Maneater
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- An animal that has a reputation for eating humans, such as the tiger or shark.
- A cannibal.
- A woman with a threatening attitude, often readily taking and discarding male romantic partners.
- A carnivorous animal that has developed a taste for human flesh
Maneater can refer to:
A man-eater is a colloquial term for an animal that preys on human beings for its diet. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet. Most reported cases of man-eaters have involved tigers, leopards, sharks, crocodiles and lions. Contrary to misconceptions, animals become man-eaters when their natural habitat and diet is diminished, or suffering from an injury or ailment that impedes their hunting their usual prey.
Other man-eaters
- Beast of Gévaudan
- Gustave (crocodile)
- Leopard of Rudraprayag
- Malawi terror beast
- Panar Leopard
- Wolf of Ansbach
- Wolves of Périgord
- Wolf of Sarlat
- Wolf of Soissons
- Wolves of Paris
Perception of man-eaters
Attacks on human beings for food have caused the demonizing of the predatory animals in question. The fear caused by the prospect of an attack has encouraged the hunting of tigers, leopards and lions for sport and the extermination or driving out predatory animals from territories close to human settlement; the harassment and hunting of such animals has been coupled with the destruction of their natural habitats. Fear of attacks on humans has inspired folklore, superstition, legends and tales characterizing predatory animals as evil. The impact of the Jersey shore shark attacks was the use of sharks as symbols of evils and enemies in political cartoons and caricatures of all kinds of negative developments and occurrences.
See also
- femme fatale
- "Maneater" (Hall & Oates song), a 1982 single by Daryl Hall and John Oates
