If animals, real or imaginary, feature heavily in your story, give this a read.
In fiction, carnivores are frequently depicted as incredibly vicious and as attacking every other living creature on sight, whereas herbivores are depicted as gentle, benign, and typically only hurt humans on accident if they panic, such as by rearing or stampeding.
This is bullshit. Firstly, many herbivores are incredibly vicious and are in fact far more likely to attack a person just for being nearby. This especially goes for large herd ungulates like rhinos, hippos, Cape buffalo, and moose. All of these are highly aggressive to humans and in general. Bison are considerably more chill than their African cousins, but they still send tourists flying (sometimes to their graves) in Yellowstone due to people trying to get too close and treat them like a petting zoo. Deer, often imagined as the pinnacle of fearful and delicate, will typically choose flight over fightâŚbut should they choose to fight, especially a male in rut or a female with a fawn, they can and will kill a human being. Even a rabbit will do its best to fuck someone up if they feel they are threatened.
Remember, every animal will fight for its life with all its got, and to herbivores, EVERYTHING is a potential threat. If an animal theyâre not familiar with as âsafeâ is nearby, they will assume itâs a threat. There are some prey animals that are surprisingly docileâvideos Iâve seen of people interacting with a wild potoroo and a Bosavi wooly rat show them to be incredibly chill, and the quokka is famous for its lack of fear towards humansâbut these are the exception, not the rule.
Wild carnivores arenât cute pets just waiting for the right special animal-loving protagonist to take them home, but they arenât these constantly-aggressive, constantly-angry, constantly-ravenous monsters either that so much media makes out. They most certainly will hunt when theyâre hungry, and in the rare instance they decide to make a meal of a human, that human is indeed fucked (itâs hilarious to me how many people think they could fight off a lion, tiger, etc.) but unless itâs truly starving and desperate* most of them are not going to make a point of pursuing a potential meal, human or otherwise, to the exclusion of all else. Especially not if thereâs other options around. Why expend all these energy chasing after the protagonists if thereâs literally anything else they could catch and eat instead?
And why do so many of these monster-animals seem so interested in catching and killing the protagonists, but not in actually eating them; a ridiculous number of predators in fiction will straight-up leave the body of a person they JUST killed behind in order to catch another human. Why? This makes no sense, I donât care if itâs a fictional animal like a dragon or manticore, itâs not conducive to survival.
Unless this animal is MEANT to have an actual sentient grudge (which CAN happen, a man in Russia once shot a tiger and took its kill; the tiger waited for him in his cabin when he returned) do away with the Super Persistent Predator trope. Especially when itâs an animal like a great white shark, whose preferred prey not only isnât humans, weâre actually downright nasty to them because we donât have the fat content of the seals and sea lions they typically eat (most great white âattacksâ are just them checking us out or mistaking us for a delicious sea mammal)
There are exceptions to this rant, though most are small creatures. For instance, stoats do engage in âsurplus killingâ and stockpile the bodies, and shrews are very aggressive little predators due to having incredibly fast metabolisms that mean they basically have to eat all the time to stay alive. And, yes, there are some large ones; the tiger shark will eat anything, bull sharks are pretty bad to be around, and the polar bear has actively hunted humans when the opportunity presents itself. But as with the âsuper gentle chill wild herbivore that is basically domesticatedâ they are the exceptions. And Iâm sure you know of other exceptions; the fact they are âexceptionsâ in the first place means itâs NOT the norm.
If thereâs a reason the animals in your story are hyper-aggressive and persistent to a point they seem almost consciously evil, thatâs fineâgenetically engineered that way, for instanceâbut have there be a REASON. Itâs seldom the default in nature.
Think of it this way: Youâd fight a lot harder to save your life than you would to get a hamburger (unless saving your life required that hamburger). Consider that when you write real animals, and when you craft fictional ones.Â
(* Which admittedly most real life man-eaters are; most large mammals that turn to actively hunting humans have been sick, elderly, or injured in such a way they canât pursue their normal prey. But in fiction, the animals that are absurdly focused on eating humans alone always seem in perfect health and are seldom revealed as otherwise, or even having a reason at all. Itâs just presented as their default behavior. Which it is not. Thatâs the point of this rant.)
