Just Eat Him

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John Madden: This could be the score that Sylvester needed right here! Pat Summerall: No, there's Tweety [still inside Sylvester's head]. He has not broken the plane of the esophageal track. Sylvester did not score. John Madden: This is unbelievable! All Sylvester needs to do is swallow him! —Cartoon Network Big Game XXVII

The carnivorous equivalent of Just Hit Him.

The nature of predator and prey is often made more complicated than it needs to be. Especially when the prey just happens to be the protagonist.

For instance, if the predator seeks to kill his enemy or turn it into food, one would think that the process would be fairly simple. Just have it catch the prey in its mouth, chew its flesh and/or bones into a nonliving paste, and swallow it.

Unless the character is fodder for the Monster of the Week or a horror antagonist, though, this just doesn't happen. One of the following two outcomes almost always ensues:

• The predator catches the prey in its mouth. It chews for a while, and then spits it out again. The victim may be injured, or traumatized, or covered in a massive amount of spittle, but he is likely to survive.
• The predator catches the prey in its mouth, and then swallows it whole. This may make sense for snakes and sea life, but even toothy carnivores seem to do this. Unfortunately for the predator, this approach tends to result in either a Fantastic Voyage or Womb Level on the part of the victim, and often actually results in the creature's death or discomfort due to damage to vital organs and the like. This version is often used as a family friendly death (a villain who gets swallowed by a dragon, for example) hinging on the younger members of the audience not realizing that being swallowed alive and digested would be one of the most horrible deaths imaginable. It also doesn't make sense if the eater is intelligent and savoring the meal at hand; swallowing a piece of food whole, especially meat, means you don't really taste it....

This trope is especially common in video games with a lifebar, as being devoured in one bite doesn't lend itself well to an enjoyable boss fight. Those that do kill the player instantly tend to appear in the survival horror genre, or serve as stage obstacles in platformers.

Sometimes for some people, unsurprisingly, this is Fetish Fuel under the heading of "vorarephilia", or "vore" for short.

Not to be confused with Just Eat Gilligan. Compare Eat Me when someone deliberately tries to get eaten. May involve a Mouth Cam. May be averted, or at least delayed, by Palate Propping.

Examples of Just Eat Him include:

Advertising

• This Toyota Tacoma ad. If Nefarian had bothered to chew, the law wouldn't have been laid down.

Anime & Manga

• Ranma ½: More of a case of "just butcher him," but whenever Ryōga Hibiki almost gets eaten while stuck in pig form, the eater inevitably decides, instead of killing him and chopping him up, to boil him alive like a lobster. Fortunately this turns him back into a man (who, since he's Made of Iron, only turns red rather than get covered in third-degree burns).
• Digimon Adventure: Metalseadramon tries this on Wargreymon.

Films -- Animation

• In Shrek, the dragon eats Lord Farquad, but an After the Credits sequence shows he's "ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' aliiive...." Mostly just for laughs though, as he never gets out.
  • He presumably did die eventually, as his ghost appears as the antagonist in a Shrek-based theme park 3D film.
• In Spirited Away, No-Face swallows first a talking frog (taking on its voice), and then a pair of bath attendants, only to vomit them later (unharmed) along all the food he'd gobbled down. Though, as he's a very strange shadow creature, eating and digesting are probably just unnatural for No-Face.
  • He absorbed his surroundings—in that case, the greed and avarice of the bathhouse. He took on the voice of everyone he'd swallowed at once. Purged of his greed (and everything else) he returned to his original mild-mannered appearance.

Films -- Live Action

• Men in Black is yet another good example, although admittedly he gets goaded into it. Edgar, a giant cockroach, is fighting Agents J and K. K successfully goads Edgar into swallowing him, but he still doesn't chew.

K: You're nothing but a smear on the Sports page to me, you slimy, ugly, intestinal parasite! Eat me! Eat me!

