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Super-Persistent Predator - TV Tropes
"While I think [the Thanator] was a neat looking creature, it exhibits 'Hollywood super-predator syndrome', and acts like an unstoppable, drug-fuelled, psychotic whirlwind, smashing through vegetation, tearing tree roots up, and altogether doing everything possible in order to kill and eat the object of its attention. It's not even deterred by a barrage of automatic gunfire, and almost pursues Jake right off the end of a cliff (he jumps off to land in the waterfall splash-pool below)."
Our intrepid young adventurers are exploring their new unknown land for whatever reason it may be: money, pursuit of knowledge, or simply by accident (a quest for survival). In any case, they are unaccustomed to the land, but aren't exactly smart about being careful. Namely, they run into some monstrous beast that wants only one thing from them: lunch. After a dangerous escape (someone will probably be killed), the explorers dust themselves off, maybe laugh nervously, and try to get as far away from that thing as possible. No harm done, time to focus on getting to the shelter or something, right?
But wait, what's that sound? Is it following them? Through rivers and mountains and who knows what else?
You bet. Seems like this thing just won't give up until it has another taste of human. No matter how long it goes without a meal. Because Predators Are Mean, even if they are Xenophobic Herbivores.
Basically, this predator will hunt the protagonists far beyond the call of common sense or even instinct, be it through fierce jungles, caves, canyons, or whatever else the protagonists have to go through. Once the climax comes by, the beast will most likely be right there, ready for one Final Battle. If the heroes manage to find shelter, the predator(s) will go through an extreme amount of effort to break windows, unlock doors, or learn to bypass complicated security measures and then bash through a wall anyway to get to its prey. A situation like this might have you thinking that it'd be more productive to just find something else to eat. Sometimes it's explained away by stating that they've got human intelligence, but that just raises further questions about why an intelligent predator would expend so much effort to eat something that keeps eluding them. You might find an ethologist tearfully screaming that nobody, animal or human, would be this vindictively persistent just for one difficult meal.
But there's a reason this trope can work so very well. Note the word human intelligence. "Persistence hunting" isn't only a scarily good hunting strategy, provided the predator has enough stamina to keep chasing until the prey doesn't have the strength to keep running, it's also our strategy, both in hunting and escaping (waiting for the predator to give up), thanks to our genes being arranged to favor stamina over speed. The use of this trope instantly makes the 'dumb animal' a credible threat and Worthy Opponent, since we don't have the option of outfoxing it until it gives up and goes away. No, this is something smart enough to see through our stratagems, that won't fall prey to Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! and stop chasing us, and will continue the hunt even as we tire. It's clearly going to come down to a climactic battle of man vs. nature. Exciting, no?
Amusingly, this is one handwave that often wouldn't have been necessary — it's a well-known fact among biologists that intelligent predators can and will hunt for fun, even if they aren't hungry. For example, dolphins will mutilate and kill smaller breeds of dolphins on occasion. Orcas have been known to throw live seals around for hours on end, occasionally releasing them once they're done. Oh, and let's not forget about a few humans' habits. Of course, even in those cases, the predator isn't going to put itself through undue hardship and travel vast distances unless the reward is good enough. In particular, avoiding injury from prey is a prime motivation for most all solitary predators (social ones can potentially rely on other members of the group to provide food while they heal), as any inhibiting injury can spell starvation and most won't target something that is especially dangerous (or even pretends to be dangerous, hence why threat displays are so widespread in nature) to dispatch unless circumstances allow them to even the odds, or unless they are starving or inexperienced at hunting (and in these cases, they won't pose as much of a threat due to poor physical condition or poor decision-making, respectively). "Winning" against prey that manages to break a bone or inflict a wound that gets infected is often a Pyrrhic Victory for the predator and typically avoided for animals that want to have any meals in the future. Animals may hunt for fun but they certainly don't hunt for glory or bragging rights. Many even seem to account for if the effort involved in a hunt will cost them more energy than what they would gain from the meal even if they succeed. This is especially important considering that for many predators a majority of hunting attempts end in failure anyway, so a certain degree of caution is wise.
In practice, this is the animal version of the Implacable Man. The latter trope also applies if this isn't a regular animal but a robot looking like one sent by a villain, an animal bewitched and sent by a villain, or otherwise someone specifically tasked with chasing the particular victim(s). The inversion is Animal Nemesis (especially in a Moby Schtick setting). Compare Attack! Attack! Attack!, when the animal fights irrationally. Usually happens in places with Everything Trying to Kill You. Biological equivalent of the Spiteful A.I. The entire universe can be like this to a Butt-Monkey, and more often than not will be to someone unfortunate enough to be Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious. If this beast appears at the end to chase the villain away, it's Exit, Pursued by a Bear. This trope has nothing to do with Predator, although that one is super persistent, albeit for different reasons.
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Anime & Manga
- Attack on Titan: No one is quite sure why the Titans prey on humans. It's been shown that they don't even need to eat humans to survive. The most basic definition of an Aberrant Titan seems to be one whose persistence is predicated on some factor other than "closest humans nearby". It's eventually revealed that titans are former humans that are subconsciously drawn to eat other humans in the hopes that one of them will be a titan shifter, which will grant them titan shifting powers that will finally allow them to return to human form.
- Claymore: Justified with the Abyss Eaters, as they are conditioned to crave the flesh of one particular target. Said target is much, much stronger than them, but their persistence wears him down until he dies a Death of a Thousand Cuts after months in a constant state of battle.
- One of the explicitly stated differences between regular animals and monsters in Delicious in Dungeon is that monsters' urge to kill always overpowers normal self-preservation instincts. Monsters will never stop attacking until they're killed, will attack even if clearly outnumbered and outgunned by their target(s), and unlike regular animals, don't retreat if injured by their quarry or their initial attack fails.
- Doraemon movies featuring dinosaurs would often depict them in this manner:
- Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur have a T-Rex who attempts chewing up Shizuka, Nobita, and a newly-hatched baby brontosaurus (which barely stood to a human's kneecaps) despite having killed an adult brontosaurus nearby, ready to feast upon. Thankfully Doraemon managed to obtain his Momotaro capsules and tame the T-Rex. From the same movie there's a whole flock of pterosaurs who relentlessly pursues the gang in an Aerial Canyon Chase for multiple minutes.
- In Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs the gang encounters yet another T-Rex in an underground cavern where dinosaurs haven't gone fully extinct, and this one repeatedly tries chomping them down until it's ambushed and killed by the Naga tribespeople.
- Doraemon: Nobita's New Dinosaur has a Tarbosaurus who attacks the gang in a Cretaceous Forest, repeatedly pursuing them even though there's plenty of stray Sinoceratops, Titoanosauruses and other animals around. Once more, Doraemon's gadgets - this time the Tomodachi Chocolate - saves the day by taming it.
