I'm not going to come into the open and say "ERR THIS IS OBVIOUSLY WHY IT'S AROUSING" Because frankly I'm with you on the fact I have no idea. But I'm also with you on your evidence part.

Personally: I never even watched cartoons that had hints at vore, or saw movies or anything like that, plus, from my hazy childhood memories I recall being fascinated by vore long before I was truly watching cartoons, so that dispels any theory that could chronologically come after as well at least in my case.

As for it being genetic, I don't think so either, nobody else in my family line has even hinted at showing the slightest interest in it (I haven't directly asked them but from subtle references to it they definitely have no idea what it even is in the simplest form.) So if that information helps anybody solidify or change a theory, then there it is.

I do have a few theories I'll put here though, but neither of them have real evidence behind them other than what dispels other theories.
1- It might be caused by anything and everything, it just so happens that when a to-be-voraphile is growing up, a certain linking of events, experiences, and knowledge just accumulate into the brain liking vore, then when the body hits puberty the brain takes an inventory of what it REALLY likes and makes it stimulating, which could also explain why people who grow up mentally alone tend to be asexuals*. (*Note I only have personal experiences with friends of that theory.)
2- It might just be a roll of the dice type thing, where kind of like the first theory (Which personally I find more likely) the brain just takes a few random things it knows about, or thinks it knows about, and turns them stimulating.

Both of those are just ideas though, I'd be interested on what you or anybody else thinks of those little tidbits there.

Firstly, I'm suprised how fast you responded to this. I only posted it less than an hour ago. Thank you for taking time to read it!
Secondly, and more on topic, I really prefer your first answer, and while I don't know much about asexuals, I will take your word for it, and that seems like a really solid answer, and I believe it could be likely that vorephilia could stem from a similar reason to asexuality. I would hate for vorephilia to just be gained by complete chance. It just does not satisfy my hunger (hehe) for finding the truth behind vore. Nothing is completely done by chance in nature, only computers can do perfect probability, and we are certainly not computers. But it is good to see that I'm not the only one that was interested in vore before I could even remember.

Thanks for sharing, but I think your belief that an interest in vore belongs to just a 'unique few', is highly inaccurate.

I maintain that virtually everyone has an interest in 'vore' but most are ashamed to admit it. There is evidence to suggest it is part of not only our psyche as humans, but even our other primate cousins as antrhopologists have noticed, (such as baboons and chimps watching in rapt fascination when one of their number is being eaten by a lion or crocodile).

Why do more people watch Shark week than Dolphin week on Animal Planet?

Why are any (quality) movies with overt vore like Jaws or Jurassic Park huge blockbusters?

Why is nearly everyone's favorite dino the T-Rex, or another big predator capable of swallowing humans?

Why are mythical (and man eating dragons), so much a part of our culture, and have been ever since the dawn of civilization? (Heck, most of the human population today worship an obvious dragon whose great wings, talons, firey breath, smoking nostrils, and appettite for fatted calves and Midiannite virgins are clearly documented in the Bible!)

Why did the Hotwheels Franchise even make the vore-oriented game you played as a child, if only a handful of kids would be interested in it?

This list could go on four hours as you must know. Sorry to burst your bubble but the truth is -- nearly everyone is a 'closet vorephile' though you will never know for sure because most people are embarrassed to admit it. Most probably don't even realize what the term means, or that there are sites like this one that promote it.

Woah, I never thought of it that way. Well, that is a very interesting and different idea than any that I've seen before! I like this thought actually, but I have a few questions about it. How, then, are others not sexually turned on if they were to see vore? I mean, if their pet snake were to eat a rat, most people wouldn't feel any sort of attraction or positive reaction towards it. If they were trying to keep it secret, and were ashamed of it, then why do many even look away as if they were repulsed by it? Another thought I have is that I have actually told two people about my fetish (I wrote a journal entry about it on my DA if you want to know more), and they were completely confused and disgusted by it, and it seems that if it truly was attractive to everyone, they would have at least shown some interest in the subject rather than just not wanting to talk about it. And my final thought: I have seen people who are commissioned vore pictures, and they claim that they are not vorephiles and have no attraction to that sort of thing. They could be lying, but they seem pretty neutral towards it. Again, I'm not saying that your wrong, but all theories have a counterargument, and this is no exception. (Sorry about the length of this reply, but I'm trying to be as scientific as possible here) (also, thanks for reading!).

