Natural Weapon



What to do when you're without a weapon? Puny Humans must resort to hands and feet (or obtain an Emergency Weapon). On the other hand, non-human races, animals and aliens tend to have claws, stings and other such abilities.

This need not involve claws; stingers or even more complex organic weapons count. As long as they're a natural part of the creature's anatomy.

Compare Anatomy Arsenal (which can overlap with this; the arsenal is literally part of the user's anatomy), Living Weapon (when the weapon is part of another creature entirely).

Super-Trope to; ...sometimes
 * Bare-Fisted Monk
 * Wolverine Claws
 * Tail Slap
 * Breath Weapon
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Combat Tentacles
 * Goomba Stomp
 * Hard Head
 * Horn Attack
 * Ass Kicks You

Anime and Manga

 * Dozens of examples can be found in the released forms of Arrancars in Bleach. They carry around swords, but in "resurreccion" mode most arrancars' zanpakuto become natural weapons. They may have claws, pincers, tentacles, wings, tails, or horns that will be used to fight.

Comic Books

 * One X Men villain, Riptide, could secrete hardened resin from his skin and fire it as projectile weapons at his foes.
 * Wolverine and X-23's...WolverineClaws are also made of bone, although they both have adamantium attached to them (Wolverine on his whole skeleton, X-23 just on her claws) to make them much more dangerous.

Film

 * Resident Evil: The Licker mutant had huge claws that could rip through solid metal and inflict grievous wounds. Its bite attack was also fairly impressive.
 * The xenomorphs of the Alien series. Extensible teeth, tremendously powerful arms, acid for blood, prehensile tail. Par for the course, since they were created as Living Weapons in the expanded universe.
 * The bug aliens of the Starship Troopers movie series, the novel version built weapons just like people do.

Literature

 * Lots in Animorphs. Andalites have a scythe blade at the end of their tails, and Hork-Bajir are covered head to toe in spikes. Humans are considered particularly vulnerable in large part because we don't have any.
 * Bit of a subversion on the Hork-Bajir -- despite appearing to be a walking knife factory, they're a peaceful race and use the blades to cut and eat tree bark. As long as they aren't being controlled by a Yeerk.

Tabletop Games

 * The Trope Namer is Dungeons and Dragons, where "natural weapon" is a special ability for monsters.
 * The Tyranids from Warhammer 40000 were the inspiration for the Zerg.
 * Lots of them in GURPS. Innate Attack is the most common (since it can represent thousands of different things) but the list includes: Strikers, Claws, Teeth and Spines.

Video Games

 * In The Elder Scrolls series, the cat-like Khajiit get a bonus to their unarmed skill because of their claws.
 * Taokaka and the rest of the Kaka clan from Blaz Blue have organic Magitech claws that can absorb and use Seither, something for which most of the other characters need weapons.
 * In Half Life, Xen aliens have "natural" weapons galore. Vortigaunts can produce huge bolts of directed electricity. Grunts have hornet guns, which seem to be some sort of insect hive that they've managed to turn into a weapon. Controllers can shoot balls of energy (ball lightning?) and the Nihilanth shoots these as well as teleport portals.
 * In Opposing Force, you have the Race X aliens: pit drones, which shoot some sort of biological darts from their forehead, the shocktroopers, which like the Xen grunts use two more forms of biological weapons (shock roaches and spore launchers), voltigores, which like Xen vortigaunts can shoot massive charges of electricity, the pit worm, which can fire a laser from its eye, and the gene worm, which can fire a chemical stream from its mouth.
 * The Zerg in Starcraft are made of this trope... literally.
 * The Laguz in Fire Emblem Tellius and Mamkutes elsewhere in the Fire Emblem series. The former use claws, beaks, etc. while the latter use Breath Weapons.
 * Several species of Pokémon base moves around their anatomy. Bulbasaur is famous for moves like Vine Whip and Bullet Seed, which use the bulb on its back; Octillery's signature move is Octazooka, which uses its mouth as an artillery piece, and so on. A full list would take up the entire page.
 * Interestingly averted in Knights of the Old Republic. Wookiees have claws and they use them as tools, but are not allowed to use them as weapons, because only animals do that. Any wookie that fights with his claws is branded a mad-claw and banished.
 * Baraka, from Mortal Kombat, is a member of the Tarkatan race, which have retractable blades in their arms. These blades serve many violent purposes, such as chopping off heads and impaling Torsos.
 * Pretty much any creature more powerful than a zombie in Resident Evil will have these; various formerly human T-Virus mutants (from Crimson Heads to Tyrants) tend to grow claws as they mutate. G-Virus and Nemesis mutants gain Combat Tentacles. Las Plaga have their own natural weapons when they leave their human hosts. Animals infected by any of these naturally keep their own examples as well.
 * All of the weapons you can get in Evolva. The genohunters' limbs (sometimes the neck or the back) transform each time you select a weapon, as you shoot at the enemies using the transformed limb.

Web Original

 * Some of the anthropomorphic animals in Darwin's Soldiers have natural weapons. Most of the time, it takes the forms of teeth, claws and muscle but snakes in this universe possess working venom glands.

Real Life

 * Real Life: The cone shell can fire a neural-toxic laced harpoon. Seriously.
 * Skunks have a well-known natural chemical weapon, spraying a substance that smells so foul, other animals fear it.
 * Bombardier Beetles take that Up to Eleven, spraying a boiling chemical to severely burn targets.
 * The Pistol Shrimp has a freaking sonic cannon for an arm!

Western Animation

 * Most of The Herculoids have at least one of some kind.