- Dragon Ball Z: Young Gohan was sent on survival training with little more than a sword. Eventually, he gets the hang of it. And apparently gets chased by a predator dinosaur every morning. Not only does the dinosaur never get Gohan, every morning he knocks him out and he slices off part of his tail and eats it. And yet, despite his prey eating HIM every morning, the gigantic critter continues to hunt Gohan. (In the beginning, anyway. Eventually, it starts running away from him.)
- Enchanted Journey: The fox pursues Glikko and Nono for the entire final leg of the titular journey, completely disregarding any obstacles or dangers, and even refusing to eat the dead hawk, because he wants them.
- Gyo features numerous dangerous aquatic creatures trying to prey on the human populace, but one of the most notable and driven examples is the land-mobile great white shark which attacks the protagonists, which goes to quite extraordinary lengths in its attempt to devour the heroes. Though the circumstances aren't entirely clear, this example may be justified, as the fish in question have been cybernetically (and, it is strongly implied, supernaturally) augmented for the specific purpose of killing and inflicting terror on humans; many are already dead or dying and seem more driven on by the machines attached to them rather than any natural urge to feed.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a couple of these:
- Pet Shop, a hawk with ice powers from Stardust Crusaders. If you enter the grounds of Big Bad DIO's mansion, Pet Shop will not stop chasing you until it has removed you as a threat. His ultimate opponent ends up being another animal, who has internal monologue about this behavior being frightening and unusual.
- In Golden Wind, Black Sabbath is a Stand set to automatically trigger when the flame in Polpo's lighter goes out. When this happens, anyone in the vicinity who steps into a shadow will immediately become Black Sabbath's target, whereupon it will teleport to their location and stab them with the Stand Arrow until it catches someone who awakens a Stand instead of dying. Because it's an automatic-type Stand, it has immense strength and durability, absolutely cannot be reasoned with, and cannot distinguish normal people from Stand users, meaning it will attack anyone no matter who they are. And on top of all that, Giorno has the rotten luck of confronting it right as the sun is beginning to set, meaning it's only a matter of time before he's completely surrounded by shadows.
- In JoJolion, there's a Stand called Blue Hawaii. It infects the victim with a mindless, relentless pursuit of the intended target upon contact with a part of the User, ignoring their own safety to a horrifying degree. What makes this power terrifying is that it ironically still works well with groups, despite the fact it can only work on one person at a time.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena featured a herd of super-persistent elephants. Where they're chasing Nanami's raft across the ocean on surfboards.
- In So I'm a Spider, So What? the Anogratch are known as the "Revenge Monkeys" because if you kill even one member of their troops, its thousands of kin will not stop until they have killed you. As Kumoko found, they will literally Zerg Rush the attacker until every last member of the troop has been killed.
- Smirre in the anime series of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. While he only attacks the flock a few times in the book, he becomes a recurring antagonist in the anime, who follows the geese all the way from Scania to Lapland.
Comic Books
- 2000 AD:
- Repeatedly used for T. rexes despite the fact that they would logically find humans to be pretty poor mealsnote there is literally less meat on the average sized human than a T. rex would take in one bite from its usual prey, they are shown willing to go after humans despite tremendous obstacles and repeated violent repulsion; no matter how much they get shot out, whether they lose eyes or limbs, they will not stop coming until dead. In Helltrekkers, a Judge Dredd storyline, it's given the vague Hand Wave that Rexes get literally addicted to the taste of human flesh.
- Another Judge Dredd story, in which he and a rookie Judge are making their way through the arctic regions of the Cursed Earth, had a giant bear that kept coming even after they'd used up all their ammo and dropped an avalanche on it. It's noted that this isn't normal bear behaviour, but nothing that survives in the Cursed Earth is a normal bear.
- Somewhat subverted in DC: The New Frontier, where the T. rex that "welcomes" The Losers to Dinosaur Island decide they're not worth hunting after they blow its arms off with bazookas and grenades. Nevertheless, they succumb to Dwindling Party on the island anyways, and the following day the one survivor deliberately baits the Rex into coming for him again, with a grenade in each hand.
- In Pocket God, a shark with a laser beam on its back is a regular adversary for the pygmies. Its persistence is lampshaded in one issue.
- In one issue of Xenozoic Tales, Jack has been stranded in the wilderness without weapons and has the misfortune to attract the attention of a cutter (Allosaurus) that keeps coming after him, over and over again. Justified in this case because the cutter has an injured jaw and isn't capable of hunting its normal prey. Jack is the first animal it has encountered in some time that combines being slow enough to hunt while being small enough to not be able to significantly fight back. Just his luck!
Comic Strips
- In one Garfield strip, a dog chases Garfield up a tree. Garfield wonders how long the dog will wait for him to come down before giving up and going home. When he looks down he sees that the dog has made itself comfortable with a recliner and a glass of lemonade.
Fan Works
- Codex Equus: Once a gumiho has set its sights on a victim, it will never give up the chase and will pursue them to the ends of the world and for as long as necessary until it can catch them; once this is done, it will often start on its victim's family as well. The only way to end the chase is to kill the gumiho. On the upside, if a victim manages to hide themselves behind barriers or wards that the gumiho cannot cross or perceive it through, the creature will be left stuck in an endless loop of fruitless searching that will effectively neutralize it, as it won't select a new target until a slip-up allows it to identify its original target.
- Shadows over Meridian: After Caroline's bleeding hand inadvertently draws the attention of a Frostbiter, the apex predator of the northern mountains, while her team travels through its territory, it chases them all the way into a rocky maze, with nothing able to dissuade it from its hunt. It's only when Jade gives it two carcasses to eat that she peacefully gets it to return home.
- What If Kevin McAllister Was Home Alone On Halloween? (link, Halloween & Home Alone): Michael Myers is an endlessly patient and persistent attacker. Approaching the McCallister house where Kevin is home alone on Halloween night, after knocking on the door and receiving no invitation, Michael lurks outside the house for hours before eventually forcing his way in, pursuing Kevin through the house relentlessly. When Michael locks onto the house's sole occupant as a murder victim, he's unwilling to relent in search of an easier target until Kevin is dead.
Films — Animation
Literature
- 12 Miles Below: Drakes are the machines designed to hunt down and eliminate humans. However, in the first book Tenisent is shocked when a spider machine tracks them down repeatedly. Spiders normally stay in their nests and never leave, so this is very strange behavior. The spider eventually kills Tenisent, and Keith kills it back... but it retains enough anger to survive past death, and the Pale Lady remakes it as one of her Feathers.
