I’ve been in these threads before. The wolf always wins. On the internet at least. There was another thread about “can any domestic dog beat a wolf”. Nope was the only answer, the wolf is just so much bigger and meaner. "Oh, what about these dog breeds specifically bred to fight wolves? ". Nope because reasons.
Or bring along a friend.
You never saw me in PE class.
I’m still not sure why the other guy gets a bat, but I don’t.
I say man wins easily, even if he’s knocked down. A wolf’s teeth are his only credible weapon against a human and they just aren’t good enough to kill unless he gets to the neck, which is the part of a human that is actually easiest for us to protect. Plus as has been pointed out, going for the neck isn’t instinctive for the wolf, which means he’ll do some pretty grievous damage to an arm or leg or even the torso. While that sucks, all the human has to do is throw off the much lighter animal that has zero leverage to keep the human down, and he gets another swing of the bat.
Was it a Bud?
The man in the training was wearing protective clothes, and you can see that he’s not able to swing really well.
However, the video does show a good point, that the animal would likely jump at the attack. I never was good at baseball or softball and we never did wolfball, so I have no idea how hard that would be to hit.
Experience is key.
Most men, I think, haven’t swung a bat in awhile (I’m not finding stats on this, so I’m basing it off the men I know, none of whom play baseball; I know this isn’t exactly scientific, so I’d love to see some actual stats). Those who haven’t swung a bat recently are gonna be at a real disadvantage.
Those who have swung a bat have done so in highly control conditions: you know the direction the ball is coming from, you get ready, you know it’s going to come at you in a small window, you know roughly speaking how fast it’ll come, and so on. You’ve practiced hitting the same object at the same speed from the same direction dozens or hundreds or thousands of times.
Wolves? Not gonna play by the rules. They’re going to come at whatever angle makes most sense to them, leap at the moment it makes sense to them. Baseball reflexes won’t apply here.
I’d guess that if a guy somehow had a chance to practice this maneuver a couple dozen times (say, with a wiffle bat and a wolf trained to jump but not bite), he could get to the point where he’d have a very good chance. But if this is the first time for both parties, my money’s on the wolf.
If we are gonna bring in bat swinging experience, how much experience do wolves have with 6’ tall bipeds? With hands? Who understand the concept of a weapon? None! Those wolves get shot. So most wolves are gonna be “wtf? This thing is tall! And it’s somehow swinging a massive heavy paw or something at me!”.
The average wolf has a lot more experience bringing down prey than the average man has experience fighting off predators. Given the parameters of the OP–that the wolf is actually willing to go for the gusto–the wolf’s is going to have a lot more relevant work experience.
History has already decided this. Humans with sticks took over wolf habitats. Wolves have evolved to kill defenseless prey and fight each other for primacy. An old lady swinging a stick would scare off a wolf. They never developed the “maybe fighting is worth dying for” personality that man has. Man wins. Again.
I’d think a man would get more hits but a wolf would have a great OBP, how small must the strike zone be for a wolf?
Totally agreed, if the wolf isn’t motivated, and you’re right that unless something very strange is happening, the wolf isn’t motivated. And I just read the OP, and it doesn’t require a motivated wolf. So yeah, a man without a baseball bat wins also.
But if the wolf is motivated, and the man isn’t a prehistoric man who grew up fending off wild animals, the wolf totally wins.
There’s just so much wrong with this I hardly know where to start. Maybe the “just aren’t good enough” part.
A wolf’s canine teeth are more than an inch long. Hold up your arm and take a look. If the wolf grabbed your forearm, his teeth would meet in the middle. Know what’s inside there? Veins, arteries, and the tendons and ligaments that control your hand. One bite, a quick crunch at 1,500 psi, a hearty tug, and canines and incisors rip the flesh from your arm from elbow to wrist. Elapsed time, less than a second. Your radius and/or ulna is fractured. You’re gushing blood at a horrific rate, a rate that will exsanguinate you in under six minutes if a major artery is severed.
That isn’t the kind of damage you shake off while winding up for another swing. And it’s just the first bite. You’re bleeding out, in excruciating pain, and the wolf is circling for his next rush while you fumble one-handed with your bat. Not lookin’ good, compadre!
