Does Kyurem really eat humans?

[Zekrom's Lover]

According to legends Kyurem eats people yet in black 2/white 2...

Spoiler

When Ghetsis commands it to kill you it attempts to kill the player using giant floating icicles

Im confused why would it do that instead of trying to eat him/her?

 

[Midorikawa]

Maybe it likes cold food, also it probably doesn't like to eat living humans, so it uses the ice to kill and cut you up to make you easier to eat.

 

[Czechmate]

I agree with mw-mw. It probably does freeze you with Ice Bem.

 

[smalllady]

Those legends in B2/W2 were stated to be possibly inaccurate.

 

[Kelleo]

Yeah, I also heard somewhere that Kyurem can't even open its mouth. so how could it really eat anything, let alone people?

 

[The Froakster]

I wouldve already been dead.

 

[Zistal]

Given that Lacunosa Town is surrounded by a fortified wall and Kyurem is pretty much a zombie, I'm inclined to believe the answer is "yes". I imagine Kyurem instinctively ate people and Pokemon in a desperate attempt to fill the void left by Reshiram and Zekrom, but eventually gave up upon realizing nothing was changing.

 

[PD83]

Sure, why not?

 

[Sith Droideka]

You can eat dead things. Humans do it all the time.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, I also heard somewhere that Kyurem can't even open its mouth. so how could it really eat anything, let alone people?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73261431/kyurem.jpg

I think Lacunosa legends about Kyurem are meant to be inaccurate. In another thread someone suggested the possibility that Kyurem "absorbs energy" rather than eating people. This fits well its typing, since scientifically "cold" doesn't exist, being instead the "lack" or "loss" of heat. I mean, when you feel cold, it's you "giving heat" and not your surroundings "giving cold".

That would take Kyurem's powers at another level; while most Ice Pokémon actually "use" cold to attack, Kyurem "is" the cold.

 

[Kelleo]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73261431/kyurem.jpg

Um, I was talking about normal Kyurem, not its forms. And besides that, I heard what I heard before B2W2 was announced.

 

[KrystalDragon13]

Hmm.. that would be really strange if he eats humans 0_0.. I doubt it though.

 

[The Outrage]

You cite B2W2 (when this was mentioned in BW) even though the old woman who tells you the story in B2W2 admits that the legend passed down may have become inaccurate over time? I don't see how this is really much a topic of debate anymore. Drayden notes that Kyurem's existence has been hidden, so its involvement with the other two dragons is really obscure knowledge, which means anything else said about it could be misconstrued from the truth.

I think Lacunosa legends about Kyurem are meant to be inaccurate.

The game also blatantly point out the inaccuracies of what the Lacunosa people believed. They didn't even know about Kyurem's relation to Reshiram and Zekrom.

@Zekrom's Lover;
As for the question of why does Kyurem try to kill you first before eating you? Because that's what its trainer said to do, it didn't tell Kyurem to eat them. Just because you can kill something by eating them, doesn't mean you're in the mood to in the first place. Also why do predators kill their prey? To eat them. Why is it at all weird that, even if Kyurem ate humans, that it would try to kill its meal first?

 

[Pegasus80]

The reason is likely because that it was under control of Ghetsis, also it came from a meteorite/comet from space, so it was likely confused and was trying to find food, and tried people and pokemon, but eventually went to berry's since it was easier / tastier

 

[Esserise]

Man this thread is ooooooold. Older than my account, even! But I love a good necro.

If you can reconcile the claims with the fact that Kyurem can't seem to open its mouth, then sure, there's nothing outright saying it doesn't eat people. The thing about legends in stories like Pokémon is that they usually have at least a grain of truth to them. 'Cause surely in order for it to have lived for at least hundreds, if not thousands of years in the Giant Chasm, it would need to be able to sustain itself in some way? But of course, that doesn't mean that the stories are 100% accurate, either. Maybe it's all baloney. Personally, I tend to assume that every legend in Pokémon is roughly halfway between truth and embellishment.

See, I rather like the idea that it "consumes" people and Pokémon using the limbs break them down and absorb them, in much the same way that we see it absorbing Reshiram/Zekrom's stone form in B2W2. It's seeking to repair its body, but this proves futile, because random people and Pokémon don't possess the specific energies that Kyurem can use to patch the gaps in its form. It's enough to keep its heart beating and its blood flowing, but that's all. So, I don't see it as quite the gruesome boogeyman that the tales describe, but I also don't think the Lacunosans pulled the notion of it "eating" other living things out of thin air. In my view, they just didn't fully understand what they were witnessing. Kyurem wasn't a monster coming to terrorize the town, but rather was a broken, wounded creature instinctively trying to heal itself.

And as far as it using icicles to attack RosaNate, it was acting on Ghetsis's command. Ghetsis's staff allowed him to control Kyurem, bypassing its own willpower. And he told it to attack them using Glaciate, so that's what it did.

