The accompanying music video was filmed by American director Anthony Mandler in Los Angeles.

Maneater was one of the first songs Furtado and Timbaland worked on in the Hit Factory Criteria recording studios in Miami.

Furtado has described the song as an analogy of how she incorporated the "creative energy" of Timbaland and his production crew into Loose.

[4] When making the album, Furtado and Timbaland were influenced by the work of musicians from the 1980s such as Talking Heads, Blondie, Madonna, the Police, and Eurythmics.

[7] Furtado has characterized "Maneater" as "a 'couture pop' song",[8] explaining that it is "in your face and very fashionable, stylistic and of-the-moment.

[9] In Australia, the CD was released in two formats, although one version (the international single) had an extremely limited run and was not widely available.

The uptempo song has prominent rock and synthpop influences and is lyrically related to how people become "hot on themselves" when dancing in their underwear in front of a mirror.

"[5] Media sources compared it to the 1982 Hall & Oates single of the same name, which Furtado has cited as an influence on the song.

Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone stated that while not a Hall & Oates cover, the song "bumps hard enough to qualify as a sequel, and that's high praise indeed.

It was released on maxi CD as the album's first single outside North America on 26 May in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and on 5 June in the United Kingdom and other European markets.

[24] The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) certified "Maneater" two-times platinum for shipments of 1.2 million units.

[29] In Canada, where "Promiscuous" topped the singles chart, "Maneater" reached number twenty-two on 23 November 2006 (its fifteenth week).

[34] The video does not have a substantial plot and, per Furtado's request, focuses on simultaneously celebrating and parodying the "maneater cliché".

[4] It begins with Furtado searching for her runaway Great Dane, Toby, at night in a seemingly deserted industrial district of an unnamed city.

She follows the dog to the basement of a dark, dilapidated building, where she encounters a silent crowd of people in the middle of what MTV News described as a "Fight Club-esque party".

[36] At the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, Furtado was nominated in the category of Female Artist of the Year for "Maneater" and "Say It Right".