Sapient Fur Trade

The perfect centaurpiece for your living room.

"You'll make a nice fur coat."

— Courtney Gears to Ratchet, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

People can find hundreds of reasons to kill other people. Most of them are emotional, like hatred and anger, while some, like money, are more pragmatic.

This practice, though, takes pragmatism to a whole new level: people are killed, usually on a race-wide scale, because their dead bodies provide useful raw materials.

This will be most common and obvious in a fur trade, where the skins of another race of people are bought and sold for material or trophies, but as people tend to be creative beings potential uses are limited only by their imagination.

This will usually not be perpetrated within a race, or people who believe themselves to be the same race. Normally the hunter race will believe for some reason that the hunted race aren't actually people, either from misunderstanding or because it suits them to make artificial distinctions.

On the other hand, if they do know precisely what they're doing, expect either for the two races to be mortal enemies or for the hunter race to be portrayed as morally irredeemable.

A Super-Trope to Genuine Human Hide. A Sub-Trope of Fur and Loathing. This is a common practice of the Predator Pastiche and the Proud Hunter Race.

Compare I'm a Humanitarian (particularly if the raw material people are being killed for is food), Cruella to Animals (being cruel whether or not the animals are sapient), Desecrating the Dead, Organ Theft, Human Resources, and Monster Organ Trafficking.

Contrast Live Mink Coat (an animal is worn, but not harmed).

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Hunter × Hunter: The eyes of the Kurta Clan are highly prized due to their unique scarlet coloring, a fact that has almost lead to the Clan's total genocide.
• Tokyo Ghoul: The bodies of Ghouls can be used to produce numerous valuable products. The Quinque, the primary weapons used by Ghoul Investigators to hunt ghouls, are made from the predatory organ of a slain ghoul. Rendered down bodies can also be used to produce Quinque Steel or an RC solution of unknown purpose. As such, ghouls are hunted not simply because they are considered dangerous beings without any rights, but because their bodies are extremely useful. A prime example of this is in the backstory of the Kirishima siblings. Their father was a peaceful scavenger who lived in harmony with his human neighbors. Though known to be harmless, he was targeted and hunted down because he was considered valuable "material". His kagune was used to produce the experimental Arata Armors for the CCG.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man: Hydro-Man once buys his girlfriend a fur coat supposedly made from Tigra's pelt (it's actually fake), implying that the Marvel Universe might have a black market for goods made from furry heroes or villains.
• X-Men: In some non-canon alternate universes where Anyone Can Die and often do, the only remains of the X-Man Beast is his pelt used like a rug or coat.

Fan Works

• The Ambassador's Son: Sharptooth mentions that the body parts of dragons are believed to hold a variety of medicinal and magical powers, leading to their hunting by poachers despite being sapient beings. This is particularly a problem for eggs and unhatched dragons, both because they're less dangerous and because dragon eggs are particularly magically potent.

Film — Animated

• Zootopia has a scene where con-artist fox Nick Wilde mentions selling a rug made from a skunk's butt. Considering that this is a world inhabited by talking animals, it raises some questions.

Film — Live Action

• Predator: The titular aliens take human skulls and weapons as trophies. They have rules, a code of conduct (no children, no one unarmed) and in one movie capture humans and place them on a "hunting preserve". A hunting preserve that's an entire planet.
• Star Wars: Trandoshans such as Bossk are a Proud Hunter Race with no real hangups about hunting sapient beings, and in particular hunt Wookiees and take their pelts as trophies for a religious ritual. Ironically there's one story where Bossk is taken prisoner and an Imperial governor wants to make him into a lizard-skin jacket for his wife.

