Taotie is one of the Four Perils, the incarnation of insatiable gluttony. No matter what it eats it is never filled, so that it finally devoured even its own body until only the head remained. It is also well known from the taotie motif carved on Bronze Age ritual vessels.
Its core is a bottomless, ever-consuming greed. The figure that eats even itself into oblivion holds the paradox that a hunger which cannot stop ultimately destroys itself.