Does a single big male lion have any chance against an elephant?
I know that lions sometimes prey upon the massive pachyderms, but that involves an entire pride tackling the beast, doesn’t it?
The elephant could smash the lion with its bulk, swat it with its trunk, or gore it with the tusks. The lion’s claws and teeth could do – what, exactly? Does it have weaponry equal to this task?
And, since they are roughly equivalent in size, what about a tiger vs. elephant scenario? I am pretty sure that Asian elephants are a bit smaller than the African variety, but not by a big enough factor to make much of a difference, I suppose.
It seems that tigers can beat Indian elephants often enough to have been noted - including a mama elephant with her calf. Even if the elephant drives off the tiger, it may sustain trunk injuries that leave it unable to drink or eat.
I think a lion would have to be pretty desperate to attack a large African Elephant. But it might try if it was hungry enough. And it could seriously injure an elephant, though risking it’s own life. There was another thread about elephants attacking lions I think. I found it difficult to find confirmed incidents in this area, but plenty of anecdotal references.
Wow. There’s such thing as a pro-tiger whackjob?
Quote:
"This section of this site is about outrageous lies you’ll find on the internet about the tiger. This section is here for you to see how lion enthusiastics lie about the tiger. "
I heard there were tiger droppings found at the grassy knoll. Men identifying themselves as government agents scooped them up in a brown paper bag and vanished from the scene.
As long as the elephant knew the lion was there and could keep facing him with his tusks down the lion has very little chance to get a bite or claw in edgewise. Pretty much any approach he made to the elephant would be met with a tusk and he’d find himself attacking nothing but hard skull. Anything is possible though, if it were a very acrobatic lion and was willing to expend the energy to keep making sneak attacks and running away, he might wear the elephant down and take a little piece of ear or trunk with him each attack. But if, at any time during all those attacks, the elephant managed to land just one of his attacks that would pretty much end it for the lion.
The other important factor is that the lion knows its chances would be slim at best, and so almost certainly wouldn’t even try. Predators can’t make a living on fair fights.
Big predatory cats survive by striking hard and fast. Everyone knows the cheetah/racehorse scenario: The cheetah can hit 70+ mph but only for a few seconds. Cats, big & small, kill by biting thru the neck and severing the spine. Doing this to an elephant is essentially impossible.
IOW a big cat is simply not designed to fell an elephant…
I suppose that is why the “sabre-tooth tiger” (Smilodon) was equipped with such huge canines – to deal with large, thick-skinned beasties that their smaller-toothed cousins could not.
FWIW, I seem to remember the show Planet Earth has a segment in which a pride of lions take down a juvenile african elephant.
It was a whole pride, but it is conceivable a single lion could do the job against a juvenile elephant who is sick or starving and separated from the herd. The strategy is to harry the elephant until it becomes exhausted or weak from blood loss.
It is believed that Smilodon teeth would snap off if normal biting pressure was applied. In addition, I don’t think that they could open their mouth wide enough to actually “bite”. If they were used for piercing it would have to be more of a neck-snap stabbing motion. My recollection that they used them to hold the prey in place
The Lion challenged the Elephant: “Who is the King of the Jungle?” The Elephant stomped him, gored him, and threw him over his back. The Lion said, “Just because you don’t know the answer, no need to get angry?”
I’m not sure intelligence is the factor. Lions hunting skills are heavily instinctive. As cats go, they aren’t the brightest bulbs in hunting. But I think even lions would know they aren’t going to take down an elephant in single strike. And if they succeed it would be from injuring the elephant and dispatching him later in very weakened state. I don’t have a confirmation on this, but I recall something about lone lions being cowards, and sticking to smaller, weaker prey in general. In one documentary I saw, during a drought a lion was chased away from a hippo corpse by a crocodile. They’ll back away from large male cattle. It’s hard to imagine the conditions where a single lion would attack a large elephant. A lion that had ever preyed on large cattle would be aware of the dangers of attacking any animal larger than itself.
They did have that segment. As I recall, it also took them all night to make the kill and it was an elephant who just trekked across the Kalahari desert with its herd to reach that watering hole. Their tactics involved encircling the elephant so it couldn’t maneuver or get away while other lions hung off of it and slowly wore it down.
I wouldn’t place the safe money on “lion” in a one-on-one fight between a healthy adult lion and healthy adult elephant where the lion couldn’t practice those sorts of tactics.
