Attack on Titan: Titans look like giant naked humans, although they act more like zombies, and tend to eat anyone they manage to grab.

Also see Literal Maneater for when the alien or monster is an attractive female that specifically eats male humans. Consuming Passion is for when this trope has sexual undertones. Contrast Monstrous Cannibalism, when creatures cannibalize members of their own social group, not somebody else's. Related to Horror Hunger and, for less intelligent hunters of humans, Super-Persistent Predator. See I'm a Humanitarian or The Secret of Long Pork Pies for plain old cannibalism, and How to Invade an Alien Planet for additional reasons why this doesn't work so well. Named for the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode (itself based on a short story by Damon Knight) that dramatically shows you cannot judge a book by its title. For a predator whose typical diet consists of elephant-sized herbivores, it's plain illogical for it to pass over a big, hearty hadrosaur dinner for some scrawny Human McNuggets.Ĭan also be justified if the monsters are a result of The Virus, if said virus is human-specific and spreads through a bite, since it can be altering its host's mind in order to spread itself around more effectively. Makes absolutely no sense in dinosaur movies that has Tyrannosaurus rex pursuing people. In other cases it's explained by sheer sadism, as vampires become inherent sociopaths as soon as they're turned.) (However, vampires are more likely to have justifications for this behavior, since their hunger is often supernatural in origin being dead, they aren't 'feeding' in any biological sense, and since Humans Are Special, often the blood must come from a living human.

A human would be more likely to fight back, and human blood would increase the risk of food-borne diseases. It seems like all recently turned vampires just decide, 'Hey, let's go kill humans!' They never once consider feeding on other animals, such as livestock, which would surely contain more blood than humans, nor does it occur to them to break into the blood bank of a hospital. On the topic of horror genre monsters, the same could go for vampires. To be fair, wild wolves will scavenge from an existing food source if available, rather than waste energy hunting for it, and humans behave much the same way. In folklore, this is usually explained by werewolf seeking the thrill of murder, not food source otherwise they'd go after wild deer or rabbits. Likewise, in any given werewolf horror movie, the werewolf typically preys on live humans, as opposed to raiding a butcher shop or a livestock farm. This also happens in just about every zombie movie - the zombies spend almost all their time and efforts attempting to feed on live humans and only humans, not even each other, which is pretty strange for creatures acting on 'pure motorized instinct.' In other words, that line above - 'humans are a delicacy' - is taken literally you wouldn't eat it every day, but when you get the chance. (And don't even get us started on how, apparently, human and alien biology is a hundred percent compatible - every space monster seems perfectly equipped to digest human flesh which probably never even existed in its native environment - or if not, it never realizes until it's too late.)Ī lighter version of the trope, bordering on aversion, is when the aliens can, in fact, eat just about anything. Maybe it's because humans are easier to find nowadays? Nonetheless, rampaging alien carnivores will bypass an entire herd of beef cattle, bison, elephants, whatever, just to get their chops around a nice, juicy human. We are not even suitable for farming, because neither we are quick/efficient at food-to-meat conversion, nor can we consume inedible biomass such as grass. We are frighteningly inefficient as a food source, given the amount of meat on us relative to our size (compared with other prey animals, humans are kinda bony - you ever try pigeon? Or quail? Think of that, only more bones, more mammalian, and less delicious.), as well as our reproduction rate, and of course, our ability to fight back with our brains, our opposable thumbs, and our general jerkassishness as a race as a whole. On a planet covered with millions of animal and plant species, it seems that humans are the only thing here worth eating, apparently because they are sapient.įrom a predator's standpoint, humans aren't really worth eating.

Humans seem to be the universe's top delicacy and a desired hunting trophy. The planet Earth in fiction seems to be a magnet for every hostile alien, monster, demon, trans-dimensional being, cosmic horror, and human-created atrocity known for a very simple reason.

Kind kong and d jungle girls