Know why a wolf doesn’t rely on a neck bite the way big cats do? It’s because they kill by causing massive tissue damage, bleeding, and shock, not suffocation. And they do so perfectly well by attacking softer targets of opportunity like limbs and underbelly.
Speaking of underbelly, a human’s inner thighs and groin contain several major arteries. A good bite there, which by the way is a preferred attack location on prey, and your guy with a bat bleeds to death in under three minutes.
An average person weighs 170 pounds, an average wolf 95. That’s hardly enough of a difference for the human to “throw off” the wolf like tossing a pillow. I doubt many average guys can “throw” a 95 pound deadweight very far. And doing so puts at least one forearm right back into easy bite range.
The wolf doesn’t have to “keep the human down” to kill. All it needs to do is cause damage that, cumulatively, causes death. Dart in, grab some part, bite down, rip, release, dart out. First bite and the human has only one functional arm. Second bite, a leg no longer holds weight when it is ripped apart from knee to ankle. Lather, rinse, repeat around the human body.
The speed with which an animal can use its mouth as a weapon is difficult to imagine for us critters that are built in such a way that our jaws cannot easily be maneuvered into effective fighting position. Go to the vet and try to get a frightened and uncooperative dog into a crate. Better yet, try to handle even a much smaller canid like a fox or coyote, and you will see how swiftly it can inflict multiple bites. Scale that up into a 95 to 135 pound canid with inch and a quarter canines and slicing incisors. Bat guy has only the slimmest chance.
Assuming, of course and once again, a motivated wolf.
Forget the single wolf angle, I would rather know:
- Pack of 6 wolves vs. Barry Bonds and a bat (before steroids, 1986)?
- Pack of 6 wolves vs. Barry Bonds and a bat (after steroids, 2007)?
Yet there are few, if any, reported cases of a wolf taking down a grown man, with or without a baseball bat. And cougars, a much stronger animal, have also tended to fail when attacking healthy grown men. Gotta go with the man, still.
I agree with you, as far as that goes. There are indeed few modern cases. I’m even willing to stretch a definition a bit for you. But your conclusion is still wrong.
Cougars are “stronger” by virtue of having larger average size. Plus, in addition to a toothy smile, they have four additional slashing tools at their disposal, their paws. The same, for that matter, applies to bears. Note that, even with larger size and additional weapons, most cougar and bear attacks end with human survival. This isn’t due to the human causing the animal any significant damage (unless the human is armed with a gun or knife, or help intervenes) and actually fighting it off. Instead the animal simply fails to carry through on its initial attack. Same could be said for shark attacks, for that matter.
This takes us back to our “motivated wolf” hypothesis. I fully admit that an unmotivated wolf – or cougar, or bear, or shark, lion, tiger….) probably won’t press an attack. I also agree that modern wolves (bears, sharks, lions, tigers….) are extremely unlikely to even initiate an attack. So for most human encounters with large predatory animals, a shout and an arm wave is likely to be as effective as a baseball bat. An initial attack is quite rare, and if it occurs, there is small chance of it being followed through with tenacity.
Realize though that earthbound wild predators have coexisted with humans and proto-humans for at least a hundred thousand years. It has been a long, long time since any species of predator could make a living out of killing humans. We first made use of tools including simple bludgeons, sharpened sticks, and fire. We found ways to project weapons at a distance, whether thrown by hand or using an atlatl. Initial manually powered weapons were followed by mechanically amplified devices like bows, then firearms. We developed edged weapons, beginning with flint chips, through soft metal alloy knives, into swords and katanas. We lived – and defended ourselves – communally. Finally, and probably of greatest significance, we have the ability to pass on knowledge, and the identity of an attacker, to our entire tribe. We can hate. And we’re damned good at holding a grudge. No species on earth exists that is unaffected by powerful and long-standing Darwinian selection against attacking humans. It should be of little surprise that modern wild predators are extremely hesitant to mess with humans at all, and are rather easily dissuaded from the rare attacks that do still occur.