• • Moments later, K manages to blow Edgar up from the inside by using a blaster the bug had swallowed earlier.
  • The novelization hand waves this by saying that the Bug only swallowed K whole out of anger; he would have chewed J if he'd gotten the chance.
• In Men in Black 2, Serleena, the Big Bad who is an alien tentacle monster taking a human form, does this to a mugger. However, the man is dead when she regurgitates him shortly after.
• In the movie Dude, Where's My Car?, the Jerk Jock asks the alien giantess "Spit or swallow?"... you can pretty much guess what happens next.
• The ending of Godzilla 2000 has Orga expanding his jaws like a snake. Godzilla willingly goes inside, and as Orga absorbs more of his DNA, Godzilla charges up his atomic breath to a point where he starts glowing orange. When he fires the beam, he blows the top half of Orga's body to bits.
• In the third Tremors movie, Burt actually gets eaten by a Graboid at one point. Fortunately, it swallows him whole and he still had his walkie-talkie on him, so he was able to coach the nearby Jack into tricking Graboid into smashing itself against one of the underground concrete walls surrounding his compound. Jack, in turn, manages to dig down to the Graboid and cut it open in time to get Burt safely out.
  • Graboids always swallow things whole. Usually, this is not a problem, but Burt went down with a metal barrel protecting him, hence why he did not die immediately.
• Eraserhead climaxes with The baby eating Henry (apparently) in retaliation for murdering it.
• Averted in the film Beowulf. A great deal of the men Grendel killed were just for giggles, but the ones he wants to eat are killed very swiftly, and there is a shot of him ripping off somebody's head and savoring the taste.
• In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Devastator attempts to suck in one of the Autobots, Mudflap. It ends in option 2, with Mudflap blowing a giant hole in Devastator's head
• At the end of Cloverfield, Clovey gets his first (on-screen) sample of human flesh when it nibbles on Hud. We watch from the camera's eye (carried by Hud, of course) as the monster picks him up in its jaws and mangles him around a bit before incidentally dropping his top half and the camera.
• This is done in The Gingerdead Man, but it backfires horribly when the homicidal pastry somehow possesses his devourer, turning him into a human-sized cookie.
• In Star Wars, this is averted with the Rancor but played straight with the Sarlacc, as evidenced by Boba Fett's escape from the monster's stomach in the expanded universe novels.

Literature

• Rationalized in Animorphs: Megamorphs #2. The victim managed to avoid the T. rex's teeth long enough to acquire the dinosaur's DNA and turn into a duplicate of it. This transformation was sufficient to make something inside the T. rex go all 'splodey. You try swallowing something that proceeds to start growing inside you.
  • Earlier, Rachel and Tobias got swallowed by a Kronosaurus. Rachel then turned into a bear and mauled her way into its lungs looking for breathable air (whereupon it conveniently beached itself to die).
    • It also plays the horrific nature of what that would entail quite graphically, making quite clear that our heroes are being covered in very painful stomach acids. Plus, Kronosaurus is actually big enough to pull this off.
• Jonah and the Whale (or "Great Big Fish") from The Bible. Justified since the fish had been sent by God, so presumably the whole thing was miraculous.
• Razor Eddie allows himself to be eaten by a huge worm-like monster in Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, specifically so he can evoke this trope and cut it to ribbons from within.
  • Simon R. Green also used a variant of this trope in The Bones of Haven, when a sewer-lurking giant spider's corpse lands on Hawk, apparently pinning him underwater. Actually, he ends up inside its abdomen, and must cut his way out with his ax. A partial subversion in that it hadn't eaten Hawk, just collapsed on top of him when he'd cut its body open from beneath.
• In Mark E. Rodger's Samurai Cat during the Battle of Valhalla, Fenrir makes the mistake of eating the titular character. Big mistake.

