This is inspired by the “what could defeat a grizzly?” thread as well as a visit to the zoo today.
In the petting zoo, one of the goats was mixing it up with another and I noticed that both of them would rise up on their hind legs before ramming into each other. The baby goats play-fighting did the same thing. Then we happened to see a video playing in the cafeteria–two polar bears fighting, both rose up on their hind legs. Then two cheetahs (? some kind of spotted big cat, probably African), and they rose up on their hind legs.
In the grizzly thread someone said this behavior is to gain a height advantage, which makes sense. Do all animals try for the height advantage when they fight? Or are there some which will try to attack the opponent’s exposed belly, or sweep the leg, or something?
Animals generally try to avoid fights – evolutionarily, it’s much safer if you scare the other off without fighting. So they try to look more scary, which generally translates to looking bigger.
Thus cats arch their back, raise their tail straight up, and make their hair stand on edge, make loud noises – all things that make them look bigger & more scary. Dogs also stand their hair on end to look bigger.
So the standing on hind legs may give a height advantage, but first it might scare the opponent off, thus ‘winning’ the fight without ever actually fighting.
Some animals definitely seem to go for specific areas, in chimp attacks on people they seem to always go for the face and genitals, those bastards!
In regard to the height/size thing, in a survival book I read once it said if you come across a mountain lion if you have a zip-up hoodie or shirt or something to unzip it and spread it out like wings and stand on your tippy toes to make your self look as large and tall as possible and to yell loudly and hopefully it would think you are much larger and ferocious than you really are, either that or you’ll give the mountain lion a good laugh after he’s done picking your remains out of his teeth.