- Animorphs:
- Animorphs: The Andalite's Gift: The Veleek is not an intelligent being and doesn't consciously understand that it's being tasked with capturing morphers to bring back, so no matter how close it comes to capturing an Animorph it is always drawn away by someone else morphing and releasing a fresh burst of morphing energy. But when it's not being drawn away it pursues relentlessly, slowed only by the necessity of chewing through anything between it and them. Marco and Jake, fleeing as wolves, can't even outrun it through deep woods with large trees, only keep it at a steady distance. It also doesn't know to try to maintain the masquerade, so it also readily pursues them among ordinary humans, chewing through houses.
- Animorphs: In the Time of Dinosaurs: The Animorphs are are transported back in time and find themselves battling a Tyrannosaurus Rex. While fleeing, they morph to escape, and Marco morphs into an osprey, his standard bird choice, that has both the ability to fly and should logically be too small to keep the predator's attention. However, instead of giving up once the already-small meal becomes an even smaller meal, as Marco logically expects it to do, the dinosaur keeps chasing him, and actually begins to tear apart trees that are standing in the way. Marco ultimately realizes that food has stopped being the point of the chase, and that the Rex is chasing him out of pure bloodlust and rage.
- Artemis Fowl: Justified with Trolls. To them, humans are by far the most delicious things ever; after trying one, a troll will do anything to eat more. Also, as subterranean predators, they have extremely finely-tuned senses, so that exposure to the surface tends to cause them Sensory Overload which causes severe brain damage, usually removing most of their survival instinct.
- Bruce Coville's Book of...:
- Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares:
- The dragon of The Boy Who Cried Dragon, who tells Jimmy, as he's being taken away by the police, that he'll pursue him to the end of his days, and that he never forgets a smell.
- Brutus the dog in The Cat Came Back, who continually pursues any of the neighborhood cats, and kept going after Bootsie until age slowed the cat down enough for Brutus to catch and kill him. Taken to extremes in that even after Bootsie dies, Brutus won't leave him alone and comes over to dig at his grave... which proves a fatal mistake.
- Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters II: The monster in Trouble Afoot, which will do anything to keep its existence a secret, and won't stop following anyone who finds out about it.
- Dinoverse: The enormous Tyrannosaurus rex Moriarty stalks the four teenagers-in-dinosaur-bodies for hundreds of miles after meeting them on a beach. Getting pulled into the ocean by an Elasmosaurus, having rocks flung into its face after an earthquake, and a flash flood do not deter him. Bertram gives a weak explanation by saying that since this group of animals would never normally travel together, they might signal disease. Certainly they're big enough to make a good meal, but this is a lot of effort, especially considering how easy it is to forage for food on the seashore. Mike, who's in the body of a T. rex himself, thinks that It's Personal.
- Evolution (2002): A Troodon relentlessly pursues Purga, the protagonist of the first chapter, not because she's hungry, but because she snapped when she found Purga eating her eggs.
- The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth by Lord Dunsany: The "dragon-crocodile" Tharagavverug eats one human being every day and always pursues his chosen prey "like a doom" until he catches it. On account of this, the villagers who live near Tharagavverug's marsh have entirely given up running away from him, but have developed the custom of all going out in the morning in order to let Tharagavverug pick his victim, as this is quicker and less troublesome than having him hunt for a victim in the village. The narrator says they also tried climbing trees, but Tharagavverug would cut down the tree by using the scaly ridge on his back as a saw.
- The Great Zoo of China:
- The dragon known as Melted Face spends almost the whole novel tracking down and trying to kill CJ in retaliation for her burning its face. More justified than most in that dragons are shown to be frighteningly intelligent, and this one was really pissed off about what happened to its face.
- Melted Face's pack leader, Red Face, proves to be even more persistent, appearing almost every time the red-bellies show up and identified by CJ as recognising her, and also being the final dragon she faces off with.
- Shannara:
- The Heritage of Shannara: The Wisteron in The Elf Queen of Shannara, which pursues Wren and the other Elves any time they so much as put a toe outside of Arborlon, and flatly refuses to stay down. Justified, as like the other Shadowen on the island, it hates the Elves for creating it in the first place.
- The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: The Graak and the caulls also behave this way. It's justified in the case of the caulls, which are magically-altered mutant wolves designed to track their victims relentlessly. The Graak, a massive, bloody-minded dinosaur, doesn't have any justification for its behaviour, but is such a Primal Fear that it doesn't really need one.
- The Hunger Games:
- The Tracker Jacker wasps. Their name is pretty self-explanatory, as they were bred to A) track down their prey and B) (hi)jack their victim's nervous system with their Grade A hallucinogenic venom. They home in on the first person they see and don't stop until said person is stung.
- In Mockingjay, there were the lizard-mutts, which were engineered to hunt and kill Katniss specifically, but will viciously munch on anything or anyone in their way.
- Gone to absolutely ridiculous and eventually cinematic extremes in David Fletcher's Hunted: A True Story of Survival, in which a literal Mama Bear goes after the writer for killing her cub and it only ends when the writer manages to crush the bear under tons of ice. The kicker? It's supposed to be based on a "true story".
- While they are humanoid, the trolls in R.A. Salvatore's Streams of Silver act like predators (they are trying to kill and eat the heroes, after all), and they are extremely persistent. It helps that they're classic D&D trolls whose rapid regeneration can only be stopped by fire or acid and the protagonists have no magic to readily provide either with them.
- The novelization of Jaws: The Revenge has a shark that somehow understands the concept of revenge, and as such, keeps coming back. And how does a shark come to understand revenge? Well, there's a reason this book named the Voodoo Shark.
- In Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Muldoon commented that the raptors were cruelly intelligent and liked to hunt for sport as much as for food. It was actually justified because (as Malcolm realises) the raptors discovered that humans are an easy meal and become a favoured prey, as with some modern man-eaters. This is contrasted with the wild raptors that appear near the end of the book, that all but ignore Grant when he infiltrates their nest. In the second book it was explained that because raptors were so intelligent, being born and raised without actual raptor "parents" to raise them properly turned them into violent and chaotic creatures. Meanwhile, the Tyrannosaur seemed to be stalking Dr. Grant and the kids in particular, even leaving behind a Hadrosaur kill to pursue them down a river. It starts to become pretty obvious Rule of Scary when at one point it's waiting at the bottom of a waterfall with its jaws open, hoping they'll fall inside.
- There is a short story by Dino Buzzati called The K where the titular Threatening Shark pursues the narrator all around the world, for all of his life, so fixated it is on devouring him (though obviously, at least it can only chase him while he's at sea). As it turns out, the K is not out to eat the protagonist but to give him a magical pearl on behalf of the King of the Seas. But when he finally decides to face the creature, he is already too old to make use of it, having wasted both his own life and the shark's.
