Flumphs also eat vegetable matter and hunt small animals from time to time. They prefer small, warm-blooded animals when they hunt, and delight in chasing bats and flying squirrels. Particularly brave flumphs hunt badgers, weasels, and dogs, but leave cats strictly alone because of a taboo whose origin remains unknown. When eating, a flumph secretes acid, digesting most of the food outside its body. It then uses its tentacles to draw the resulting sludge to its mouth, some also being absorbed by the openings in the tentacles or sucked in through the hollow spikes.