I’m right here. Bring it on./Photograph by Pierre Fidenci
Consider this a small concession to Phillip’s assertion earlier that Mankind is not the central point of the universe…
If kicking butt were the deciding factor, we’d lose.
I really enjoyed this little item on Quora, written by a Portland woman named Arkadia Moon (I’ll bet there are a lot of people in Portland with names like that). I seemed like the kind of question that Gareth Keenan would have posed on the original, British version of “The Office:” “Could a professional fighter survive an encounter with a fully grown healthy gorilla determined to kill him, without feigning death?”
Unless the gorilla is somehow hobbled (drugged, lamed, &c.), or the human fighter is armed (especially with something like a spear that can hold the gorilla off at a distance), the gorilla will kill the human and then be vaguely dejected that the human wasn’t able to put up enough of a challenge to be interesting. Consider:
- A male gorilla significantly outweighs most professional fighters.
- His centre of gravity is closer to the ground. Wrestlers will appreciate the huge advantage involved; erect bipedality is a serious liability here.
- One word: fangs.
- Being a wild animal, the gorilla will throw 100% of his available resources into the fight from the word go. Humans — even professional fighters or soldiers — never do this, unless they are in such a state of psychosis that they might as well be wild animals. (I have seen a 5’0″ woman in such a state, at fifty kilos, require five humans at double her weight each to take her down and hold her down.)
- Because the gorilla’s fighting responses are instinctual, not trained, they will be faster than the human’s.
- The gorilla’s musculature and skeleton are considerably more robust than the human’s, which means that the gorilla will soak up much more punishment before being seriously injured. This makes the human’s fighter’s main hope of winning — almost immediately incapacitating the gorilla — very problematic.
What will happen is that the gorilla will close with the human and knock him off his feet. At that point, all — all — of the human’s possible advantages are out the window, and it’s all over but the screaming, bleeding, and dying.
Of course, the matter hasn’t been tested under laboratory conditions. But Ms. Moon seems to have really thought this out, and I’m quite sure she’s right.
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How very like “certain” women to view men and our actions as only the physical struggle. No fight is ever decided only in the last moments; the set up is far more important to the outcome. That is where humans excel, not apes.
It may be that women think more strategically than men, so she may have fallen into an easy trap here and missed our general human advantage over animals. But man vs. ape in the wild? If one would rewind the tap a bit further back, man would have the time to arrange the ape’s death. Most every time.
We humans didn’t get ahead on muscle alone, we excelled through using our brains.
The most dangerous weapon is the mind. The ape is bringing fangs to a gunfight.
Which species is endangered?
Which is why you bring a gun to a fang fight.
More interesting fights than man vs. ape.
1. Siberian Tiger vs. Polar Bear. I think this one would be really close. If the two were in a large environment, the tiger’s agility would probably make him the winner. In a small arena, I’d go with the polar bear.
2. Lion vs. Tiger. KInd of an old classic.
3. American Alligator vs. Komodo Dragon. The gator would have the size advantage, but the Dragon does have venom. Probably comes down to who gets the first bite in.
4. Bull vs. Bear. Kind of a wall-street classic matchup, this one would be pretty good. If the bull just charged the grizzly, he would get the best of the attack, and if he got a good shot in, he could tire out the grizzly.
5. Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark. Kind of counter-intuitive here, but the orca wins. They’ve actually been known to feed on white sharks.
@ Bryan – Siberian Tigers have been known to occasionally take down brown bears in the wild. I think they do it primarily by ambush and biting the bears neck, trying to sever the spinal cord. I think if the bear sees the tiger coming though, it’d be a fair fight. I don’t think that tigers and polar bears have any overlapping territory.
American Alligators can outweigh Komodo Dragons by about a factor of 10. I think a fully grown Komodo dragon weighs up to about 150. They aren’t venomous, either. That’s a misconception. Their mouths are just REALLY dirty, and if you get bitten by one, the wound will eventually go septic. I doubt that they could even pierce an alligator’s hide. The alligator would get ahold of the dragon and it’d be all over. If it were in the water, particuarly. Even on land, it would tear the dragon apart, shaking it like a rag doll.
I think the bear would win 99/100 times in a bull vs. grizzly matchup.
Good analysis of the animal match-ups. I didn’t really think about how big gators get. However, I still instinctively believe that a full-size bull could gore a grizzly bear in one charge and then wear him out over time. Think of the devastating wound a bull could inflict at a full-speed charge.
If you had the bull/bear matchup in a small area, though – advantage bear.
Well, depending on your breed of bull, it should have a big size advantage. Larger breeds like a Limousin or Charolais can weigh over a ton. Grizzlies have been known to take American Bison, which I’d think would be tougher than a domestic bull. I don’t know if that’s adult, healthy male bison or weaker smaller members of the herd, though. Getting charged by a bull would be a lot like getting hit by a truck, though. My money’s still on the bear, until we can perform a controlled experiment and see.
This is the kind of highbrow commenting that I come to this blog for.
When the gorilla escaped at the Riverbanks Zoo a few years ago it grabbed the concession worker so hard that its giant gorilla fingers punctured the worker’s leg. Allegedly.