If you want to see it, the cat’s name is Pinky. It’s all over YouTube. Watch to the very end.
Well the OP puts it in two different ways:
- What is the smallest land animal that a human could not defeat in hand to claw combat*
and also
[W]hat is the least massive land animal that, one on one, could regularly be expected to defeat a healthy determined human in naked hand to hand combat in an enclosed (say Roman Colosseum sized) fighting space?
I don’t know about the second, but to answer the first question: how would you go about defeating a North American porcupine (assuming you are naked and have no weapons?) I wouldn’t want to kick it or pick it up by the neck.
A friend of mine once had a pet African jungle cat, which apparently bears roughly the same relationship to a domestic cat as a wolf to a dog. He regarded all humans but his owners with unrestrained hostility. He was only slightly larger than an ordinary cat, but before he was declawed I would not have dared to tangle with him. His claws were big. Maybe you could defeat him in the end, even kill him, but you would not get away without some pretty serious wounds.
Dig a hole with your bare hands and herd it into the hole with yells.
Sure, where Mr. Porky will be lurking and plotting to take its revenge as soon as I have my back turned. I seem to recall that those little guys can actually launch their quills at you from a distance.
I don’t think that’s true.
It seems that you are right. I can’t believed I perpetuated misinformation at the SDMB!! I am so ashamed.
Me too.
Who the hell is afraid of a Buckeye?
Like Batman?
No, I’m pretty sure that even the best-prepared human would lose to Batman.
I totally agree with you Acid Lamp. We are talking a life or death situation here. There is not a chance in hell a 30lb badger could get the better of me in the situation described. I am larger and probably more active than the average man, but I just can’t imagine any man not using his superior intellect and size to his advantage in a life or death situation. No matter what part of my body is being attacked I can simply use my leverage and weight to bash the animal against the hard ground and crush his fragile skull. Not to mention using my fingers or teeth to rid him of his sight.
And that is the key. A human having sentience, is going to do whatever he can to avoid a lethal encounter. An animal once committed to attacking,( and it would have to be otherwise it would run) doesn’t have that edge. It might want you dead, but it is going to fight stupidly.
If you want to be really badass, you can always offer it a sacrifice limb (usually your non dominant forearm) to maul. Now that it’s main weapons are committed you can gain control. Yes you will need stitches, but you will win the battle.
Yes, there was a zoologist back in the old days that got jumped by a leopard and managed to kill it, and the zoologist only had a knife. The kicker is the dude was older, lightweight- and only had one arm.
And I am assuming (to answer Cervaise, even though I am not the OP) a clothed human in excellent shape with some training. To be fair I am also assuming the animal isn’t sick or maimed. In general, a wild animal/predator/mammal that is not sick or mamed is in top condition- they have to be.
Word. Many people are killed in the US each year walking along and/or crossing railroad tracks. When you hear the weasel, get out of the way!
This just redeemed my faith in humanity.
As I was severely puzzled by the first question- what WOULD I do when faced with good ol’ Porky, and I had nothing. I wasn’t coming up with a quick and easy solution, but then BAM! There it was, just had to scroll down!
Now I know, and I’m ready to take the little bastich on!
Why do you assume it would fight in a stupid way? Animals - especially predators - are known to use various tactics of engaging opponents. They can lunge for a bite and back off. With four paws they are faster and they are lighter, which means they can change direction rapidly.
Sacrifice your arm? Great. But what if you fail to gain control? What if animal just bite you several times and wriggles from your grasp and backs off to attack again? You just lost 50% of your grasping ability and are loosing blood.
Now, I’m not claiming that badger or something would kill human. Most probably it wouldn’t. But you make it sound like it would be easy to dispatch it. No, it wouldn’t. Without tools our smarts doesn’t count for that much when fighting goes teeth to teeth and claw to claw. And punctured tendons can ruin your day.
I don’t want to keep banging on in defence of badgers, but I think you may be underestimating your opponent (the terms ‘fragile skull’ and ‘I can simply’ are what’s making me :dubious: ). I still think this one could go either way - depending largely on how the question here is defined.
If you put an ordinary badger in an ordinary room with an ordinary human, what’s most likely to happen is that the badger just keeps evading the human and the two make very little contact, indefinitely.
If the question is posed such that the badger is somehow conditioned to attack with maximum ferocity, and the human is naked and unarmed, I think the conflict could go either way. I can’t help getting the impression you’re not fully appreciating how muscular and stocky they are.
If it latches onto (say) your arm with its teeth and you let it keep its feet on the floor, it could probably pull you off balance quite easily.
If you ignore the pain and lift it off its feet, you’re going to bring it into contact with your naked body - you can’t hold 30 pounds out at arm’s length for any reasonable amount of time. A badger’s claws and legs are quite capable of lacerating you badly - and there are vulnerable spots on your body where you could suffer a fatal injury.
You could launch yourself on top of it and possibly crush the ribcage.
You could grab and wrench a leg or two - that would probably give you a very significant advantage.
You don’t need to hold it at arms length for any time, you need to get a firm grip on a limb and play “continental railroad”. That’s where you pretend you’re the guy driving the golden spike. A healthy adult male can easily lift up 30lbs overhead with two hands and smash it into the ground over and over. If the person goes at the fight as full out as the badger, I have a very hard time imagining the badger walking away from the dead human that was 5x his size.
I concede that would probably work a lot better than trying to kick it, when it’s already attached to your arm, or crushing its ‘fragile skull’.