Myth & Legend

• Swallowing one's offspring alive is one of many, many bad habits practiced by the Greek pantheon. Granted, they generally survive because you can't kill them at all so that may actually be a decent place to hide them.
• The Grimm version of the story Tom Thumb has the titular character getting swallowed by both a horse and a wolf and coming out alive both times.
• In Bowdlerized versions of some fairy tales, most notably Little Red Riding Hood, it often turns out that the wolf (or similar predator) swallowed its victim whole, thus allowing for a happy reunion after the events have played out.
  • In reality, the wolf would have ripped his victim's throat out first. Unlike humans, predators go for the most nutritious parts of the body first in case they only have time to eat one organ before something bigger chases them away, so then he would have ripped the belly open and started eating the liver. Not only could you not get the victim back alive, but the only way to get them back in one piece would be to freeze the mush from the wolf's belly.
  • Subverted by an adaptation of Peter and The Wolf by "Weird Al" Yankovic. "Which means the gastric juices slowly dissolved his body and he died a long, painful death."
  • Subverted with a vengeance in Todd McFarlane's Twisted Fairy Tales line of figures, in which Little Red Riding Hood, clad in a leather bikini, hooded cloak, and thigh-high spiked boots, holds up the corpse of an eviscerated wolf to show the messy contents of his stomach (which included Grandma).
  • In reference to this, Granny Weatherwax said: "That's just what children get told."

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons, some creatures have a special attack called "Swallow Whole" which causes massive damage by crushing and acid. It is possible for a victim to cut their way out (in which case, inexplicably, "muscular action closes the hole" without exception) or in some cases, climb back into the mouth and out.
  • Notably, it is a semi-feasible strategy to fight the legendary Tarrasque from within, as its spell-reflecting carapace and absurd number of natural weapons make it more dangerous on the outside. (Acid-resistance spells are still a good idea, though.)
  • In 4th Edition, it's no longer possible to carve your way out of the creature until it's dead. Creatures still have much lower internal AC than external, though.
  • As an aside, the game's titular dragons are by and large not among the monsters who try this, despite being big enough to do it as they grow older (doing so requires the dragon take certain feats). Since they're generally intelligent, it may be that most are Genre Savvy.
• Averted in Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Giants use randomly determined attacks. Among the possibilities is "pick up and eat", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and an instant kill no matter what cool magic items or special abilities the target may have.
• Tyranid Mawlocs have a tendency to swallow people whole. And they're still alive as they're being digested.