- Averted in The Kaiju Preservation Society. While the animals on Kaiju Earth are all dangerous, they won't pursue prey if it's too much trouble or if an easier target presents itself (hence the "eat me" canisters as a defense—something not moving that smells like food is way more enticing than something brandishing a big electric stick and then running away).
- In Piers Anthony's Orn, one of the characters has a prolonged battle with a Tyrannosaurus, in the sense that they play an extended game of cat and mouse. The attempted justification for this is that the dinosaur has evolved the tactic of pursuing its meals relentlessly, thus ensuring that, eventually, it will eat. Which still doesn't make sense, as eventually it risks burning more calories trying to catch the prey than it'd get from eating it.
- In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Last Man Running, the Doctor and Leela finds themselves on a planet apparently full of such predators. Both are quick to notice that this is not a normal behaviour for an animal, which is their first clue that they all have been genetically engineered.
- Peter Pan: The crocodile, after eating Hook's hand, liked the taste so much that it has constantly pursued Hook through land and sea ever since, hoping to eat the rest of him. And it would have gotten him too had it not swallowed a clock that constantly ticks within its stomach, giving an ample warning for Hook. At the climax of the story, the clock finally runs down and the crocodile is able to get its meal.
- In The Outcasts, the giant eagles mercilessly kill all of the livestock in Col's village without eating them, and a convocation of eagles pursues them and harries them mercilessly, systematically destroying their supplies. It's because they're being directed by Arin.
- In Robert E. Howard's "Red Nails" Conan the Barbarian knows that the dragon having treed them will wait forever if needed.
- Return of the Runebound Professor: The oversized jaguar-ish monster that gets a whiff of Noah is apparently intelligent enough to understand both strategy and human speech (although it doesn't have the right vocal cords to reply), and hunts the party long past the point where they've left its territory and a normal predator would give up, toying with them and trying to split them up so it can take them down one at a time.
- "The Ruum", by Arthur Porges, is all about this trope. The ruum is a virtually unstoppable alien bio-mech creature that pursues the protagonist, Jim Irwin, until it finally catches him, only eventually releasing him due to him not falling within its strictly limited capture standards. A full story summary is available on The Other Wiki.
- Saintess Summons Skeletons:
- The Shade in Shadow of the Conqueror are so murderous as to be willing to sacrifice even their own lives if it means being able to kill even a single non-corrupted person.
- The Stormlight Archive:
- The Way of Kings (2010): Discussed when a chasmfiend gets loose to attack the king's party during a hunting trip. Dalinar points out that they could retreat and allow the monster to feed on the party's animals, but the king wants a glorious battle. Once it has taken enough damage, it goes into a blood rage, and Dalinar notes now that it would chase them for miles if they tried to retreat.
- Words of Radiance: The chasmfiend Shallan and Kaladin encounter while trapped in the chasms spends an awful lot of time chasing them. They are able to distract it for a few hours by leading it to a pile of corpses, but later it finds them again. It's noted several times that it is acting with disturbing intelligence and malevolence for an animal, hinting that there's something more to it. Considering that humans have been spending the last six years systematically slaughtering chasmfiends while they are in their vulnerable pupating stage, it's not impossible that it's out for revenge.
- World War Z has this as a trait for zombies, which consider humans as prey. Zombies will chase humans for as long as it takes to catch them. A zombie will chase a human into the sea, over a cliff, into a raging inferno, it doesn't matter. A zombie will go after any living prey that it can find, and eat it to death. Justified, in that a zombie literally has no sense of self-preservation, just a ravenous hunger for flesh.
- In the chapter where the astronaut from the International Space Station is interviewed, he mentions one zombie that chased after a small animal in the desert. When the animal burrowed under the sand, the zombie started digging for it, even as sand continued to pour back into the hole, filling it just as fast as it was dug. The zombie was digging nonstop for five straight days before it apparently lost the animal's scent and gave up.
- Happens in an utterly over-the-top way in Wraith Squadron, with an insect that supposedly follows mammalian prey it encounters ... well, as far as it has to. (Even managing to sneak onto the heroes' spaceship.) The Storini Crystal Deceiver is said to paralyze its prey and eat them alive; victims can be saved if they are found before too much biomass has been devoured. The victim hears the creature in the walls, and ends up coating the entire room in plastic sealant to keep it out ... only to hear it afterwards in the room. Subverted hilariously: the entire creature and the auditory hoax to go with it was made up as part of a practical joke, as epic revenge against a covert practical joker. And it's then mixed with a healthy dose of Fridge Terror, when Face and Phanan explain to the prankster that this was their LOWEST setting of payback.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5:
- Badly done in the episode "Grey 17 Is Missing" with a craptastic alien "predator" called a Zarg straight out of MST3K. It isn't stealthy, it isn't intimidating, it isn't even particularly original, and producer J. Michael Straczynski has been known to say he wants to apologize to fans in person for it.
- Played scarily straight with the Shadow Battlecrabs. Once they lock on to a target, they will never cease pursuit until it is destroyed. Seeing how they can easily overtake almost any other spaceship in the galaxy, they rarely have to resort to this.
- Another scary one is the Na'ka'leen Feeder, who, unless you provide him food, will chase you everywhere to eat your memories. The Centauri quarantined its resource-rich after some of these beasts wiped out an entire colony, and news of one of those things having been shipped on the station had Londo barricade inside his quarters in terror until he was told it had been found and killed.
- The "dogs" (quadrupedal robots) in the Black Mirror episode "Metalhead" will relentlessly chase you over miles of difficult terrain for as long as it takes, once you've gotten their attention. And if you do manage to "kill" one of these, its last act will be to launch a grenade full of fragmented "trackers" that will embed in your flesh so that other "dogs" will hunt you. Given the complete lack of animals or other humans that we see, it's implied the robots have become the "apex predator" of the entire ecosystem and wiped out all life.
- Doctor Who:
- The Drashigs from "Carnival of Monsters" pursue prey from their own swampland habitat to the Miniscope's interior circuitry, the interior of the Earth habitat's ship, and all the way out of the Miniscope's compression field.
- "The Family of Blood" are predatory aliens capable of chasing the Doctor through all time and space thanks to a stolen Vortex Manipulator. The Doctor runs away and hides in pre-WWII Britain, even changing his own species to human to try and shake them off, but they still find him. Justified in their instance because their species has an extremely short lifespan which can only be extended by consuming that of a being like the Doctor - who would make them functionally immortal and capable of conquering the stars, by the Doctor's own estimation.
- The unnamed creature from Heaven Sent acted like one of these as due to the fact it didn't need to eat or sleep and could not die it could afford to slowly pursue The Doctor as it would catch up as soon as The Doctor was forced to stop for any reason.
