Tarrare ([taʁaʁ]; c. 1772 – 1798), sometimes spelt Tarar, was a French showman, soldier, and spy noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits.

At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, where even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite.

General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and employed him as a courier for the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination.

[1][6] For some years after this, he toured the country with a roaming band of thieves and prostitutes,[7] stealing and begging for food,[1] before gaining employment as a warm-up act to a travelling charlatan.

[10] This smell became noticeably worse after he had eaten;[11][10] his eyes and cheeks became bloodshot,[9] a visible vapour rose from his body,[10] and he became lethargic, during which time he belched noisily and his jaws made swallowing motions.

[13] Aside from his eating habits, his contemporaries saw no apparent signs of mental illness or unusual behaviour in him,[13] other than an apathetic temperament with "a complete lack of force and ideas".

[1] He was granted quadruple rations but remained hungry;[8] he scavenged for garbage in gutters and trash containers,[6] ate the scraps of food left by other patients,[1] and crept into the apothecary's room to eat the poultices.

[6] "The dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect, as if they had anticipated the kind of fate he was preparing for them"[9] Courville and Percy decided to test Tarrare's capacity for food.

[2][8] Following this, hospital staff offered Tarrare a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies, all of which were eaten;[9] he also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.

[2] After several months that he spent as an experimental case, military authorities began to press for Tarrare to be returned to active duty.

[9][17] Courville proposed to de Beauharnais that Tarrare could thus serve as a military courier, carrying documents securely through enemy territory with no risk of them being found if he were searched.

[9] Having swallowed the box successfully, Tarrare was given a wheelbarrow filled with 30 pounds (14 kg) of raw bull's lungs and liver as a reward,[2] which he immediately ate in front of the assembled generals.

Although General de Beauharnais was convinced of Tarrare's physical capacity to carry messages internally, he was concerned about his mental state and initially reluctant to entrust him with significant military documents.

[19] Tarrare was ordered as his first assignment to carry a message to a French colonel imprisoned by the Prussians near Neustadt;[9] he was told that the documents were of great military significance, but in reality, de Beauharnais had merely written a note asking the colonel to confirm that the message had been received successfully, and if so, to return a reply of any potentially useful information about Prussian troop movements.

[19] (Some sources state that General Zoegli never retrieved the box, as Tarrare had the presence of mind to recover and eat the stool containing it before it could be seized by the Prussians.

[19] Following this incident, Tarrare was desperate to avoid further military service, and returned to the hospital, telling Percy that he would attempt any possible cure for his appetite.

[20] Efforts to keep him on any kind of controlled diet failed; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal outside butchers' shops and to fight stray dogs for rotting meat in gutters, alleys and rubbish heaps.

[20] Tarrare told Percy that he had swallowed a golden fork two years earlier, which he believed was now lodged inside him and causing his current weakness.