The Grizzly Bear is a fierce predator that resides in the mountains and forests of the nothern american continent. It can smell blood from great distances away, it is immensely strong and able to run at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour.
The Mountain Gorilla is the largest of the primates living mainly in remote places in the hills of Rwanda/Uganda in Africa. Although vegetarian, the male Silverback is capable of extreme violence if provoked or if it is defending territory.
Both fine, noble creatures but what Im interested in is:
Which one would win in a fight?
Since they would never actually meet in the wild, speculation is the only recourse open to us.
Personally Id go for the Gorilla - it has the strength of the bear but also (I reckon) greater intelligence to go with it.
ps strength is not necessarily the main determinant of the winner of a fight but I wonder which one of the two is the stronger?
YOu really think this is a conundrum? OK. Please tell me how the 500 lb Gorilla is going to “outwit” the much larger and stronger 1500 lb grizzly in a closed ring. If you were able to inhabit the body of a gorilla in this fight please enlighten me to how you would “outwit” the grizzly.
In situations like these, it usually comes down to who has the best weapons ie: teeth or claws. The bear has both these. Put mitts on the bear, things might turn out a bit better for the ape… muzzle the bear too and it comes down to a wrestling match - a reasonably close one. I’ve read of one fight between a couger and bear. The bear of course killed the couger… but the scratches from the cat’s claws were so deep the bear ended up dying a week later. Much as I admire the big apes, I’d say they’re at a disadvantage due to lack of claws and a bit of body mass (assuming of course you get the biggest bear available… the average is far less than 1500lbs). But still, being built like Freddy Kruger means size and strength are less important.
Actually, male grizzlys average closer to about 500 lbs, with big males reaching up to 900 lbs. The mountain gorillas range between 350-600 lbs (male). I’m assuming we pick specimens of equal weight for this battle, right?
Gorillas are strong, but there have been no real tests of just how strong they are. Estimates range from between 10x that of a man to as high as 30x! But then, bears are no weaklings either, being known to roll around very large logs or boulders to get what they’re after.
When all is said and done, like mmmiiikkeee says, it would pretty much come down to weaponry (which the bear has in abundance), coupled with attitude, which the gorilla lacks. Gorillas tend to be rather shy, and their attacks are more swat-and-run, rather than bite-and-maul.
Yeah Ive checked up on the size and weight of gorillas - you could be right about the weight of them, about 500lbs. In height they can get to 1.8m I think bears are bigger than this. So then, to slightly retract and change my OP - does this mean the grizzly is the hardest animal on the planet?
What could beat a grizzly in a straight fight? A elephant would do it easy, I reckon, or a rhino, but what about a lion? Think Id go with the lion, it’d be just too fast, and its got the requisite claws and fangs.
ps while looking for info on Gorillas I checked out the Dian Fossey website. I didnt realise there are now fewer than 650 Mountain Gorillas left in the world and that no Mountain Gorilla has ever survived in captivity for more than a few years. Scary.
The polar bear is even larger and nastier than a grizzly.
However, I’d put my money on either a bengal tiger or an anaconda if we are talking an equal-mass heavyweight matchup. If it goes to unrestricted superheavyweight, I’d go with either an elephant or a great white shark. The latter match would be fought in an olympic-sized pool with a shallow wading portion on one side to provide a fair arena.
This thread is beginning to remind me of the Simpsons episode where daredevil cyclist Lance Murdock jumped over a huge tank filled with sharks, pirhanas, electric eels…and one lion.
Here’s a link to thread Jorge refered to. There’s another thread somewhere in which someone referenced fights in Mexico between bears and big cats (lions IIRC), but for the life of me I can’t find it.
" The weight of brown bears is highly variable, normally ranging anywhere from 150 to 375 kilograms (330 to 825 pounds). Males within a geographic area may weigh more than twice as much as females. As an indication of the variability among brown bears, male bears that have access to the coastal areas often weigh 500 kilograms (1100 pounds) with some individual animals weigh in excess of 680 kilograms (1500 pounds). This is twice as heavy as the largest American male black bears."