- Several of the cryptids featured in Lost Tapes play to this trope.
- Primeval:
- The Smilodon (very much at odds with what we know of the real animal, which had relatively short legs and heavy muscle attachment sites, indicating that it was a wrestler, not a distance runner or even a sprinter. No way it can outrun anyone.)
- And true to their classic reputation, the raptors, who will follow you up elevators (they could at least be outmanoeuvred, however). And then there's that anomaly-jumping raptor from 3.10.
- Justified with the Spinosaurus from episode 4.1, which pursues Connor and Abby for territorial reasons rather than to eat them.
- Stargate SG-1: After spending an episode hunting down a dangerous mutated alien that is loose in the woods, Vala notes that it was odd behaviour for the beast to charge armed soldiers alone. This is followed by a second predator attacking the crew, and Vala notes that there being two of them made the attack more plausible.
- Lampshaded and subverted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Genesis". When Picard and Data find themselves cornered in the sickbay, with a de-evolved Worf pounding away at the non-functioning door holding him back, Picard wonders aloud if Worf sees them as prey. Data points out that there are other de-evolved crew members to eat that aren't behind thick metal doors that would be much easier to get to, so something else must be driving De-evolved!Worf on. Turns out, he's being driven by a mating instinct for a de-evolved Troi.
- In Star Trek: Enterprise, Archer and T'Pol are stalked by a wild Vulcan sehlat (basically a saber-toothed bear), and T'pol notes that they are very persistent and can continue to pursue their prey for days.
- Terra Nova plays with this. In one sequence, a pair of Carnotaurus chase two jeeps up to the gates of the titular settlement, but when TN's defensive sonic weapons start firing, the dinosaurs decide to look for something easier to kill. The trope is later played straight with the fictional Slashers, which are really, really determined to get at the stranded kids in the broken down jeep, never mind those pesky assault rifles the kids have.
Manhua
- One Old Master Q comic have the titular character boating near a beach when he's attacked by a shark. He managed to escape by rowing like crazy, all the way back to the shoreline, and as Master Q gets on land while Blowing a Raspberry at the shark, suddenly said shark comes out of the sand in front of Master Q, Land Shark-style.
Music
- Annihilator's song "King of the Kill" is sung from the perspective of an apex predator prowling the jungle at night.
''Don't try to run, there's no way to survive
A vicious surrender, I'll
eat you alive!
No one is safe until I get my fill
All hear my warning, I'm king of the kill!
- In Rob Cantor's "Shia LaBeouf", Shia LaBeouf goes after you despite you evidently giving him more trouble than any of his other victims. In the extended version, his persistence leads to his death at your hands.
- The Station's "You Can't Trust A Killer Whale" is a parody song of Taylor Swift's Today Was A Fairy Tale. The song and music video are an over-the-top, Bloody Hilarious depiction of an Orca being a relentless killing machine.
Mythology
Radio
- In the Doctor Who radio serial "The Paradise of Death", the Gargan is a predator that ignores you unless you enter its territory (which it thoughtfully marks with rocks). If you do pass the rocks, it pursues you until it has eaten you.
Tabletop Games
- Arduin:
- Arduin Grimoire Volume 4: The Lost Grimoire
- The Bloodbeast can sense its prey up to 50 miles away. Once it starts hunting a target, it is untiring and will follow its prey relentlessly.
- Howlfiends are monsters from the 21st plane of Hell. Once they choose a quarry, they will track it relentlessly and tirelessly until they catch up to it.
- The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources
- The Quarl is a feline as large as a tiger, with incredibly keen senses of smell and hearing. It is vicious, cunning and totally without fear, and is known for stalking its prey for days.
- The Silver Slyth monster can track any creature by scent even if the trail is up to ten days old. Once it starts tracking its prey, it will not stop until it catches it or the trail becomes more than ten days old. They feel no pain and never tire so they usually catch the target.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- A will-'o-wisp feeds on fear and can go invisible, so its typical behavior is to attack a party, disappear if it takes too much damage, stalk the party, and then attack again when it's least expected.
- Dark Sun: The supplement Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr describes cilops, fifteen-foot-long Creepy Centipedes that don't require any sleep and will track their prey (using both their sense of smell and psionics) for weeks without stopping.
- The Draconomicon, a third edition supplement, describes how an angered mountain landwyrm doesn't rest until its foes have been destroyed, and will pursue fleeing targets for days.
- Once a jabberwock has chosen a target, it pursues them until either one of them dies, or the target escapes via teleportation magic.
- Exalted:
- Raksha, souleating Lovecraftian fae, find human dreams and emotions especially tasty. Likewise, there's Zsofika the Kite Flute, a Second Circle Demon known for choosing one target and chasing it every chance she gets until it's dead. It doesn't matter if you banish her or dispatch her back to Malfeas via copious stabbings — unless you find some way to permanently kill her, as long as she's in Creation and she's not bound to a task, she will be coming after you.
- Starting from 2nd Edition, the Lunar Exalted can learn a duo of Charms that can potentially turn them into this. They can render escape pointless by perfectly matching the opponent's running speed in mid-flight, no matter what magic or obstacles are in their way.
- Paranoia: A doberbot's combat programming works this way. "Attack someone until he dies. Attack someone else until he dies. Attack someone else until he dies..."
- Rolemaster: One of the supplements has rules for a thing called the "Black Reaper". Next to the description is also a short story featuring this monster: A demonic warrior clad in black armor and wielding a huge axe is disturbed when an adventurer decides to take a certain item from a treasure hoard. The thief and his companions manage to flee back to their boat and sail across the ocean for days, when suddenly the Black Reaper climbs up the anchor chain and finally kills him with his axe, taking the stolen item, ignoring everyone else, and begins to move back to its lair. The rules state that it can create passages through all but the hardest magical surfaces with the axe and its creation requires an unholy ritual involving both a fallen half-god and a lesser demon.
- Traveller: In the Double Adventure "The Chamax Plague/Horde", the Chamax are incredibly determined to kill and eat. They have the ability to sense life at a distance and will travel great distances to obtain it. They can also sense radio broadcasts, which allows them to triangulate their victims' location at even longer distances.
Web Animation
- Brackenwood: A variant. The insect swarm in "Waterlollies" purses Bitey relentlessly when he steals their hive, and keeps roaming the forest in a single-minded attempt to find him long after he discards the emptied nest and, thus, after their attack will have any practical benefit for them.