Literature

• Animorphs: In The Extreme, Ax states that the alien race of Venber were driven to extinction when it was discovered that their silicon-based bodies can be melted down into an extremely efficient coolant and superconductor.
• Discworld: There's a single mention in Equal Rites of a caravan leader wearing a trollhide jerkin. His Discworld Companion entry notes that trollhide is no longer considered an acceptable clothing material. Hunting trolls for sport is mentioned in The Fifth Elephant (as is werewolves hunting humans for sport). The trollburger mentioned in Mort is probably a burger for a troll, since whatever uses humans may find for the remains of silicaceous lifeforms, edibility is not one of them.
• The Helmsman Saga: The Leaguers are hunting the Sodeskayan Bears for their pelts.
• Played with in "Hunting Problem" by Robert Sheckley. Aliens from a distant world consider it a rite of passage to hunt down and skin a dangerous creature named "Mirash", whom they believe to be naturally cunning but not sentient. It turns out, however, that "Mirash" are actually the occasional human visitors of their planet, and "skinning" them actually only involves taking the fancy space suits they usually arrive in.
• Lampshaded in Little Fuzzy.
  • Victor Grego considers a plan to put a high bounty on fuzzies, in order to wipe them out before they can be legally recognized as sapient.
  • At first, Jack Holloway thinks that wanting to sell fuzzy furs is Leonard Kellogg's motivation for wanting to find them non-sapient. Only later is Jack reminded that fuzzies being sapient would invalidate the Chartered Zarathustra Company's charter.
• Mark Of The Cat: Sand Cats are hunted for fur despite being sapient, or perhaps because of it. They don't generally make good neighbors, after all.
• Merry Gentry: Merry has a minor freak out when she learns that the fur coat worn by Frost in one book is made of troll hide, not bear or some other animal like she'd originally assumed. Frost, for his part, is offended that she takes such issue with the way he honors a fallen enemy.
• In "Mirage" by Clifford Simak, one of the seven sexes of the Martians has been almost completely exterminated by humans who prized their fur, which could sell for fifty thousand dollars a pelt.
• Paradox: In one scene in Earthrise, Irene, a Harat-Shariin (one of those races of human-animal hybrids known collectively as "the Pelted"), suggests that maybe surrendering to the pirates chasing them and being sold into slavery isn't such a bad thing. Reese suggests that maybe they want to make her into a rug instead, which is enough to scare her into changing her mind. Later, in Only the Open, a liner is attacked by pirates who start killing human passengers and stunning Pelted ones, and the telepath Jahir confirms that they're furriers before fighting them off.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Kane from "Phases" is a werewolf hunter who hunts werewolves to sell their pelts on the black market. The fact that his targets are humans for all but three nights a month does not bother him in the slightest.
• One episode of Grimm has a Wesen who hunts other Wesen for their hides. His latest target is a couple from a rare species who are about to have their first child. He also mentions that a Fuchsbau hide is more valuable than a Blutbad hide.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Less prominent in 5E, but in many older editions, there were all kinds of uses for the hides, teeth, claws, and bones of sapient monsters for crafting armor, weapons, and magic items. The cloak of displacement, for example, was in older editions actually made from the hide of a displacer beast. Dragon-scale armor still exists, though it's noted in the 5E description that it can be crafted out of the shed scales of a living dragon — some dragons even collect their own scales to make the armor as a gift for a humanoid they particularly like.
• Hunter: The Vigil: The members of Ashwood Abbey occasionally make bits and pieces of slain supernaturals into clothing. The ultimate prize, of course, would be a werewolf-fur coat... but since werewolves turn back into humans when they die, this requires skinning them alive. To date, only one member of the Abbey has ever pulled it off, and the current members consider it a tad beyond the pale even for them.
• Myriad Song: In case you didn't think the Myriad worlds exploited Towsers enough, their silicate fur can be made into armor. It has the best soak dice of any armor in the rulebook too, fortunately every major government bans the stuff.
• Commander Garr-Grek Vaerr from the classic Traveller FASA supplement Action Aboard: Adventures on the King Richard is a Vargr, a sapient alien genetically engineered from Earth canines. He hates the hunter Hugo Grovet because of rumors that Grovet hunts and kills Vargr for their pelts.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate 2: Every dragon that shows up in the game can be killed and its skin can be harvested. Taking said skins to the Ultimate Blacksmith allows you to turn them into armor. Unsurprisingly, these armors tend to be some of the best in the game.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • There exists a black market for Khajiit furs. One of In-Universe Books is titled Confessions of a Khajiit Fur Trader, written by a Khajiit who trades in the fur of his own kind, as well as Argonian hides. The book ends with a declaration that he even intends to one day sell his own pelt for a ridiculous amount of money.
  • Background lore indicates that the Dreugh, an aquatic race of humanoid octopi, were once highly intelligent, able to speak, and capable of using magic. It is said that they even ruled the world (or a previous world that was destroyed and made into the current world) during the earliest era following creation. While their intelligence is said to have devolved over time, they are still considered a sapient species. That doesn't stop hunters (primarily the Dunmer) from killing them for their leathery hides (which can be forged into quality weapons and armor) and wax (a valuable ingredient in alchemy).
  • Likewise, Minotaurs possess enough intelligence to craft rudimentary weapons and armor, and are known to live in social "clan" societies. They may even be Half Human Hybrids (by way of a non-malicious Monster Progenitor) and the second Emperor of the Alessian Empire was Belharza, said to be the first Minotaur and son of St. Alessia (from her Divine Date coupling with Morihaus, the Aedric demi-god "winged man-bull".) However, Minotaurs are still valued by hunters for their horns (which are prestigious hunting prizes and have valuable alchemical properties) as well as Oxblood Fungal Spores (which are used by blacksmiths and are only known to grow on Minotaurs). They are also often captured alive and used as a common opponent in gladiatorial arenas throughout Tamriel.
  • In Skyrim, you can slay fully sentient dragons, rip out their souls to learn the Thu'um, and then turn their bones and scales into armor or weapons. (Or sell them for a hefty profit.) Don't feel bad — the vast majority of dragons are utter assholes.
• Kult: Heretic Kingdoms: The Taymurians are basically wolf-people, and are sometimes hunted by humans for their pelts. This doesn't make them very inclined to end their war against the human kingdoms, but if players do a side-quest to take out some hunters, one of the Taymurian tribes is willing to respond by making peace.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal: When Ratchet is fighting the sadist Evil Diva Courtney Gears, one of her battle taunts is saying she'll make a fur coat out of him.
• Valheim:
  • Every enemy in the game drops materials that can be used in crafting weapons, armor, and/or food, including the non-animal ones. The draugr are especially notable in that they drop entrails, which can then be used to make sausages. Bon appétit!
  • Trophies (usually heads) are a relatively rare drop, and while mostly decorative are correspondingly used for more specialized items (deer heads for a spiked hammer, dragon heads for a helmet, etc.). One update uses them for fishing bait.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Leather gained from the Skinning skill can be obtained from intelligent humanoids such as naga. Dragon scales can only be obtained from dragons and dragonkin, most of which are sapient. Notably, the worgen (werewolves) in the game were once skinnable, but this ability was removed once worgen were added as a playable race.
  • In a lot of orc and tauren buildings, you can find bearskin-style rugs made from a centaur◊. Centaurs are Always Chaotic Evil and have been hunting the tauren for centuries, but it's still a little grisly to see something that has a human face all flayed out like that.

