Headscratchers pages are for questions that remain after you're done with the story, so the page is Spoilers Off!
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If the Bugsnax WANT to be eaten, then why are they running away or fighting the player?
- Did they think it would be too suspicious?
- Mentioned briefly on the Fridge page, but if you pay attention they don't seem to be outright violent towards anyone but the player. When you fight the bosses, they're trailed on you. Remember, bugsnax are strongly animalistic parasites; they may be able to detect allergies and such, and decide you're not worth the trouble of being meek in any way. They only seem to run from others at most, right up until the very end that they do become aggressive through their attempts to force their way into the grumpuses' mouths. As for their flight instincts, there are several possible answers: One can be answered with psychology. Humans, and this instance grumpuses, have the tendency to take an interest towards things they can't immediately have. Much like actual drugs, the fact that they're not easy to catch makes them more desirable. They evolved with the grumpuses, after all, and probably know that on some level. Another is that ancient grumpuses, as mentioned by Triffany, were potentially aggressive towards the bugsnax (they made their young learn to fight them off through dance, after all), thus causing them to change and adapt to be more flighty on some level. After all, they're not sure whether you're going to eat them or kill them. And it may still help the first point made. Then there's another thing: Not every bugsnax seems to have been made at the same time or share the same behavior. Some are basic, fruity snacks, but some seem to be recent developments. Coincidentally, the Snakpods, very recent-looking packaged bugsnax that definitely couldn't exist in an older era, literally don't move. They don't fight, don't run, and can be caught by the player without blinking. It could also be that not all of them developed equally, with some needing to employ different tactics for different tastes. As Floofty says themselves, any snack could be any other snack with the right stimulus...
- Alternate hypothesis — by the time the player character gets to Snaktooth Island, the bugsnax are being at least partially controlled and influenced by Lizbert, who has become a Barrier Maiden of sorts to protect the other grumpuses as best she can. It's possible they're fighting/fleeing at her direction, to keep everyone else from eating too many of them and transforming beyond their ability to recover.
- There's also the psychological phenomenon of being more interested in things we have to put effort into getting.
- Since the bugsnax assimilate grumpuses into the island’s mass to reproduce, perhaps there’s some small bit of the consciousnesses of those who died to the snax still in there? It might be hazy at the very best, but maybe the snax on the surface actually don’t want to be eaten and are trying, at least in some way, to avoid causing their fate to befall others. Though it seems all bets are off in the Undersnax and when the island truly gets hungry - whatever little bit of humanity (grumpusity?) is left might get crushed by the need to add to the hoard.
Even if the last Strabby escaped to freedom, what good would it do?
- They can't create more Bugsnax without completely transforming an animal, right? Unless the implication is that someone finds it and somehow tracks it back to Snaktooth Island...
- At the very least there is the implication is that it wasn't just the strabby that survived, it just happened to get on the boat. After all, Liz and Egg did manage to live after experiencing extreme peril through both the volcano and the snax, not to mention having to fight off their own monstrous snakification.
- Though a single Strabby is far from sufficient to transform a Grumpus, it seems very possible that it could transform a much smaller animal and get its start there.
So if Bugsnax are BAD, why exactly are the ones based off of fruit/vegetables also bad?
- I mean, strawberries, carrots... fruit and vegetables are good for you, healthy, even. While it makes sense that, say, a Bunger can be bad for you, since it's "junk food", why is, say, a Strabby just as bad?
- Bugsnax are not the food they look like. A Strabby is not a strawberry, it just looks like one. Making themselves look like healthy fruits and veg increases the chance that some people will want to eat them. In the end, all Bugsnax are equally bad, because they all have the same reproduction cycle that involves killing their host.