Video Games

• This is very common in the Zelda series.
  • Like-Likes have appeared in the series since the first game. Their main attack is to swallow Link whole, then spit him out with only minor damage. This may be justified, considering that the creatures seem more interested in devouring his shield or armor.
  • Any boss monster that actually manages to catch Link in its mouth tends to merely do several hearts of damage and then release him. Recent 3D games treat this as a mini-cutscene.
  • Moldworms, unlike most swallowing enemies, do not spit Link out, rather putting him through the entire digestive process (yeesh). Strangely, this is not necessarily fatal.
• Tanzer from SaGa Frontier has a habit of swallowing airships whole. The victims attempt to continue their lives inside its body, at least until the main characters arrive.
  • Almost the exact same thing happens with the Leviathan from Final Fantasy II, except with regular ships.
• Galdon from Star Fox Adventures. Particularly notable, because he swallows Fox and gets his uvula beaten up multiple times during the fight. You'd think he'd, like, stop eating him eventually.
  • Andross from Star Fox 64 could also eat Fox's ship whole, only to spit him back out after stripping the wings off his ship, heavily crippling the controls.
• Adding the adjective omnivorous to anything in Scribblenauts will cause it to eat everything, including you.
• Justified by Chompasaurus from Banjo-Tooie. He suffers from digestive troubles, and is more interested in getting someone inside him to fix the problem.
• In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, the Dragon monster class possesses the Inside Tour attack, which has the dragon smack the target into the air, vacuum them into its mouth, swallow them, poop them out, then nail them with a tail strike while they're stuck in the swirly pink poop pile. Can be used to hilarious effect in a combination attack, where the target can get subjected to more abuse while in their humiliating state, or more ridiculously, the other attacker can get swallowed along with them, and proceed to audibly pummel them through the entire process.
  • In Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, the Cockatrice has its Reverse Egg magichange attack, which has its snake tail enlarge and devour a multitude of targets, after which the bird proceeds to spit them out as eggs.
• The Warcraft games have Kodo Beasts which can devour most enemy units whole. They slowly lose health until being digested completely. It seems they are pretty fine before though, since they still provide field of view for enemy players in there, and when the Kodo is killed, they simply get out.
  • Dryads are indigestible due to spell immunity. They can be swallowed perfectly well, but will then remain alive in the kodo indefinitely.
• In one chapter of Paper Mario, Mario is asked to do battle with Tubba Blubba, who's been eating Boos. Once he is defeated, he decides to open his mouth and let them all go. They come flying out...
  • In the sequel, Koops goes with Mario, partially to avenge his father, presumed dead. When they defeat the dragon who ate him, he's regurgitated and is spit out. Despite having been in there for many years, he's fine, except his shell smells of dragon insides.
    • Remember that old cartoon joke about turtles having whole homes inside their shells?
  • Let's face it. Without this trope, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story wouldn't exist.
  • Averted with Boss Bass, from Super Mario Bros 3, who eats you whole, makes you lose a life, and return to the map screen (or get a Game Over), even if you're Super Mario or wearing one of the suits. The only defense is Starman.
• Averted in the original Tomb Raider game, in which the T. rex has a one-hit kill if you don't run away very fast and then climb something high.
• Ratchet and Clank Going Commando plays this trope straight during the optional fight against the giant swamp-monster mother—if Ratchet is swallowed whole by the beast but still has life left afterward, the beast will then hurl him back out and pick its teeth.
  • The giant venus flytrap plants on Oozla will snap their jaw-like, toothed petals closed on Ratchet, then "chew" briefly before releasing him.
  • The Giant Mutated Protopet at the end swallows Captain Qwark whole. He gets spit out intact when Ratchet wins the final boss battle.
• Dino Crisis averts this, with the T. rex swallowing you nicely in one bite if you stand still too long in front of him.
• Averted quite annoyingly in Resident Evil 4. Sometimes, your enemies' heads will explode, releasing the parasite inside their body in several different ways. In one of these ways, the parasite is merely a mouth on an enormous neck that can take Leon's head off in one bite. There's also a boss monster that can gobble you up.
  • Likewise Gamma Hunters, Frog-like monsters in Resident Evil 3 and the Outbreak series, can swallow a character whole, resulting in an instant kill.
• In Heart of Darkness, the hero Andy is once swallowed whole by a Giant Mook. This looks like an endgame but isn't, because the toad-like monster had earlier swallowed Andy's plasma riffle... and the hero can recover his weapon in the mook's stomach and blast it from the inside.
  • He is not, however, so lucky in many of his death animations.
• Subverted in Star Wars Battlefront II. When playing the Jabba's Palace map, one must take care in the throne room to avoid the area directly in front of Jabba himself, lest you fall through the same trap door seen in Return of the Jedi and be eaten in one chomp by the Rancor. Note that there is another way into the Rancor Pit; the Rancor doesn't notice anyone who enters by that door.