Do not allow this to fool you though. If any of the larger terrestrial predators – including an adult wolf – attacked a human armed only with a bludgeon, and attacked it with the intensity of a very hungry animal attacking prey, or that of a mother defending her offspring from attack (or any other hypothetical that over-rides tens of thousands of years of inherited reluctance to mess with humans), the result is certain. It would fuck you up in about three heartbeats. From there, you’d be well and truly dead in a New York minute. And there wouldn’t be a single thing you and your bludgeon could do about it.
Don’t bother. It’s answered in Post 3. But yeah, large predators swore off men with sticks millennia ago.
Saw a nice film on PBS once showing a pack attacking a healthy male elk. He picked up one with his antlers and threw it thirty feet. The wolf didn’t get up. IIRC, the other wolves got the message.
I am reminded of the old lady who chased a mountain lion off her elderly husband in Redwood National Park a few years ago using a pen to the eye. Mountain lion later killed. It was a young, inexperience and very hungry mountain lion, but its focus on the man, and being attacked by the second, an old lady, was enough to chase it away. In all the nature shows I watch, very few herd animals gang up on predators. Cape buffalo and elephants being an exception. Most dumb herd animals run away. The ones with actual bravery seem to scare off even fearsome predators when in numbers.
Alone with a baseball bat. I’ll take aluminum since it is lighter and I’ll be able to swing it faster and longer. I’ll use a hands apart grip to protect my throat as often as possible, and then shorten with two hands to take swings. I think the wolf will leave for easier and less dangerous prey. I’ll got get a rabies shot.
No, bats can be used up close.
You can hold it two handed as a stick and when the wolf comes in, jam it in their mouth, and with a quick twist turn their head, jump on top to pin them. Success rate? I don’t know, never tried it, but it’s a possible technique. Wrestling around with dogs shows reasonable possibility, given the caveat that dogs aren’t wolves and all.
You can swing overhead with one arm and connect in a dropping shot on the back or ribs as well as skull.
You can grip in one hand (or even two) and then bash the handle end straight down on the wolf. Okay, it might cut you up in that scenario, and that could be fatal for you. Still, that’s not a useless technique.
No, cougars typically kill by grabbing your head/neck from the rear and breaking your neck.
[QUOTE=the link above]
Mountain lions are solitary animals. They tend to live in remote country and are seldom seen by humans. They hunt their prey by stealth and ambush. Their method of killing is usually with a powerful bite at the base of the skull, breaking the neck. (“Living with Wildlife in Mountain Lion Country,” Colorado Division of Wildlife, Denver, CO)
[/QUOTE]
So why wouldn’t grappling techniques that humans use on other humans work, like choke outs? Granted, you have to get close and risk getting bitten and ripped up to get ahold of the wolf, but there’s nonzero possibility of grabbing the wolf’s head, directing it down to get on top, and pinning it. (See below.)
That’s certainly part of my plan to deal if I’m ever attacked by a dog.
Amusingly, I followed the link to wikipedia on wolf attacks, and from there to this page on List of wolf attacks in North America.
A man with a cudgel stopped a wolf attack long enough to draw his knife. If I had a knife, I certainly would think of drawing it as my followup strike, but if I didn’t have that knife, I’m not stopping at one blow, I’m giving as rapid a followup on as many targets as I can, including head, ribs, legs, whatever is in my bat’s path.
The followup shooting certainly helped the survival. Wrestling wasn’t that successful alone.
Kept the wolf at bay for 25 minutes with an ax, without getting a great hit in.
A wolf jumped at her face, she blocked it with her arms and knocked it down. Shows it is possible to time your defense and succeed.
Managed to wrestle and control the wolf by the throat until he could use another weapon to scare it away.
Bludgeoned a wolf that was holding onto the man. Was aided by second person, and victim’s own punches not effective.
While I don’t think success for the human is a given, I don’t think success for the wolf is a given, either.
The real problem is wolves tend to hunt in packs. Without a firearm, you’re fairly screwed. A lone wolf, even a rabid one, is still defeatable for a determined human with a cudgel, but it won’t be an easy task and could go the other way.
If we’re going to consider the fact that predators rarely press their attacks against humans, we should also point out that most humans are surprised or terrified by an attack and do ineffectual things to protect themselves. This tends to be true when humans attack humans as well. But put a wolf and Anderson Silva in the octagon, I’ll take Silva.