accompanies his admittedly surprising illustration that depicts carnivorous scavenging behavior in ceratopsians. Even though he explains the thinking behind the piece, several posters can't quite wrap their heads around the idea of a meat-eating Styracosaur — which just underlines his point.
- This editorial, found (naturally) on the Failblog.
- Part this, part Lets Meet The Meat, and part What Measure Is A Non Cute. Fellow New Englanders: Lobsters. Discuss.
- And try not to think of this trope during Thanksgiving dinner. We dare you.
- On the contrary! This Troper's family eagerly anticipates feasting on the vile turkey! Just don't ask any of us to eat Octopus.
- Have you ever heard of David Pearce? The Abolitionist Project? This Tetrapod Zoology post will explain all. Or try to.
- "Mad Cow disease" became the issue it was, in the UK, thanks to the ground up remains of other animals being included in the feed for other cows, without the treatment that European feed got that destroyed the responsible prions.
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