It’s a cool premise. They set two animals up against each other and use various demonstrations and such to determine which would win in deathmatch. Mechanical models, computer imagery, etc.
Why must the big cats always lose?! The last one that I watched was a Lion vs. Tiger. (Yes, I know that they are both cats and one has to lose. It is the manner of the loss that is at issue.) The tiger lost. Even though the teeth were an inch longer, the tiger weighs more, and it is stronger it loses because the friggin lion has a mane. Some hair is what makes a differance? That’s just dumb.
Tonight was Jaguar vs. Anaconda. Jaguars have jaws that can crush at 600 lbs/square inch. They strike at 17 ft/second and can hit with 160 lbs. of force with their claws. They are the only cat that can actually bite the head off of their prey. Something about their teeth acting like scissors.
Anyway, they postulate that a snake would take out the jaguar by waiting for it in the water. The jaguar bites through the snake’s spine and the snake tries to get away but the cat drags it onto the shore. Then the snake bites the cat in the face and the cat dies. Wha? Did I miss something? Anacondas don’t even have big teeth. They have lots of them, but they are pretty small and wouldn’t get near doing serious damage to a cat’s skull.
I saw the lion vs. tiger one, and promptly resolved to never see the show again. They had the lion attack the tiger while the tiger was busy feeding on a fresh kill and still exhausted…WTF? how in the world is this scenario even remotely a fair and even test of the two cats’ abilities? Why even bother?
All constrictor’s have teeth that slant to the rear. It’s not about crushing power, it’s about getting enough grip to wrap around the prey. The Jaguar never had a chance.
And the lion’s mane? Imagine letting a dog playfully nip and chew on your hand. Now imagine it while wearing a glove.
Haven’t seen the show yet. But judging from the trailers alone, I always thought this show paralleled Mtv’s “Celebrity Death Match.” or at least they both make about as much sense.
I saw that episode and the one with the Great White Shark versus the Saltwater Croc on the same afternoon (that was one geeky Sunday!).
I thought the tiger getting attacked from surprise was pretty cheesy too, but it seemed to recover well enough after the first bit. I thought the most telling point of the show was the part on behavior. Male lions basically spend the first 4 or 5 years of their lives learning how to fight so they can challenge another male and take over a pride of their own. Tigers, on the other hand, are solitary for most of their lives and only interact with other tigers when it’s time to mate. So basically, the lion won because it had more experience at fighting other big cats than the tiger did (and the mane helped).
While I like the idea of the show, I thought this was a pretty stupid match up. The animals were just too similar. A tiger vs. a bear or a gorilla would have been better.
Also, the show should either do two animal death matches per episode or be only a half hour long. Watching animal researchers trying to trash talk gets old pretty quickly.
I can’t remember where I heard this, but I had always been told that a tiger would take a lion because tiger fights with both paws and a lion with only one.
Yeah, I think that there was too much emphasis put on the Lion’s fighting experiance. So the lion play fights a lot and doesn’t ever kill the other cat. They hunt in packs. What does that have to do with a 1v1 fight?
The tiger is used to relying on itself and killing it’s prey on its own. They have more of a killer instinct and more indvidual experiance.
As for a mane being compared to a gloved hand, I think that’s fallacious. Hair isn’t a thicker skin, it’s more hair. So it would be more like biting a hand versus biting a really hairy hand. Teeth don’t care about the amount of hair in the way. That’s why they are pointy.
Say, did anyone see the Hippo vs. Bull shark one? I bet the shark won because it has a pointy-er nose. :rolleyes:
I have seen this show, and honestly, it really reminds me of the “Superman vs Batman” discussion, but with a special effects budget.
And some of the scenerios are just plain silly. How do they figure a Jaguar would go from "shit, I'm being attacked, got to use fang and claw to get out of this situation" to " Hey maybe this thing is good to eat". Most of the animals, even the really nasty ones, that I have seen respond to nearly being eaten by running like heck. Live to fight another day and all that.
Don't even get me started on the silly bull shark vs hippo episode.
I think lions fighting for dominance do sometimes kill each other, not sure though.
It seems to me that most of these fights come down to whichever animal can get it’s pattened killing move off first, and that seems to be arbitrarily decided by whoever makes their little CGI movies for them. Like in the tiger/lion one, if the tiger had gotten its spine crusher bite thought the lions mane, it would have been one dead lion. Also, I don’t recall them mentioning anywhere in the interminable lead up to the fight that a lions mane would act as any kind of protection.
Same with the White Shark/ Crocodile one, the winner would probably is which ever one got in the first good sized bite. And that seems to be decided by the guys who made the movie more than the scientists.
Still fun to watch though….
P.S I haven’t seen the bull shark vs. hippo one, but would a bull shark be able to get its mouth open wide enough to bite a hippo? It seems it would be like a human trying to bite though a fully inflated leather beach ball
And on preview:
Well, I certainly don’t want to get into a zoological debate, but allow me to say this. The pointy teeth are to break through the tough hide of prey to get to the meat.
As far as the fur/glove thing. That is entierly a good comparison. Have you ever actually felt the mane of a lion? It is really, really friggin thick. I’d go so far as to say it would offer better protection than a glove by far. Hence my using a dog as comparison for bite force.
You may be thinking of a big cat’s teeth being stopped by the hair on your head, but I assure you, the lion’s mane is much, much, much more dense than that. It’s really an evolution thing. THe lions with the thickest mane can withstand a predator or rival from hitting the spine, as big cats love to do in fights. If the mane wasn’t an important part of the male and not the female, the mane probably wouldn’t have mattered in the trait.
Again, the only way to know is to see it happen in the wild. Otherwise, just enjoy the damn show if you want to watch it.
I think it’s dumb that they make this big deal about getting invested in the result and smack-talking each other—unconvincingly, I might add. “I am sure that my animal is going to win!” “You are incorrect! My animal is certainly going to defeat your animal!”
Do they have some kind of a super-advanced computer that can actually realistically simulate a battle between two creatures given nothing more than paramaters like jaw strength and the length of the animal’s claws? Uh, no! Hello? It’s not a simulation! It’s just computer animation! And disappointingly cheesy-lookin’ computer animation at that.
And then they act like the totally made-up outcome of the fight is some kind of authoritative scientific result. AS IF.
Tell me about it! I saw that awful animal-vs.-animal episode where they pitted the Enterprise-D against an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Star Destroyer won because the Enterprise was too stupid to engage it at warp speed! Buncha idiots.