- Played for Drama in Camp Camp. A lost David runs afoul of a wolf who attacks him for no reason, even pouncing on him while he is hanging on a cliff for dear life. When they both land on the bottom, David confronts the badly injured wolf, telling it that he gave it every chance to just walk away, but it kept attacking him. David then hefts a large rock over the wolf's head... and the next scene cuts to him with the bandaged wolf.
- Sniffles the anteater from Happy Tree Friends literally gets himself tortured just to catch a family of ants. The ants demonstrate an inversion, going so far as to teach their children the art of Cold-Blooded Torture.
- The Lazer Collection: DR. OCTAGONAPUSBLAAAAAAAAAARRGGHHHHH!!
- RWBY: Despite occasionally looking like bigger, solid black animals, Grimm are soulless monsters who care more about killing humans than their own survival. Older Grimm are wise enough to bide their time, however.
- Terrible Writing Advice: In episode "Alien Ecosystems", Beaubien mocks the trope being used with no sense. Since large animals need a lot of energy to stay alive, there's no reason why large monstrous predators should focus on obsessively chasing down comparatively tiny humans while expending far more energy than they'll actually get back by eating them, and it makes especially little sense when they'll keep going despite sustaining injury — real-life predators will almost always cut their losses and leave when prey proves too tough to tackle safely. As Beaubien snarkily remarks, this trope is essentially a result of writers treating predators as videogame monsters.
Webcomics
- The birdosaurus in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, which continues to menace the eponymous doctor even after he’s been transported to a Bad Future where decades have passed. Played for Laughs; it doesn’t seem to be interested in eating him, just in making his life hell, such as by slowly and deliberately setting off a booby trap in the booby trap-filled room he's in the middle of navigating, making sure he’s both able to see it and unable to stop it.
- In Issue 06 of The Beast Legion, Xeus's WereTiger form keeps coming at Master Surya despite all the obstructions.
- Played for Laughs in Girl Genius, with a slaver queen that won't stop chasing Tarvek.
Tarvek: Oh, come on! What's wrong with this monster? Some of these people look delicious!
- Unlike most other examples here, in Off-White, the Super-Persistent Predator is a main character, though we probably aren't supposed to sympathize with his actions. Said character, the wolf Raigho, doesn't stop attacking the human Seven after he misunderstands and thinks she is impersonating a godlike figure, even after she gorges out his eye.
- The Ditherkers that an assassin siccs on Emily in Spacetrawler are modified to chase their target, and only their target, until they bring it down or starve to death trying. They track by scent, cling to the hull of a spaceship moving at greased-light speed (and don't suffocate), and asexually reproduce when killed by any other means.
- Tower of God has the Bull, an amphibious predator that settled in the testing grounds and constantly hunted examinees. Though when it attacks the main characters, it's because it's being mind-controlled by Ren.
- The Time Vulture from xkcd comic #926 is a mild example. Cueball claims it lives for millennia and kills its prey by slowing down its internal clock and simply waiting for it to die of natural causes. For the remainder of the prey's natural lifespan. This greatly confuses Cueball's friend.note In the Alt Text, Randall claims that, in a way, all vultures are Time Vultures; some just have more patience than others. Indeed, finding an animal that is about to die and simply waiting around is something Real Life vultures do, making them all mild examples of this trope.
Friend: But what if the prey doesn't die?
Cueball: I don't think you quite understand.
Friend: I mean, I'm not about to die...
Cueball: From the vulture's viewpoint, everyone says that moments before they do.
Web Originals
- The hunters in Dream's Minecraft Manhunt really want to kill Dream.
- Dropout and Harry Partridge's Bear Shark.
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
- The Mary-Sue Hunter agents of the PPC are required to have Implacable Man tendencies by default, because the Suvians they hunt are a threat to the multiverse and will wreak continuous havoc if left unchecked — it's all in the job description, even. Several missions cover entire series of badfics, with the agents sent into them pursuing their target throughout each installment until the Suvian is caught. Where this trope comes in is the fact that some agents eat Suvians, usually vampires who employ the typical method. It's been stated a few times that because Suvians are Humanoid Abominations, there are far fewer ethical concerns than if the agents were preying on actual human beings.
- An example that encompasses a PPC spinoff and a badfic sporked by the author of said spinoff (who also wrote the badfic in the first place): Velociripper, the nemesis for the fic's Author Avatar, not only escapes containment multiple times just to hunt down his rival, but also travels from Municiberg across who-knows-how-many dimensions and all the way to Isla Sorna in search of him. It takes being Swallowed Whole by a mosasaur to stop his relentless pursuit, and in the context of the PPC spinoff even that isn't enough. He gets vomited back out when the mosasaur is bought to the PPC HQ, and promptly goes after Falchion (the author's current self-insert) believing that he is his enemy incarnate even though Falchion had already disposed of the Gary Stu in question. Luckily, the two of them reconcile after the misunderstanding is cleared up, and Velociripper decides to become a PPC agent himself, thereby becoming a Super-Persistent Predator towards Suvians.
- SCP Foundation: SCP-096 is a normally harmless creature until you see its face. It then flies into a rage and will stop at nothing to kill you. Military-grade armaments have little to no effect during its pursuit of a target. The effect also works on pictures, and its face could be as small as four pixels and it would still make all attempts to brutally [DATA EXPUNGED]. And once you see its face it knows where you are, so looking at its picture while hundreds of miles away won't help you. Naturally, the Foundation tried to kill 682 with it. It ended with both of them severely injured and leaving SCP-096 so afraid of 682 that it hides its own face in fear.
- The Slender Man Mythos: In most depictions, Slender Man seems to be an overall passive hunter, but the bottom line is that once you've encountered him, you will never be rid of him.
Western Animation
- Garfield:
- The panther in Garfield in the Rough, which attacks them at their campsite and smashes the driver-side window of Jon's car with its head (taking two tries to break it), then turns to go after Garfield after he drops on its back and claws and bites the panther.
- The Garfield Show: A wolf chases after Jon, Odie, and Garfield riding in a car for twenty miles until it attacks them in their home. Justified because the wolf was a mother who wanted its baby, which Odie adopted and took with him after the picnic trip.
- The Goof Troop episode "Cabana Fever" features Pete going on vacation to a tropical island and running into a shark that's so determined to eat him that it climbs onto the land and chases him to a volcano.
- The Atrociraptors from the first few episodes of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory pursue Darius and Ben over a thousand miles from Darius's cabin to Sammy's ranch, acting in a way that no normal predator would. This is what finally convinces Darius that Ben is right about someone hunting them.
- Sabor in The Legend of Tarzan; she only appears a couple of times, but both times she is incredibly single-minded about her chosen prey. Sabor is not the type of leopard who would find something easier to attack than a baby protected by a gorilla.