The only vore in my early childhood was from Tom and Jerry and Magic School Bus, but the act of consumption never interested me. When I was a kid though from ages 6 till 12 I wanted to be a marine biologist. It had nothing to do with any animal other than the whale. Whales are the only animal big enough to safely swallow a person. For some reason little me was absolutely fascinated by traveling and exploring another living thing. I always told my mom that too, but it wasn't until about 14 that I saw vore as sexually attractive. I always saw it fascinating but never in a sexual nature. No longer want to be a MB and I have no interest in cooking or hard vore but I do want to be a chef which is vore related.

Ah yes! I remember that episode of magic school bus where they explored the digestive system. I also loved Tom and Jerry, not so much for vore, but because it was friggin hilarious physical humor. I loved that as a kid, as I'm sure you and many others did. Anyways, your attraction to vore sounds very similar to mine, although I always felt an unexplainable sensation whenever I saw it before puberty, for as long as I can remember. It is very strange how people develop it at different ages of their childhood.

People actually form their fetishes and sexual desires pretty early on in life. That doesn't mean your tastes don't change, however, my basic theory of why modern humans (mostly Americans in my experience) have so many fetishes involves the common idea of not educating your kids about sex. We as a country don't approve of kids knowing about it or how it works and deny them their curiosities about genitals and that kind of thing. Maybe they know it involves someone, or part of someone going into the other, as I half taught myself with dry textbooks. Even when i was about 12, i thought a guy's dick was basically flaccid during sex. Pregnancy scared the hell out of me, so I think because I identified more with animals I got into animal behaviors more than human ones. I always thought animal dongs were cooler than human ones LOL.

So while I can basically provide a ton of examples of ancient humans and cultures (who didn't have as many hangups with kids being sexual, witnessing sex, or knowing about it) to me, I think maybe part of stranger, more abstracted fetishes that don't always involve genitals are a little bit due to culture and a lot due to the fact that kids are exploring the world and making connections that may not mean anything. Two boys could have the same experience: get an erection while hiding under the bed while parents are gone and smelling someone discarded shoe/sock. One kid will develop a fetish for small enclosed spaces the other will be into shoes/feet/musk/ something foot related. Your brain in development forms crazy, supersticious attachments to some things and maybe not at first, but eventually, whenever these kids get aroused, they will either think of the thing that was the first association, or they will be triggered by a similar object/sensation...
So I personally very much doubt a specific fetish would be genetic, however, maybe a tendency towards having LOTS of fetishes and high libido is totally legit, or maybe forming a fetish as a specific age could be genetic

pardon if a bit incoherent,it's late XD

That was actually very logical and well thought out! It makes sense too, since my parents didn't educate me about sex properly until I was 10 or somewhere around there. Most kids had a general idea way before that. Third grade seemed to be when most kids learned the basics of sex, when I learned in fifth, I think. I never even learned more than the basic concept until like seventh grade, and by then I had already found out about vore. It would make sense how vore would become a sexual thing for me, since I already experienced a strange attraction to it before, and my body just interpreted it as sexual when puberty hit, but I still have limited ideas of how I would develop that strange attraction in the first place, from a very young age. Your reasoning does make a ton of sense however, and it explains how other fetishes could be acquired as well, and logically. Thanks for that!

Totally XD I had a bit of a similar thing, as well as being conflicted at a young age from being trans. I wanted to be a boy, but wasn't into competition and fighting stuff so much as dinosaurs and TMNTs, so I have all kinds of wierd kid baggage that still bugs me. It's a marvel anyone manages to not be totally into bizzaro fetishes in my opinion. Though generally I tend to love them even if they don'tturn me on because I have fun bringing other's surreal ideas to life!

I know plenty of boys who aren't into competitions and fighting stuff, so don't worry about that, but I agree that the weirdest fetishes/fandom a are the most accepting. Its kinda nice, because everyone in the vore community basically already knows the biggest secret of each other, and we make up such a small percentage of the population, therefore, you've already made a strong bond with everyone you meet!