  • There's also a level with a Sarlacc pit in the original (again, One-Hit Kill if you're eaten by it).
• Unsuprisingly, this can be done in Second Life under the Fetish Fuel heading
• Averted in Ecco the Dolphin, where the Vortex Queen does just eat you. Get caught in her mouth and she chomps down on you, causing instant death. The same applies to the Foe Queen, her Expy in Defender of the Future. Defender also features a great white shark as the first boss; another instant killer if you approach it the wrong way.
• In one of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer games (for Xbox) the titular character faces down a giant snake monster thingie in Angel's mansion. Play wrong and Buffy gets chomped on... then thrown aside. Granted, she is durable... but other vampires try to go for the throat. It's very confusing.
• In Nethack, purple worms swallow their victims whole (which is a nod to their D&D origins, discussed above). If said victim is your character, you do have a chance to cut or blast yourself free, but you'd better make it quick. Since The Dev Team Thinks of Everything, if you're wearing a ring of slow digestion, the worm automatically spits you back out. This attack form also means that PWs make useful pets if you can magically tame them, but you and the worm may eventually learn that swallowing certain types of creatures is a really bad idea.
• Averted in Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb. If the giant crocodile found in the last chamber of the Ceylon ruins manages to get close enough to Indy, it swallows him in one bite.
• In Tales of Symphonia, there are two enemies that will swallow your characters and then spit them out. (It's said enemies' strongest combo attack and can poison you in the case of the aptly named Carnivorous Plant.)
• A few of the larger bosses and mundane enemies in Final Fantasy X and X-2 use this as an attack.
• Jet Force Gemini: one level takes place in a giant worm. Why none of the heroes (or enemies) are digested is never explained. Successful exiting of the worm is by the obvious back exit.
• While usually averted in the Kirby series in the sense that you just completely defeat an enemy you eat, it's played straight for an actually scarier effect when fighting Dedede in Dreamland 3 and Kirby64. He mutates as an Eldritch Abomination and eats Kirby with a huge eyed mouth from his stomach and spits him from the mouth. Note that here being eaten causes the damage, while normally it's caused because of being spit against a wall at full strength.
• In Muramasa: The Demon Blade, while in Hell, Momohime has to let herself be eaten by an Oni in order to retrieve Jinkuro's soul after she unwittenly causes it to be eaten. She even convinces it to swallow her whole for her plan to work. Given that she has swords, getting out it easy (and takes a whole life bar from the Oni). What's strange is that midway through the fight, the Oni will try and eat her again, leading to the same outcome, despite having been slashed from the inside before. Hell, it poses minimum threat.
• Yoshi's Story has an boss made of cotton candy or something similar that you have to lick until nothing remains. You get health every time you lick it, so suffice to say it is an easy boss.
• Jak and Daxter averts this in one partially-submerged town. If you fall in the water and remain there for more than a few moments, you will instantly die when a huge fish eats you. Even if you make it out of the water, if the fish was close enough, it may just jump over your tiny floating platform to eat you anyway. Also, when the fish is coming for you, the music stops and is replaced by a slow heartbeat sound, which manages to be absolutely terrifying, especially since it takes place in the mostly-peaceful mission hub.
• Turok: Dinosaur Hunter has a T. rex boss that will heft you up in his jaws and swallow you down whole in a cutscene after he brings your lifebar to zero. You would think he'd chew you up with those sharp teeth but he doesn't. This might or might not just happen if you get too close to him and die, because he does have some miniguns and rocket launchers strapped to his back.
• World of Warcraft: One boss, C'Thun, is an Expy of Cthulhu, and will eat players if the fight goes on long enough. When that happens they are taken to another room—basically, his stomach—where they should attack internal organs to weaken him, but they take substantial damage from being digested. It's possible to force him to spit people out again before he dies.
• Kronos the Titan swallowed all of his children, and in God of War III, he does the same to Kratos at the climax of their fight. It backfires spectacularly when Kratos being Kratos, just cuts his way out of Kronos' stomach with the Blade of Olympus. Ouch.
• Many enemies in the Pikmin games, primarily the Bulborbs, kill your Pikmin by eating them.
• The Rockgagong in Tales of Graces devours the party and serves as a short dungeon (They end up escaping with a pouch of pepper they acquired by accident). It also tries to snap up anyone to who's standing too close to its face while you're fighting it as a Bonus Boss later, which removes any victims for the rest of the battle. For some awkward reason, this attack is blockable, which makes it a lot less threatening it sounds (Unless the AI is the one standing close to it...).
• Savagely averted in the Diablo III debut gameplay trailer, where the Siegebreaker warbeast picks up the male Barbarian and bites his head off.
• In the Half Life mod Natural Selection, when playing as a huge mammoth-like alien the player can use it's "Devour" special attack to instantly eat an enemy.

