Carnivore Confusion: Difference between revisions
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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.<ref>In [[Real Life]], pigs and wolves are both omnivores, eating both plants and other animals. Wolves will prey
* Sometimes your heroes are predatory animals. Now carnivores are okay, so scavengers often become the [[Villain by Default|Villains By Default]]. The usual ethos is that only evil weirdos eat carrion, and only cowards do not hunt. They will be depicted as ugly and intimidating. Example: ''[[The Lion King]]''.<ref>Non-exclusive scavenging and predation is rarely used in fiction. In [[Real Life]], lions scavenge off hyena kill more often than vice versa.</ref>
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* Similar to the option immediately above, some works such as ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' and the ''[[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.
* Establish that the carnivore is unlucky ([[Looney Tunes|Wile E. Coyote]]) or that their chosen prey is too fast or aggressive to catch—for example, Jerry of ''[[Tom and Jerry]]''. This makes the point moot, since we never see the predator eat.
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