I suppose that any multi-ton beast (elephant, rhino, hippo) would flatten a knight in plate armor fairly easily. I am also thinking that a large dog would probably be incapable of doing much damage (correct me if I am wrong about this).
What about animals in between dogs and the multi-ton critters? I am talking lions, tigers, and bears, and various horned/antlered herbivores like buffalo, moose, etc. Would a high-quality suit of plate armor be proof against such beasts?
Plate armor would give some protection from fangs or horns, but not so much from a blow. If a lion, tiger, or bear hit a knight full-force on the helmet with a paw, he’d be at serious risk of a concussion or a broken neck. A charging bull or moose might cause some serious chest injuries if it struck full on.
Bears and the big primates can be quite strong, and a properly placed hit can do serious damage, especially near the neck where the plate is weakest.
If you allow smaller animals, I’ll bet ants, termites, bees, & wasps in enough quantities would be quite letal. Same applies for some spiders and poisonous snakes.
I think most suits of plate armor are designed to be worn while riding a horse, so the back of the legs is partly uncovered. (The suits that completely cover the body were often ceremonial armor used for parades and stuff like that.) So any animal that can knock you down and roll you over could kill you.
I suspect more knights died from disease transmission from insects than big animals. It’s possible some of them died from being pinned under an injured horse. Given that Moose and some of the larger deer can kick the heck out of a car, I think it’s possible a knight could be killed from internal bleeding if such a creature attacked him.
Giraffes, evidently those long ass legs are capable of decapitating a man with a kick.
Giant squid. Armor is very poor protection against drowning.
What does the knight do - fight back or sit still to test the armour? A bear taking a swipe at a stationary target (or an unsuspecting one from behind) is different from a knight who’s allowed to fight back with lance and sword.
I think a wasp would give some serious trouble.
favorite line:
“This clarified to Hurtubise that going with less expensive butcher’s chainmail from France instead of shark chainmail was not the best decision.”
Who needs to hit you? I’d say a gorrilla, chimpanzee, or orangutan could easily rip his arm off and beat him to death with it (or watch him bleed out).
Well, I do not picture the knight just standing still, waiting for the animal to strike him without fighting back with his sword or poleaxe. I am just assuming that the animal involved (lion, tiger, bear, wildebeest, moose, etc.) is also in a confrontational mood. Given the reaction time and speed of some of these animals, particularly the big cats, they may very well get in a solid strike with their paws. Would the plate armor withstand such a blow? And what would the condition of the man inside the armor be after such an impact?
Also, at this point, I want to reiterate my assumption that a large dog, say a mastiff-type breed, could probably knock the knight over, but would not have much chance to damage the man before getting skewered by a sword or having its skull crushed by an impact weapon. Do you guys agree or disagree with me?
I’d agree that, overall, a knight against a single dog is going to be pretty safe. Part of the problem is that there are many designs of plate armor and one design might be much more effective against animals than another. Some designs would still leave you vulnerable to a dog (and especially vulnerable to a pack of dogs/wolves).
Helmet design would be a major factor against dogs. Dogs would tend go for the throat… if the design could allow them to remove the helmet, open the faceplate or grab at the throat, then the knight is toast.
The hands and feet are another common weakness. Many “full-plate” designs have only chain or gloves on the hands and feet. A dog might crush the bones even if their teeth couldn’t penetrate.
The underarms and back of the knees and thighs might also be nothing but chain, but they’d also be less likely targets for a single dog.
I think we need more than a dog, here. Even without armor, one man vs. one dog is pretty much an even fight-- We just think of it as worse because humans aren’t content to settle for an even fight. But as a pretty good rule of thumb, whenever there’s a question of which of two animals would win in a fight, the advantage almost always goes to the bigger one.
I would think the protozoan Entamoeba histolytica, which causes amoebic dysentery, likely had one of the higher body counts.
Touché. I was going to go with “the malarial mosquito,” but yours is even better.
Ahhh, but the body count ratio is surely in the human’s favor 
17 posts in, and nary a Holy Grail ref? I’m bitterly disappointed in y’all.
Today’s my day for armour posts, woohoo! 
Horses do a very good job of making a fully armoured knight unhappy - their kicks are strong enough to dent, damage, and otherwise render less effective standard plate.
Insects are very effective - I once saw a guy trip and face plant into a fireant hill - the results were NOT pretty, and required a hospital trip.
Chainmaille is amazingly effective stuff against crushing attacks, believe it or not - the metal links serve to spread out the force of the crushing attack a bit - but the guy wearing it is still gonna be unhappy. A dog versus a knight is not much of a threat - even a pack is going to have issues. Depending on the time period of the armour, the throat may be covered both with a steel gorget and a drape of maille, so it’s a harder target then you might think.
Large boars could do a nasty trick against even a man in armour, mostly from size/trampling. There are numerous accounts of medieval boar hunts ending badly for guys in armour.
I imagine a goodly sized bear is strong enough that it could do some serious damage, and from what little I have observed of bear attack styles, the “knock-em down and swat/bounce on them” technique combined with a bears weight would be pretty effective.
Lions, tigers, and such - not sure. I’ve never really studied the attack patterns of the great cats, but if they are at all similar to that of a housecat (unlikely, I’m sure), then they mainly use slashing attacks and torque to do damage. Both plate and maille are pretty effective against slashing attacks, but I’ve a feeling if a great cat managed to get an armoured man’s neck in his jaws, it’d be able to torque it enough to break his neck.
It’d have a hell of a time eating him though!
Somewhat off topic, but I recently read a book on dogs that had drawing of dogs suited out for battle. Whill googling, I ran across this:
The British used dogs when they attacked the Irish and the Irish in turn used Irish Wolfhounds to attack invading Norman knights on horseback. Two wolfhounds, or even a single one were often capable of taking a mounted man in armour off his horse, where the lightly armed handler would finish him off if necessary.
Further off topic but IMO funny as hell. . .
