Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
A terrifyingly ferocious, yet mind-bogglingly stupid predatory beast native to the planet Traal. Famously convinced that if you can't see it, it can't see you.
Creature Profile: The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have... wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous)..."
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 3
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is universally recognized by xenobiologists, survival instructors, and traumatized tourists as one of the most paradoxically terrifying lifeforms in the known Galaxy. Possessing the sheer physical strength of a runaway cargo tram and an appetite that borders on cosmic singularity, its lethality is countered only by an intellectual capacity that makes ordinary garden foliage appear intellectually dazzling.
Physiology & Behavioral Peculiarities
Adult Bugblatter Beasts stand roughly twelve to fifteen feet tall at the shoulders, encased in thick, pebbled leathery hide impervious to light blaster fire:
- The Gaping Maw: Lined with several hundred jagged serrated teeth designed to effortlessly masticate ironwood branches, boulders, and unarmored hitchhikers.
- The Olfactory & Auditory Apparatus: Despite having acute hearing and a keen sense of smell, its cognitive processing centers are entirely dominated by its visual cortex.
- The Solipsistic Flaw: The beast operates on a cognitive rule that astounds galactic psychologists: it firmly believes that perception is strictly mutual. If your eyes are covered, the beast reasons with unyielding certainty that you have vanished from reality.
The Towel Countermeasure
The Guide singles out the Bugblatter Beast as the definitive reason why no traveler should ever venture into deep space without a Massively Useful Towel:
- Blindfold Deployment: When confronted by an advancing Bugblatter Beast on the jagged crags of Traal, do not attempt to shoot or bargain with it. Pull your towel from your rucksack and wrap it firmly around your face, completely blocking your own line of sight.
- Behavioral Response: Within seconds of you blinding yourself, the beast will screech to a halt, sniff the air in utter confusion, look directly at where you are standing, conclude with deep philosophical certainty that you are no longer there, and lumber away into the swamp to look for a rock to chew on.
- Common Tourist Pitfall: The single greatest hazard when employing this maneuver is peeking through a fold in the fabric to check whether the beast has left. The instant your eye meets its gaze, mutual perception is restored and you will be promptly eaten.
Vogon Grandmother Benchmarks in the Guide
In addition to its towel-evasion fame, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal serves in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (under the entry Vogon Constructor Fleets) as the standard yardstick for Vogon callousness and irritability:
- Triplicate Rescue Protocol: The Vogons are so bureaucratic, officious, and callous that they wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
- How to Irritate a Vogon: While the best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, the Guide notes that the best way to irritate a Vogon is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
Damogran Frond Crested Eagle
An ingenious sea eagle native to Damogran that salvaged pages one and two of Zaphod Beeblebrox's prepared speech to construct an unbreakable papier-mâché nest—having heard of the notion of survival of the species, but wanting no truck with it.
Scintillating Jewelled Scuttling Crab
A breathtaking, gem-encrusted crustacean brought forth by the natural forces of Vogsphere to compensate for the evolutionary blunder of the Vogons. Every year, the Vogons import twenty-seven thousand of them to smash to bits with iron mallets.