Webcomics

• Charby the Vampirate: The lemuros have almost been wiped out due to the demand for their pelts, many of those buying the pelts are not even aware they come from a sapient human-like species since they are relatively new to Kellwood and those hunting them are through in disposing of the remains they’re not selling so it just looks like a striped magical tail or boa.
• Last Res0rt: The author has stated that the reason leather is banned on Arael is because back when the native Talmi were a Slave Race they were often, well... let's just say that one of the exceptions to the ban is recovering ancestral remains.
• TwoKinds: Keidrans — Beast Men resembling canids and felids — are often hunted for their fur, and unscrupulous humans are often characterized as such by voicing intent to hunt keidran fur or owning keidran-skin rugs. One particular breed of feline keidrans, the snow leopards, is said to have nearly been driven to extinction for their pelts.

Web Videos

• Examples from the first campaign of Critical Role:
  • Vox Machina, being the prolific dragon slayers they are, regularly harvest the bodies of their killed foes, intelligent or not. They also own a Bag of Holding that they fill with monster parts such as troll dicks and drow heads in addition to their impressive collection of dragon hide, scales, blood, claws and teeth.
  • In Vasselheim, there is the Slayer's Take, a guild of monster hunters that plays this trope even straighter: They specifically hunt monsters for their body parts that powerfull wizards use for spells or item creation, such as a white dragon whose scaled hide presumably shall become dragon-hide-armor.

Western Animation

• The Itchy & Scratchy Show: In one episode, the Villain Protagonist Itchy, an evil humanoid mouse, skins the show's hero, Scratchy, a humanoid cat who was shopping at the mall and sells his fur, White Gloves attached, to a creepy Rich Bitch. Scratchy accosts her, with his bones and muscles on display, and puts his fur back on. Unfortunately he then gets assaulted by an Animal Wrongs Group for wearing, what is clearly, his own skin.
• Ōban Star-Racers: Muir's people are crab-like creatures that communicate using telepathic tentacles that are very sought after by other sentient species. Muir's mate was left for dead after someone harvested her tentacles and he hopes to bring her back to life.
• Popeye: The King Features cartoon "Valley of the Goons" has Popeye saving the inhabitants of Goon Island from poachers out to harvest "goon skins".
• Totally Spies!: Clover is transformed into a humanoid animal, as well as many hostages, in a villain's plan to dominate the fashion industry by bringing fur, scales and feathers back in prominence, purportedly because materials from humanoid bodies would make for a better fit.

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