- Inverted in the Looney Tunes cartoon Life with Feathers where a lovebird is so depressed after his wife leaves him (on the logic that lovebirds mate for life) that he tries to commit suicide by feeding himself to Sylvester (incidentally, his first appearance). Sylvester, in turn, concludes that there has to be something wrong with the bird and refuses to eat him in case he's poisonous. The bird pursues Sylvester relentlessly through the cartoon. The same plot was then used in the cartoon Cheese Chasers, where two mice named Hubie and Bertie, having eaten so much cheese they can't stand it anymore, try to feed themselves to Claude Cat. Like with Sylester, Claude refuses to eat them figuring something's wrong with them, but they persist to the point he can't eat them or any other mouse, so he then goes and tries to get the bulldog to massacre him. It ends with the bulldog unable to take it and running after a dog catcher truck...with Claude chasing the dog...and Hubie and Bertie chasing Claude.
- A Robot Chicken sketch involving The Smurfs getting killed in a flood has Gargamel, after years of trying to capture the Smurfs so he can eat them, finally being able to eat them (what with so many Smurf corpses). When he takes a bite though, the look on his face is that of "I've wasted my life". (In the original comics, he doesn't want to eat them (Azrael does), but use them as ingredients to create a philosopher's stone.)
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In "The Sword", Adora, Bow, and Glimmer get attacked by a giant insect creature. It keeps attacking them even when Glimmer blinds it with her light powers and Bow shoots it with arrows. When Adora turns into She-Ra for the first time, the creature does turn docile, but when the transformation cuts out, it resumes its attack. And when the heroes fall into a ravine, it follows them.
- Skull Island (2023): In episode 3, the Croc Monster, setting its sights on trying to eat Mike and Charlie (and immediately after it's already eaten a grown mercenary no less), pursues the boys along the rapids of a river that the Croc itself fears, and even over a waterfall which is the main reason the Croc fears the rapids.
- Sylvester from Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird. One of the clip shows and a movie show Sylvester has chased Tweety through the entire world.
- A Thousand and One... Americas: Many of the wild animals Chris and Lon face in the series are very enduring and relentless, and refuse to give up. Standouts include the dire wolf in the second episode, the shark in the ninth, and the polar bear in the sixteenth.
- A panther in one episode of Timon & Pumbaa, "Amazon Quiver", chased them into a tree, where the duo decided to wait for the predator to become disinterested and leave. They're frail, old men with canes and walkers by the time they decide to leave in the year of 2090, and the equally-old and frail panther still wants to chase them (despite not being able to eat meat anymore)!
- Tom of Tom and Jerry, whose obsession is best relayed through the fact that he once chased Jerry into a dog pound. This is mostly justified as Tom chases Jerry less out of hunger and more out of a desire to get even. Even when Tom's original intention was eating Jerry, he only really becomes persistent when Jerry sufficiently humiliates or injures him.
- Wile E. Coyote is the obvious cover-canid for this trope. For years that poor guy has been chasing the Roadrunner far beyond the call for reason, going so far as to buy countless Acme products and mountains of birdseed instead of spending that money on something he could actually eat. It actually was explained by Wile E. himself, in the only episode in which he speaks. He addresses the question of, "Why would a supposedly intelligent predator invest so much time and energy chasing a difficult prey with very little meat?" He shows a diagram of the roadrunner and how its different cuts correspond, in the coyote's palate, to the most sumptuous delicacies that humans enjoy. One of the rules for the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons set in place by Chuck Jones, the rules that made the cartoons so awesome, is that "The Coyote can give up at any time." Being a Super-Persistent Predator is a choice of his own, maybe even an addiction he just can't quit, no matter what he does. Which is morbidly hilarious.
- Zig the hyena from Zig & Sharko spends every episode going through outrageous lengths and a ton of Amusing Injuries in hopes of capturing and eating a mermaid.
Real Life
- Humans are perhaps the most successful example of this trope. Although we've invented many ways to get a hunt over and done with quickly, one of humanity's most effective techniques against large animals is persistence hunting. While humans aren't the fastest animals, we are very good at moving across long distances without tiring out — in our hunter-gatherer days, our favored tactic seems to have been following an animal at a jog until it simply dropped of exhaustion and heatstroke and either died there or had its head bashed in with a rock. This is still practiced by many African tribes. (Before you try it on your local whitetails, though, remember that these people are hunting in vast expanses of flat land; there's no forests for the animal to hide in or hills for it to vanish over.)
- There is a well-known pack animal which uses persistence as its primary hunting strategy: Wolves. Kind of makes sense that these two species would have gotten along fairly well in ancient times, doesn't it? Man's Best Friend might have originated as a pack of wolves and a pack of humans getting to know each other while chasing down the same big game, teaming up to take it down, and sharing in the kill.
- African wild dogs are persistent hunters. They will chase their prey until it tires out, sometimes for miles.
- Hyenas are also known to do this.
- Birds like seagulls, crows and caracaras really like to obsessively harass specific targets over long periods of time. While they might not always be trying to kill their target, this behaviour also works really well in getting a competitor or potential predator to back off, as they will eventually decide hunting is not worth the effort that the birds' harassment brings.
- Some mammalian and avian predators really do behave this way, though not to the ridiculous extents often depicted in fiction (usually employed by a group of smaller predators pursuing one large prey animal, whereas many movies and TV shows have it reversed). The constant pursuit denies the prey a chance to feed, drink, or rest. Eventually the prey will either collapse or be too weak to defend itself. This can easily be sped up by injuring the prey or forcing them into dangerous terrain. These tactics can allow a slower, weaker predator to take down big game. The predator runs the same risks, so this can often be a make-it or break-it tactic.
- This Killer Whale is certainly one. After chasing a dolphin for two hours, it made a four-meter-high jump to catch it. Other Orcas will drag whales and batter them until they can't fight back anymore and then drag them down to drown them.
- Man-eater animals (that is, animals that have made humans part of their regular diet) behave like this, because compared to other animals, humans are ridiculously easy to kill, and once a predator learns that, it will tend to keep hunting the "easy meat". See the individual examples below.
- The Tsavo Man-Eaters, a pair of maneless Tsavo lions, killed/consumed between 35 and 135 Indian laborers working on the Tsavo railway bridge in British East Africa. Even lighting campfires and building redoubts out of thorns didn't stop them. Eventually, Col. John Henry Patterson, a real-life Great White Hunter, set off to kill them. He shot the first, but it escaped, then started stalking him. He shot it four more times, and it eventually died of its wounds. He found it lying dead in an ambush position where it had been waiting for him. He ambushed the second lion, shooting it five times. It got up and charged him. Three more bullets put it down. Patterson claimed it died trying to leap over a fallen tree branch, still trying to charge him. Then they spent 25 years as a rug. A modern analysis of the attacks shows that the lions may actually have been an aversion of the trope: the reported attacks were all during the dry period when the lions' normal prey was scarce. During the rainy season, when herd animals were more common, they actually stopped attacking humans. These two were more recently turned into a museum exhibit (with one of them lying down, since the rug didn't include his belly). See the Movies entry for the movie based (somewhat loosely) on the event.