With respect to this statement I am not a physiologist but this seems absurd on it’s face. I could believe maybe 2X as strong as a fit man on a comparative lb per lb basis so lets say a 400 lb gorilla is 4x as stong as a 200 lb man, but 10X to 30X? Gorillas aren’t Marvel Comics superheros and I guarantee you that there is no gorilla that can push a 2000 lb (10X) beam off it’s chest much less a 6000 lb (30x) one assuming a fit man could push off 200 lbs.
Well, here’s one, two, three sites which give weight ranges similar to what I mentioned. It is possible that some of the higher (1,000 lb s +) weights may well be those of Kodiaks (Ursus arctos middendorffi), which are a subspecies of Brown Bear, like the Grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis). Kodiaks can, and do, reach weights of 1,500 lbs. But, as noted, coastal grizzlies can reach those weights as well. So, chalk it up to incomplete research on my part.
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Hey, I just reported what I found! This site is where I got the estimates. Here is a nice little vegetarian site which makes the claim that gorillas are 30x as strong as a man. I find this claim rather dubious, myself, but hey, maybe they know something we don’t. But, as noted, there really isn’t any hard data one way or the other on gorilla strength.
For the gorilla strength thing, I read some stuff in a book years ago… oh how I wish I’d stolen that book from the library… can’t find it anywhere. Apes show amazing power when enraged, but even in a calm state of mind they’re mighty impressive. There are books with old black and white pictures from the time when people would actually keep gorillas as pets; more like companions - very interesting reading. They’ve speculated that some humans may be able to come close in some areas to approaching gorilla strength… they were comparing the lower backs and legs of world-class heavy-weight weight-lifters as perhaps similar. But anything to do with arms, hands, neck, etc… no human of any size on any drug would ever come close to. The one account that I can remember numbers on is a gorilla lifting a 600lb steel door between two enclosures (to get to the other side) so forcefully that it jammed. I’ve also read that (with training) a gorilla should indeed be able to raise 2000lbs off the floor. That and watching them snap 4" bamboo stalks like twigs on nature shows leads me to beleive that the at least 10X-stronger-than-us thing probably isn’t too far off the mark.
I’ll be back if I can find some info on the web
Hey, just a little addendum to the animal weaponry sub-thread. Gorillas have some NASTY teeth and biting strength to go along with them, right? That should count for something, even if the bear has superior teeth.
That same book I was refering to says that gorilla (silverback that is) canines are just about as big as tiger canines. They’ve got massive jaws, and huge jaw muscles to match. I don’t think they’re quite as used to using them as weapons as a bear would be though. They’ve got the dental equipment to do some serious damage, but they probably wouldn’t use it to their full advantage… they spend all day chewing on leaves ya know!!
On another note, there are many animals capable of repelling a bear attack (well maybe not statistically many). Elephants, rhinos, hippos, most any large buffalo-type animal, hell, maybe even your average rodeo bull. Of course such encounters probably wouldn’t happen, so we can’t say for sure. I’ve seen footage of polar bears attacking elephant seals… it was almost funny. They just wriggled back into the water like giant maggots while the bear did some fancy steppin’ to avoid being trampled - they were so big he couldn’t even get a grip on them!! Baby seals, yes, full-grown bull males - consider the bear a greasy white smear on the beach if the seal ever chose to wrestle instead of run.
I think the ancient Romans could have answered a lot of these “who could beat who” questions for us as they pitted just as many animals against each other in the coliseums as people. I understand they had a significant hand in de-populating the area of large wild animals for their blood games.
Let’s not forget a very underrated animal in our All-Zoological Ultimate Fighting Tournament; the hippopotamus. Despite their amusing appearance, hippos are VERY aggressive, very nasty, and very deadly. Of course, they’re also big as hell. In the pool event, I’d give them the edge over almost anything.
I’m sorry, but the correct answer is the walrus. The walrus. The walrus, according to various unpublished and unreliable sources, is The Toughest Animal in the Animal Kingdom.
But more scientifically, the walrus has the thickest skin, and injuries barely phase them. Fighting one would be like melee with a giant Jello mold with tusks. A grizzly (while big) would be physically overwhelmed while its claws wouldn’t phase the walrus. A gorilla would be mauled by the tusks.