Hungry Tiger

The Hungry Tiger is a fictional character from The Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

The Hungry Tiger is a massive beast who is friends with the Cowardly Lion. He is always hungry, no matter how much he eats, and longs to eat a "fat baby," though he never would because his conscience will not allow him to do so. He asks Nanda for permission to eat her, and when she declines, he asks for a large quantity of beefsteaks, potatoes, and ice cream. He wishes that a dentist could remove his appetite. At the banquet in the Emerald City at the end of Ozma of Oz, he acknowledges that he is finally full.

The Hungry Tiger was introduced in Ozma of Oz as one of Ozma's chariot drivers (the other being the Cowardly Lion), though Jack Snow and others believe he may be "the biggest of the tigers" in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In Chapter 18 of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, he is described as "the largest and most powerful of its kind," and having come from the forest where the Cowardly Lion ruled, which could be taken as an indirect statement that he is the same tiger that appeared in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

He is the co-protagonist of "The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger," one of Baum's Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913). And he is the title character in Ruth Plumly Thompson's sixth Oz book, The Hungry Tiger of Oz (1926).

In the comic book The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles #1 (2006), the Hungry Tiger helps the Cowardly Lion and two Tin Woodmen chase Alice Liddell.

David Maxine and Eric Shanower named their Hungry Tiger Press after the character.