• In Devil May Cry 4, Bael/Dagon can eat you as an attack. He'll chew a little, but always spits you out after a few seconds.

Web Comics

• In the early days of Sluggy Freelance, Torg was saved from being devoured thanks to his dandruff shampoo. Expendable characters got devoured left and right.
• Here, in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob. Fortunately, Bob was not digestible.
• This strip of Order of the Stick. It ends very badly for one dragon, and works out perfectly fine for another.
  • Let us not forget an earlier dragon (the son of the aforementioned dragon).
  • "HEY! Wise Mister Owlbear! How many licks does it take to get to the chewy elven center of a Vaarsuvius Pop?"
  • And not to mention this poor weasel. Yes, it survived.

"Hors d'oeuvre": And then he flung me right into the open mouth of the troll or ogre or whatever the heck it really was. I had to claw myself out, and let me tell you, I didn't take the scenic route, if you know what I mean.

• • The fate of Tsukiko, "courtesy" of Redcloak taking the simplest available around a band of wights way to dispose of the body.
• This strip of Nodwick.

Artax: Nodwick told you that after you ate him? Trung the Ogre: Yes. Fortunately, Ognar isn't much for chewing. Nodwick: (from Ognar's belly) True, but his digestive juices are impressive...

• • Considering that Nodwick's teammates tend to use him as a meatshield or just bait, this happens a lot to him. Indeed, in another comic, Nodwick mentions going to a henchman conference and being asked to give presentations on the digestive tracts of several monsters, since he has so much experience with them.
• In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, Bob the beholder is once swallowed by an undead dragon during a massive battle. He manages to "kill" it from the inside and rip out of the body, but is a bit traumatized by the experience.
• Happened once when Red Mage was fighting (or trying to) a dragon in 8-Bit Theater:

Red Mage: It has exposed its fleshy underbelly to me in the form of its digestive tract!

• • Despite sounding like he's in denial, Red Mage was able to kill the dragon by freezing it and smashing his way out, though not before everyone else found out the dragon was intelligent and co-operative.
• Bob and George: The Demon/Met hybrid does it to George. (It ends badly.)
• Schlock from Schlock Mercenary can, and often does, just eat enemies. In some cases he'll burn them to ashes, then eat the ashes. When asked if he eats his enemies as his fallback option, he responded that he eats his enemies because they are delicious.
  • He does it so frequently Ennesby even invented a new word for this.

Web Original

• As was mentioned above, some people are turned on by this trope. This is known as "vorarephilia". And, sure enough, there are many websites out there on the Internet that contain this trope in a Fetish Fuel context, either in picture or textual form.

Western Animation

• Played for laughs in more than one cat-chasing-prey comedy. On at least one occasion, Sylvester has successfully eaten Tweety Bird, at which point Tweety starts walking around in Sylvester's head and eventually escapes. Even taking wacky cartoon/Rule of Funny physics as a given, it makes the whole exercise seem rather pointless.
  • Another example took this only a tiny bit more realistically. Sylvester and Tweety are staying in a hospital and Nurse Granny finds Sylvester looking full with feathers in his mouth. She rushes him to an X-ray and Tweety's silhouette is seen in Sylvester's stomach. Cut to Sylvester in his bed with a surgical bandage on his stomach and a completely unharmed Tweety next to him saying "Bad ol' puddytat!"
• Happens with a giant worm in Courage the Cowardly Dog, which eats Muriel along with a pair of alien teddy bears. The entombed bears then have to talk Courage through piloting their space ship back to their home planet before they're fully digested.
• Featured often, as can be expected, in Tom and Jerry cartoons, with Jerry and a duckling character often making their ways into Tom's mouth, be it as prey or intentionally.
• Wakfu: This happens twice in episode 21, with Igôle swallowing whole first Az and then Adamaï, and being forced to regurgitate them both later. (Adamaï can even be seen pounding the beast's distended belly from the inside.) And again with Adamaï in tofu form in episode 23—this time, Igôle willingly spits him out.
• In the cartoon series, Fangface, whenever the werewolf hero hears a word pertaining to food, he promptly stuffs his friend into his mouth!
• Horribly averted in one episode, "The Boy Who Cried Rat", of Ren and Stimpy. Ren pretends to be an invading mouse so that his resulting havoc will force the house's owners to hire and pay for Stimpy, who is masquerading as a mouse catcher. When Stimpy is forcibly encouraged by the house's husband to eat rather than release the mouse aka Ren, Stimpy tries to hold him in his mouth, but again is encouraged by the husband to chew it so he can eat it faster. Cue Ren inside shown being grinded back and forth between Stimpy's suddenly humongous teeth. And being a cartoon character, Ren lives through the entire experience, albeit heavily mutilated (by cartoon standards).