I can personally say fear turned fascination is the case with me, I've always said my worst fear was being eaten. I had to stop play legend of Zelda ocarina of time because f The Lord Jabu Jabu's belly dungeon, and even know I think in real capacity I fear it.(after all I inly enjoy softvore and let's be honest anything that'd happen IRL would be hard vore) but when I discovered things with no digestion...my fascinati

Ion began to bloom. I'm only 16 and still coming to terms with it but...yeah XD sorry if this doesn't help at all.

Actually, this helps a lot! Even duplicate comments help me learn exactly how common each method of developing the fetish is, and I really think that the fear to love relationship is the strangest, yet one of the most common, which. I find very interesting.

How I got into vore... Hell if I know man I got into some kinky shit XD.

I've been interested in vor since I was little, so I don't remember, but I find it fun to draw and look at.

Your story roughly correlates with mine. My earliest memory of vore was an unusually large plush snake I owned at 5 or 6. As any normal person would do, I would insert my head into its mouth. I did this for no other reason than the fact that I imagined I was being eaten. Hell, I even practiced holding my breath to train for the first time I meet a constrictor snake. I can say my case has nothing to do with sex - I find nothing else attractive - but only natural phenomena. I eventually discovered the fetish on DeviantArt. Not sure why I searched for it. But I sure am glad I did.

Yeah, that's the interesting part about vore. It doesn't necessarily have anything sexual about it. A very strange fetish indeed, but I'm glad to have found out about it too.

I relate almost exactly to your story. As a child, I was always "attracted" to scenes in cartoons or movies where people are eaten. I used to imagine being eaten by my pet dog. I'd sit in front of her and smell her dog breath and stare into her mouth watching her pant and drool. When no one else was around of course. I've also always have been a very vivid and sometimes lucid dreamer and some of the earliest dreams I remember is a reoccurring on of being eaten and living in a T-rex XD Also had dreams of being eaten by cats and snakes, etc. I talked about it to some friends once, but they didn't feel the same way about it and I never talked about it after that. I discovered vore senior year of highschool. I can't remember what exactly i was doing, I believe I watched Pagemaster for the first time since childhood and the scene in the dragon egged me to search "swallowed by dragon". one linked led to another and I wound up on eka's portal for artists like Strega and RenaAyama. Eka's portal became my guilty pleasure for a few years till I tried to give up my "vices" and try to live a more "normal" life. But, after trying to kill myself a while ago I've been trying to embrace myself if that makes any sense. "Treat yourself with as much understanding and compassion you give others" is what they tell me. 20some years of depression is hard to let go of though. So I came back and realized Eka's isn't the same as it was before and yadayada wound up here for artists like eyeofcalamity.Now I'm trying to get back into art. And that's my story. Congratulations for making it to the end. Your a great listener and I appreciate you :)

I really liked your story! While I've never really fantasized about being eaten myself, I always imagined it from a third person view. Also, I'm interested to hear if you think that vore has made your depression worse or better. Was vore one of the causes of your depression, or one of the cures?

Well, that is indeed a tricky question. In short, vore is neither. My depression has been with me almost as long as i can remember. I wrote my first "suicide" in the third grade XD. Although I have to admit being a vorephiliac hasn't been something I've always been proud of and that its a culture that can leave you feeling rather alienated by people who just can't understand. However it does, like any culture, have a large pool of support to draw on. But all and all really my vorephilia is small potatoes compared to some of the other problems most depressed people deal with like feelings of inadequacy, helplessness, boredom of reality, or lack of motivation. When you starve yourself for a month just to pay rent and can't find a reason to get out of bed for three days, loose your job, things like vore don't really cross your mind. I really do apologize for the sappiness. I really didn't intend to gush, but after I started typing I couldn't stop. Again, thanks for listening.

It was the magic school bus that did it for me. That game one... where you get fed to arnold and get to explore in there... and then you patch into his brain and you see him walking around town going "Where are they, where could they be?"