- The Champawat Tiger rivals, or exceeds, any serial killer in history. This man-eating tigress killed 436 people before she was shot and killed by hunter Jim Corbett in 1907. Followed closely behind by the Panar Leopard, which claimed 400 victims before it was killed in 1910, again by Corbett.
- One Siberian tiger had to deal with a poacher who wounded it and (likely accidentally) stole a part of its kill. The tiger proceeded to follow his trail towards his house, but when the poacher wasn't home, it proceeded to first ransack everything in the house that smelled like him, and then wait two days in patience until the poacher came home. After which the tiger killed and ate him.
- Gustave, one of the largest Nile crocodiles ever recorded, is infamous, even if much about him remains uncertain. What's scarier than an enormous Nile crocodile? An enormous Nile crocodile that not only has a taste for eating humans, but enjoys torturing them too. Assuming that he's still alive, as rumours began circulating that he was killed in 2019 (or was he...?), he is believed by some to be nearly 70 years old, and, thanks to hundreds of human corpses dumped in the Rizizi river during Burundi's civil war, he has a taste for Homo sapiens. He is often rumored to have killed nearly 300 people, and according to locals, doesn't eat them all— he kills because he enjoys it. Albeit much of this information is unsubstantiated and experts believe his kill total was much smaller. A National Geographic expedition tried to capture him using a steel cage and a live goat. After the camera went out one stormy night, they found the cage the next morning, the goat gone, smashed to pieces at the bottom of a lakebed. So what makes him "super-persistent?" Well, apart from his enormous size, his other distinguishing features are machine gun scars, a grenade wound, and having an enormous bullet hole in the middle of his face.
- Komodo Dragons are often said to fit the bill; the scenario said to be that they first take a bite out of their prey, and through a combination of mild anticoagulant venom (i.e. the wound bleeds out) and severe laceration from the teeth, it's only a matter of time before the animal drops from blood loss, trauma, paralysis, and infection. And if it doesn't die in minutes, the dragon will attack again and again until it drops. Most popular depictions have long-distance tracking as the norm, but in reality studies have shown they simply keep chasing and biting it until it falls, provided that it is not too difficult to do so. They also usually target the prey's legs and ankles to keep their quarry from running. If the animal actually puts a good amount of distance between itself and the dragon, the dragon will give up (though another dragon may take advantage of the injured animal later), the dragon won't track it far at all, and most animals that escape heal just fine. In summary, the dragons being super persistent is more myth than fact.
- Some paleontologists believe that many large predatory dinosaurs (such as tyrannosaurs, allosaurs, spinosaurs, abelisaurs, ceratosaurs, and carcharodontosaurs) may have practiced this method of killing as well. This is really the only way to kill giant sauropods, which are simply too dangerous to kill by any other method of attack; one (or possibly more) big theropods would stalk a sauropod until they spotted an opening to run in and take a bite out of its vulnerable belly or flank. This created a large, bleeding wound. Continuing to attack it over a course of hours, days, or possibly even weeks would eventually cause it to die of a combination of exhaustion, blood loss, and possibly infection.
- Various saber-toothed predatory mammals also, although in their case it was inflict-deep-gushing-slashes-and-wait, not inflict-infectious/toxic-bites-and-wait.
- Great white sharks still use this strategy to prey on elephant seals. This may also be the real reason sharks release human victims (so they die of blood loss). One should emphasize "may", though, as sharks also release animals they realize are not worth eating (due to not having enough blubber, not tasting right, and such), and the "usually a single bite followed by leaving the human alone" scenario is true for shark attacks in general, not just attacks from species that prey on large pinnipeds.
- Gila Monsters of the American Southwest use many of the same methods as the Komodo Dragon (venomous bites and all). However, instead of biting multiple times, Gila Monsters will bite and mechanically latch their jaws shut. However, this is primarily a defensive attack, as gila monsters and their close cousins the Mexican beaded lizard subsist primarily on a diet of eggs and nest-bound mammals.
- When a fishing spider (Dolomedes) is attacked by a parasitic wasp, the spider will usually try to evade it by going underwater. However, some wasps have been observed following the spider underwater, stinging it, then dragging it out of the water.
- Australian Funnelweb Spiders are VERY territorial and VERY aggressive. That's not the scary part (well, not the scariest part). The scary part is that if you mess with one and get away from it, if you come back the next day, it will remember you, and be angry enough to come after you. This spider holds a grudge!
- A few desert species of spider will envenomate a target and let it escape because the spider doesn't have the strength to hold it in place. They will then follow it until the venom has taken effect.
- While herons and their close relatives, the egrets and bitterns, generally don't chase after their prey, their persistence comes from their impressive patience. Herons will spend prolonged periods of time standing perfectly still, waiting patiently for hours on end for their prey (usually fish, but also small mammals and waterbirds) to come close, then in an instant seize them with great speed and force.
- Corvids (crows, ravens, magpies etc.) are some of the most intelligent animals around, and though not specialized hunters, they will opportunistically stalk and kill (small) prey such as young or injured birds. When doing so, they can learn and adapt to get what they want, stalking pretty endlessly, teaming up with others to gang up on prey items, or even employing complex diversion strategies to separate chicks from the parent bird.
- They can also identify and remember individual people, and have been recorded giving gifts to people who treat them kindly. However, experiments have also found that crows also remember when they've been slighted by other crows and humans alike, and inform the rest of their group about who they can trust and who's considered a liability to have around; in short, crows can hold grudges.
- Bees are smart enough that, if you mess with them and then try to escape by diving underwater (a common-knowledge trick that doesn't work), they'll wait for you to come up again and then attack.
- Many external parasites, like ticks and lice, probably evolved their present lifestyles by way of this trope: from opportunistic blood-feeders that would nibble any large animal they chanced upon, to short-term hitchhikers that clung to a blood source for brief interludes, to obligate ectoparasites that live full time on a single host and only transfer to another when it dies or has offspring they can colonize.
- Wolverines are known for employing this trope in winter, when they'll chase prey animals much larger than themselves into deep snow where the difficulty of moving through snow will exhaust their victim, allowing the wolverine to get close enough to kill it. The distance of the chase can be over sixty kilometres, at which point the prey is so tired it can hardly fight back and is easily run down in a short sprint. Animals as large as adult reindeer can be brought down by a wolverine using this hunting method.
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