 

[Phosphene]

The reason is likely because that it was under control of Ghetsis, also it came from a meteorite/comet from space, so it was likely confused and was trying to find food,

Kyurem was only under the control of Ghetsis fairly recently, and the rumor that it eats people is much older than that—probably older than Ghetsis himself. Not only that, Kyurem didn’t come from a meteorite, it was the leftovers from when Reshiram and Zekrom split.

 

[Esserise]

Not only that, Kyurem didn’t come from a meteorite, it was the leftovers from when Reshiram and Zekrom split.

Ahh, the old meteorite. I remember that being somewhat of a point of confusion back in the times of yore when B2W2 were new. A lot of people seemed to interpret the information dispensed in those games as striking down the story of the meteorite in its entirety, which I think helped give credence to the idea that the claims about Kyurem eating other organisms were bogus. But the full picture is a little more complicated than that.

It certainly does appear to be true that Kyurem does not originate from the outer cosmos like Deoxys and Eternatus do. However, in B2W2, Professor Juniper shares with us her theory about what the "meteorite" in the story really was. According to her, it could very well have been Kyurem in its own Dragon Stone form:

> Bianca: Professor, do you think there's a connection between the Pokémon from the old story and the legendary Dragon-type Pokémon?
> Juniper: The meteorite.
> Bianca: The meteorite?
> Juniper: Zekrom/Reshiram was revived from a rock called the Dark Stone/Light Stone. Let's suppose the meteorite from the story and this stone are one and the same... Take into account that elements from the same era were found in Dragonspiral Tower, where Zekrom/Reshiram was, and in the Giant Chasm... It doesn't prove anything, but it could be a piece of the puzzle. Let's not write it off as a coincidence just yet...

I've always thought it was odd how the fandom seemed to so routinely ignore this detail. Juniper's theory doesn't actually conflict at all with the legend that Drayden tells us about Kyurem (for the sake of readability, I'll just use the version from Black 2):

> Drayden: Let me tell you the story. It's a long story, but listen closely. It was two years ago when the two dragon Pokémon were awakened. The black dragon Pokémon, Zekrom, pursued what is ideal, with the desire to usher in a new world of hope. And the white dragon Pokémon, Reshiram, sought what is true, with the desire to usher in a new world of goodness. Zekrom and Reshiram were once a single Pokémon. You may wonder why it split in two. The single dragon Pokémon had helped the twin heroes bring a new region into being. But the twin heroes--the older brother who sought the truth and the younger brother who sought ideals--sundered the region in two as they fought to see which of them was right. In that desperate hour, the single dragon Pokémon split its body into a black Pokémon and a white Pokémon, even though ideals and truth don't need to be in opposition! As the story goes, a third dragon Pokémon, Kyurem, also came into existence in that era. And there may be proof of this to be found in a treasure passed down in my family for generations: the DNA Splicers. Professor Juniper's research determined that the materials in the splicers date back to the same era as the materials used in building the Dragonspiral Tower. Oh, the DNA Splicers are stored very safely. I guard them because I don't know what kind of power might lie within them. But here's what's been bothering me… Could there be one more dragon Pokémon? Even if Kyurem really exists, we don't know what kind of Pokémon it is. For starters, the two Pokémon the ancient Pokémon split into are both overwhelmingly powerful. So if Kyurem exists, could it be just a husk--a shell that was left over?

All that Drayden tells us is that Kyurem came into existence around the same time as Reshiram and Zekrom, and surmises its nature as a remnant of the original dragon. This could seamlessly intertwine with Juniper's theory, if we imagine that the biological materials that make up Kyurem were ejected from the original dragon in the form of a third Dragon Stone, which soared through the air and impacted near Lacunosa Town (where it would have been mistaken for a meteor), and eventually gathered up enough of the errant energy in the Chasm in order to transform into the incomplete Kyurem that we know. If anything, B2W2 don't disqualify the Lacunosa Town story - they explain how part of the story could have come to be despite Kyurem's obvious connections to Reshiram and Zekrom rather than extraterrestrial space.

 

[Phosphene]

if we imagine that the biological materials that make up Kyurem were ejected from the original dragon in the form of a third Dragon Stone, which soared through the air and impacted near Lacunosa Town (where it would have been mistaken for a meteor), and eventually gathered up enough of the errant energy in the Chasm in order to transform into the incomplete Kyurem that we know. If anything, B2W2 don't disqualify the Lacunosa Town story - they explain how part of the story could have come to be despite Kyurem's obvious connections to Reshiram and Zekrom rather than extraterrestrial space.

That's how I think about it too, that Kyurem was mistaken for a meteor. It's just seemed to me that @Pegasus80 was implying that Kyurem was some alien creature from space who was just hungry and confused when the games suggest Kyurem has a more terrestrial origin.