Ender Pearls show a damage flash to entity whilst doing no damage

When you throw an ender pearl at an entity, a damaging effect can be seen by the red tint on a mob. The same happens when you throw an ender pearl. Although, even though I've tried this over 200 times, I am unable to kill the mob. Is this a feature? Or should this be a suggestion? Unfortunately, I am unable to attach a picture, (as I can't think of a way to show it in a picture) nor can I attach a video as the content size limits to 10MB.