There's actually an overarching psychological explanation for fetishes like this. It's all about your sexual development, and how your body is confused by how it's being turned on by some things and not others. For instance, maybe you had regular exposure to attractive bodies as a child, but it never turned you on because you weren't sexually awake yet. And then, one day, your hormones abrewing, you come across something sexually attractive, like uhm... *ahhem* Arnold's mouth, for instance... And you're not sure why you're feeling that way or what it means. Your brain assumes that looking at mouths and being swallowed whole is what's making you horny, and giving you those good vibes, so you associate it with sexy times and as your brain builds more sexually complex around that, it becomes a central part of the way you get off. I think mouths are hot. I think throats and stomachs are hot, and sometimes I get off on just the thought of attractive people eating. It's just the way I grew up and developed because that's what I was exposed to.

That's interesting. I always have found it strange though that, even though I am a male, vore turns me on no matter what genders are involved. It is strange that even a throat belonging to a cartoony boy can still be attractive. I probably did train myself to associate eating with happiness with all the Kirby games I played, along with the ones I mentioned here. With enough exposure, maybe something did associate that with sexuality. Even with a character as cartoony and amorphous as Kirby.

yup. That's very likely. And I'm the same way, the gender is sort of a secondary thing. I love bodies and their insides, and I love the whole eating process, but when it comes to the person's physical sex (as opposed to gender, which is a more complex and separate though related concept) I really don't mind. You can call yourself whatever you wanna call yourself, I just wanna look in your mouth... or uhm... suck on your fingers... and uhm...

*ahhem*

right

Well, for a topic like this we need this guy ->

or I could say the reason i love vore is the belly

I've become more tolerant ever since I knew I was a voraphile. You wouldn't know it now, but I used to be homophobic and such. I know vore isn't the sole factor of developing tolerance or even the biggest, but it definitely helped. I guess you have to be in the shoes of someone who thinks differently to really get it.

I got aroused by vore after seeing the scene from "Dude, Where's my Car?" Honestly, I don't know how that can not turn a pre-teen boy into a voraphile. It was merely a curiousity until then.

Yeah, having this fetish really allows you to understand the many other afflictions out there that people have no control over, whether it be homosexuality, mental disability, race, or any other kind of group that is discriminated against. Funny how that works.

That would be cool! Thanks for reading!

ur welcome, but my story will need a little more time .-.

It is a very intimate thing for sure.

Most predators in nature seem to get in some kind of ecstasy when they hunt and consume another animal. It can almost seem like some ritual.

And with anything sexual, there is always some kind of giving and recieving. While it is usually just the seed of the male, in vore one may instead offer their whole body.

There can´t be any greater gift than your whole self or their whole self. Loosing yourself to become something new. Loosing the burden of yourself and your ego, entering the unknown.

Some male insects get eaten by their female after they mated. It is like they offer themselves completely as an ultimate act.

The idea of a willing prey is very exicting.

Oh wow, reading your story on it is like I am reading my own.
I also had this on a very young age and I felt so incredibly weird about it until I started looking on those kinds of things and also all saw that my interest videos were tagged with "Vore".
I also feel kinda weird about it and also can't exactly say why I like it so much, I just do for some reason ^^'
It would seem that there are voraphiles that are obsessed with it at a very young age (like the case is with most fetishes) and people who learn about it later and just like it in a non-fetish way. And because people are different, some have an answer on why they like it, others can'' exactly pinpoint why.

And also, this Journal might help with your "research" ^^: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9029630/
I left a little story of my own there too.

Hey thanks man Ill certainly take a look! And I just told the group of furries at my college about being into vore yesterday, so im not alone anymore. At least one of them is also into it, so thats great. I have real people to discuss with now!

That's great to hear man.
I also found that Vore is something almost embraced in the furry community.
There are a lot of vore-furs on this site I've noticed and it is kinda accepted and not really frowned upon by many (you always have some people of course).
Probably also because of animal food chains and pred and prey animals makes it more natural I suppose ^^

I’ll share, since I think I’ve been experienced enough.

Obligatory specifications: I do have Aspergers (high-functioning autism), I’m a straight male 17-year-old, and I am very anti-social. Have never maintained any serious relationship with a girl.

