"They Actually Eat That:" Tiger.

Tigers are one animal that I bet you thought that you would never see under "They Actually Eat That." Sure, it's easy enough to torment songbirds, make a soup out of duck's blood, use Rover as food, or shoot a kangaroo, but removing the Chinese king of beasts? That's almost blasphemy, isn't it?


Uuhhhh...remember this thing? The snake enshrined in booze?

For starters, humans will eat anything - and on "They Actually Eat That," we mean anything. Homo sapiens is an omnivorous species of ape that, when not given the proper mixed diet, goes insane. There is a disorder called pica that develops whenever people are sorely missing a needed nutrient. Eating anything we can is no longer just an option; it is a way of life.

That said, being an omnivore is just part of what makes humans a "broken" species. Unlike most animals, we tend to systematically eradicate things that we find threats or food. Hell, sometimes we don't even mean to do it - it happens because of little animals that we bring along. When we do mean to eliminate a species, it is because we have put two and two together and found a way to stop whatever is terrorizing us. (Making this worse is what I call the "OMG They Killed Kenny!" reaction - one human dies and everybody gets upset over it.) Humans are mean like that; such behavior is beyond self-defense.

Tigers, being large, threatening animals that can potentially eat people, are wiped out a lot. The Bali Tiger was eradicated not because it was awesome, but because it was seen as evil. The Javan tiger was killed off by a number of things, including general forest clearing and many of its prey species being threatened by disease and poisoning.  The Caspian tiger became extinct because the Russians just plain wanted it dead [insert "Soviet Russia" joke here]. Point is, we know how to kill tigers and are very, very good at it.


In Soviet Russia, tiger kills...no, wait. No it doesn't.

 What the hell made you think we wouldn't try eating big, bad tigers, just to prove that we really are the "1337 H4XX0rz" of nature?

They Actually Eat That?! 

China is big on eating and drinking tigers. Surprise, surprise.

In China, the tiger is king. Their symbol for 'king' is derived from the forehead marking of a tiger. There are no lions in China, so they made the tiger the ruler of everything with fur. A white tiger ("Bai Hu" or "Byakko") is the ruler of the Western quarter of the Chinese sky. It is also the sign in the Zodiac most likely to 'rise to the top,' so to speak, and is considered one of the most masculine animals out there.

This symbolic potency means that they are used for...everything that you would not use a dead tiger for. Their pelts are burned to keep centipedes out of the house. Their blood is used as a general "good health" tonic. The bones cure almost anything you can think of, including burns and malaria. The genitals, welllll...


You're gonna cut off my WHAT for WHAAAT?! 

Yes, they eat tiger penis as an aphrodisiac. If you see "Tiagra" appearing at your local organic health food store, stay faaaar away.

Before you all say how horrible this is already, China has over 6,000 (often abused) tigers in captivity thanks to the popularity of tiger medicine. After banning the trade of those magical tiger bones, tiger breeders are trying a new tactic: tiger bone wine. Apparently you can sell bones in wine but not by themselves. Oh, Chinese laws. 

This farming does, however, have an up-side. The Scimitar-Horned Oryx had a similar situation; its population is now limited to game reserves, but they're alive. At least if the wild tigers go extinct, there will be tigers left to replenish the Asian jungles. It is not a good situation, but it could be a lot worse.


I love you. Now stop eating my organs.

Creature Feature: Crested Serpent Eagle.

China has a plethora of unique mythological creatures. Unlike Western monsters, which are made almost solely to be destroyed, the Chinese have taken detailed notes on their fantastic fauna. They write about everything from habitat to sexual dimorphism to how toxic the creatures are to eat. They may as well be real animals over there.

Oh, wait. At least one of them is.

There is a bird called a zhen in Chinese mythology. It is a dark shade of green, purple, or black, and eats almost nothing but poisonous reptiles. The females are as different from the males as night from day. The birds are as big as geese or eagles, but resemble owls.

In all accounts, the zhen bird is highly poisonous thanks to its diet. Its feathers are said to produce one of the most powerful toxins known in China. Some sources elaborate further, saying that this bird is so poisonous that its droppings corrode all the rocks it craps on. Merely drinking from the same watering holes as it does is potentially lethal. Only the rhinoceros is safe from the zhen's toxicity.

If one of the zhen's feathers is mixed with rice wine, the mixture becomes a deadly poison that can only be detected and cured by placing something made out of rhinoceros horn in it. Cups were made out of rhino horn so that drinkers would be less affected by poisons. Compare the detoxifying effects of the unicorn's horn, alicorn, to this idea; Europe probably stole the notion from Chinese tales about the rhinoceros horn's powers.


Ooohhhh, yeah. Work the feathers, baby, work the feathers...

Yes, the zhen is a real bird. The detailed accounts of Chinese writers have pointed scientists and mythology buffs alike to the Crested Serpent Eagle (Spilornis cheela), a bird that, you guessed it, eats snakes all the time. It also has a crest that makes it look like an owl when fluffed. The bird is not only found in China, but also covers much of Asia.


O RLY?

Now that we have identified the real-life basis of the bird, here's step 2: Given that some caterpillars eat toxic plants to give themselves a nasty taste, would eating vipers be enough to make the zhen one of the rare poisonous birds?

Nobody knows. Seriously. Although there are a few preserved Crested Serpent Eagle specimens in various museums, the chemicals used to preserve them would make any and all venom tests invalid. Why somebody has not captured one (supposedly they are fairly tame as-is), taken feather samples, put them in rice wine, and given it to some mice is beyond me. This could be a dealbreaker for saving rhinoceroses; one of the main things threatening them is the demand for their horns as Chinese medicine.

C'mon, China. You're gonna rule the world, soon. Get on this potentially lethal weapon.

(More on the zhen and the Chinese rhinoceros horn trade here.)