Real Life

• Case in point: great white sharks are known to occasionally grab swimmers, drag them a few yards, then let them go. Some researchers believe that these technically aren't shark attacks. There are several possible explanations for the behaviour.
  • Sharks are suspected to generally chomp larger prey once and then wait for it to bleed out before eating it. This reduces the risk of sustaining injuries during a long struggle. Unlike most shark prey, humans usually manage to reach land before death. (This is also unlikely in the case of great white sharks and the other classic "man eaters", as they are typically big enough not to have trouble with a human.)
  • Another possibility is that it's a taste test. Humans don't look or sound much like seals or fish, and they don't taste right, even if they aren't covered in those nasty external skins, so the fish throw them back. Typically a shark won't eat a human unless it's starving or too badly injured to go after better prey; humans have a higher bone-to-flesh ratio than most shark food. Shark stomachs just aren't made to eat them, so they will often take more calories to catch and digest than are gained from eating them.
    • Shark attacks on boogieboarders tend to be higher. It's believed the outline of the board and a pair of legs looks a lot like a seal.
  • The most likely possibility, based on several survivor accounts and ongoing research into the nervous system of the shark, is that the shark is simply investigating the human. Unfortunately, sharks don't actually have a sense of touch. The only place on their body that comes close to feeling a similar sensation is the bridge of their nose and their gums. This means their only way of figuring out what the big, noisy creature swimming around their reef is involves lots of very sharp teeth, and as humans are somewhat less durable than similar-sized aquatic creatures (dolpins, seals, other sharks, etc.) this can have unfortunate results.
    • Plus, let's be serious -- if a shark wanted to kill you, you'd be dead.
• Grizzly bears. Most grizzlies just don't care about human beings. (Some people theorize that this is because they're actually afraid of humans.) It's extremely rare for grizzlies to attack people; most maulings occur because the bear feels threatened. The safest course of action when faced with a grizzly is to play dead.
  • The same is not true of black bears. Someone who plays dead when faced with a black bear is likely to get eaten. It's thought that this is because grizzlies are active predators and black bears, which are smaller and have more plant matter in their diets, favor carrion.
    • Same for polar bears, who are almost exclusively carnivorous and have little fear of humans. They will actually go out of their way to hunt a person if they're feeling hungry, though if they're not actively starving things like gunshots will keep them away.
• All snakes swallow their prey whole. The only major difference between the various snake species is if they poison the prey or strangle it first. And a couple of species, like the Black Racer, actually do swallow their prey alive.
  • Naturalists have observed snakes swallowing poisonous salamanders and the like and then, somewhat later, observed the aforementioned salamander walking out the mouth of the dead snake.
• Carnivorous plants, while they don't "swallow" per se, do trap their victims and digest them alive. The lucky ones go in the pitcher plants, where they'll likely drown before the digestive juices go to work. The venus flytraps on the other hand...
• Frogs.
• Pelicans, oddly enough.
  • As do cormorants. Like with the snakes and salamanders above, there are observed cases of fish that these birds have started to swallow successfully wriggling loose and escaping, but presumably they hadn't reached the gastric acids yet. This is the reason for the joke about a bird (either a pelican or a cormorant) catching an eel. The bird swallows the eel - but it struggles out the mouth. It catches and swallows the eel again, clamping its beak shut - but the eel wriggles out the bird's ass. So the third time, it catches the bird, swallows, rams its beak up its ass, and mumbles "Now circulate, you bastard!".
• Ducks.
• Many, many fish. Numerous deep-sea species have long teeth just to hold prey until it's swallowed.
• Humans. For a time, swallowing live goldfish was a fad.
  • A variant occurs for some dishes where the animal is obviously no longer alive but it's body still continues to move, such as Korean Sannakji, which are seasoned raw wriggling octopus tentacles meant to be swallowed whole and present a considerable choking hazard resulting from the suction cups clinking to the eater's throat.