At a young age, through elementary school, I have publicly shown fearing getting eaten, usually through meeting new adults like my first grade teacher, for example. My fear stopped, I assume, when I developed critical thinking in middle school. I must’ve discovered vore for the first time in around 2016 (Notable mentions: “Quilava goes into croconaw,” FeedFancier, AdjectiveNounCombo and Amplitude Frequency), and from there, every night, I would browse through the newest posts on deviantArt, discovering new artists and such. For years, I built up to around 10 thousand favorited posts on dA and decided to make an account here (still not a furry) because there’s just more, and the quality for each post is more consistent than dA’s cesspool of shitposts. While I appreciate the kind gesture that I should feel special for being attracted to such a niche fetish, I do feel a little disgusted due to this not being a mainstream or well-accepted fetish by 99.999999% of people.

Thank you for making this post, though, good read.

Heh, I may have not been a furry when I wrote this initially, but as of very recently I do now self identify as one. Also I do have to say, the vore fetish IS pretty mainstream among furries which is pretty cool TBH. Like my college group of furs has multiple open vorephiles and that's totally cool with everyone. And TBH I don't expect vore to become mainstream anytime soon, especially when furries themselves are still not really socially accepted yet for the most part. But if furries become mainstream, vore has a chance. But it's still distant.

Thanks for sharing!

Holy cow I’ve never read a story so similar to mine. This is practically spot on with me, except I’d play a few different vore games while I was younger. While I was younger, I also had a theory that this fetish has to be somewhat genetic. For me, nothing else really explains how I ended up like this, or even how our stories can be so similar. I also recently told a pretty large friend group about my vore fetish as for some odd reason we were going around sharing. They seemed pretty intrigued by it and asked the same questions you’ve written at the beginning and I basically answered them the same way you did. I’d always tell them, “you know you have it good when you can find your porn on YouTube!” Very well written and a very nice job, thank you for taking the time to write how most of us feel. Never would have known there could be so many similarities

Really? Your story is that similar to mine? Very interesting, but I guess it makes sense. Technically, vore really is everywhere, even if it's a bit different than what you might see on sites like this one. I recently have had more trouble thinking its genetic, but I really can't say for sure that its not.

Also while I'm very glad you enjoyed how I wrote this, I can honestly do so much better. I wrote this a long time ago, and I've taken classes on writing since then and generally gotten wiser, and I know I can do better. But hey if this thing is still getting the job done then I can still be proud of it. Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

Being a young kid and being warned of things out to "get me" has given me funny feeling butterflies since I was like 7. When it was "eat you" that made it even stronger. I remember fantisizing about being nabbed or sometimes eaten before I even learned to masterbate. I even had childish versions of what I would now call erotic dreams.

It's weird because I'm not really all that submissive outside of the thought of being completely overpowered by something I couldn't possibly hope to fight and them doing the unspeakable. In the real world, I'm more of a top.

So, just a summary of the facts so far nailed down by the comments above:
1- Vorephilia (or Phagophilia, for those linguistically minded) is not exclusively sexual in nature. This is evidenced by the many testimonies of people being fascinated by mouths, teeth, etc. at an early age.
2- There is huge amounts of material related to vore prevalent in modern culture in video games, television, movies, and books, indicating an affinity for vore might be an inherent part of our collective subconscious.
3- The element of control or dominance (or lack thereof) is a large factor in how attractive vore is to different people.
4- Vore has the capacity to be arousing regardless of the gender or species involved. (This is not to say preferences do not exist on an individual level, just that all types of vore have the POSSIBILITY to be arousing to all vorephiles).



If anyone else was able to derive more solid conclusions from this page, I would love to see them.

Something I've noticed is the general age of people being quite young when they discover their sexuality towards vore: the age of people on FA probably skewing this, but it seems that a huge amount of vorephiles are those who had internet around the time they gained sexual desire. I'm one of the quite old people in the community (by age, not time spent in the community) and well into my twenties, no porn or object of either sex or any gender did it for me, but upon discovering it in the wild west of the early 2000's internet, I discovered that there was something that turned me on. I think that the availability to get it at your fingertips has opened many more people to it in the past twenty years.

It took quite a lot longer for me to discover vore was my fetish, but I'm a lot older than many people in the community here. My story jives with your childhood, but as I grew up I wrote many stories involving vore, and well into puberty, I didn't make the connection between vore and arousal. I thought for many years that I was just unarousable. Vore was nothing sexual for me for over twenty years, but nor was anything else. I knew I had a strong interest in it, dating as far back to the way my teacher taught the letters in kindergarten, I was extremely interested in Mr. Munch and his Monster Mouth. Into my teen years I loved writing stories, and often animals or characters got eaten in them, but still not in a sexual manner. It wasn't until discovering the word "vore" in about 2002 that I even knew it was a thing other people thought of, and I began to write more specifically involving it, rather than having it incidentally in a story, then I stumbled across Eka's Portal and found art of vore, and suddenly there was visual input, and something clicked. Judging by the size of the vore community I wouldn't say that the internet caused vorephiles, but it may have created the opportunity for many to become vorephiles. Personally, I'm of the no-sexual-elements-needed variety vorephiles, but there are many out there who like vore as much as sex, so aren't necessarily only aroused by it. I wonder, what portion of the community here into vore is a) only aroused by vore, b) aroused by non-sexual vore, but also sexual things, or c) need a sexual component to be aroused by vore, but still find it arousing. I'd be interested in researching this further.

So far I've read 2 paragraphs of your story and had some thoughts like, why were you into farts, or how could so many games involve vore that were directed for children? My other curiosity would be why would animators/companies/big names consider "Vore" an okay thing to market to children?

rule 34

Explain?

trolls inherently desire to sexualize the non-sexual in isolation.
we do that to draw others toward asexuality.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation!

So, apologies in advance, I've only partially read the pdf and some of the comments, but I figured given how completely different my experience with vore has been, it might be worth putting it out there just as an interesting case study.

My fetishes have pretty much always been based on the grounds of "Boy, that looks like it feels good." It started very early on in my pornographic consumption with big things in small holes, followed shortly thereafter with liquid inflation. The idea of some element of one's body getting stretched out to capacity is very appealing to me. Add to that something that moves, is physically interactive, and even perhaps socially interactive is a big plus on that front.

Liking unbirthing came about after, or possibly at the same time as, inflation. Since then I've steadily branched out to other orifices. I've even come to appreciate stretching the throat and stomach, as in traditional vore. Personally, I'm very adverse to any dominant/submissive aspects in vore. I just like it when everyone involved is enjoying the act itself.

Wow, I finally have people I relate to...

It was more like a switch for me. One day vore wasn't a thing to me, then next day "Oh...Tom eating Jerry is kinda....huh..." It basically grew from there. I consider myself asexual, so I suppose my brain had to compensate the lack of normal sexual drive to something else.

Who here can acually vore me in real life?

So, for me, i don't remember my childhood well and don't have any vivid memories, probably because of deppression, i feel like it all started with either Tom and Jerry which i watched a lot, or my personal night dreams.

so, one vivid memory of Tom and Jerry i have is of one episode when a yellow duck had chosen to get eaten by Tom, Jerry was deeply against that and protected the duck despite it wanting to be eaten, i actually like vore and things beyond myself, like being prepared as food, going through processes and changes, and that was literally what that episode portrayed, i remember having a weird feeling when watching and felt like that duck was looking really amazing,(arousing?) there just was something i didn't really understand, i liked every part of it really, i remember that Tom wanted to make the duck into a lasagna, the pasta just seemed really cozy and soft as he covered the duck , it may be weird but overall i think that's where it began, i seriously enjoyed the idea of being made into food, then i had dreams in which i was eaten, i enjoyed them a lot, like, really a lot, and in my teenage years discovered videos of "feeding snakes" it fascinated me, a lot, then i discovered something like vore exists, and it was even better than watching snake eat a dead mouse, and so i have both vorarephilia and an unnamed fetish which i see rarely but i know people have it, a fetish for being made into food, being smeared with butter, stuffed with food and roasted, it's all sexy to me for some reason, i just reminded myself that stuffing was within Tom and Jerry too

Vore is mainstream