Bobcats aren’t terribly big, but they are all razor sharp teeth and claws. My money’s on the cat.
If the animal’s asleep, and not too big, I can’t see how hard it would be to pick it up and slam it into the cage wall until it stops moving. On the other hand, if it’s a pissed animal of almost any size, count me out.
Well, I do like monkeys.
Yup, I’d like to lay the smack down on one, alright.
[Hijack}On some radio station there was a Trivia question of:
What animal do zoo keepers - and not all zoo’s have them - consider the most dangerous animal to deal with? The answer was a **Panda **. Naturally, I missed the reason exactly why, so if I give any of you a vague nagging sense of panic around stuffed panda bears, my job is done here. But my mind can’t stop thinking about what exactly do panda bears do that make them so dangerous. [/hijack]
My cage match actually happened.
It all started when I agreed to chicken-sit for a neighbor. My only job was to feed and water them daily, and (this is the hard part)
gather its eggs.
Ever stare down a hen sitting on her young?
It’s pretty frickin’ intimidating.
Getting pecked ain’t any fun.
Let’s just say Mr. Ujest was laughing his ass off, until I told him to get the eggs and it was my turn to laugh.
In the end we got some leather gloves and stole her young and made omlettes.
Now, that I have mastered poultry, I could possibly fight ducks, but no geese. Jeesus, they are mean sob’s.
I could run circles around a sloth.
Seriously, I’ve “taken on” all sorts of small mammals (pack rats to bats to squirrel monkeys), run down fringe-toed lizards with a lizard stick (pant pant) and handled birds up to the size of a Great Blue Heron. My biggest owie came from a lightning-quick talon of a Sharp-shinned Hawk finding its mark under my fingernail. owOWow!
I’m facing off with my namesakes this week. Could be up to 50 of those feathery fiends in my trap. Cold blood running through the veins, angry, raucous, mad with fear.
And that’s just me - the crows could be pissed too. 
The only way I’d go near an ostrich is if I had a Briminator-sized decoy. 
Maybe.
Zorro,
Do try not to display your ignorance about pandas quite so blatently.
Pandas are ill-tempered animals. They have sharp claws and even sharper teeth. One keeper in San Diego had to have 150 stitches after being bitten by a riled up panda, so spare me the they couldn’t be bothered to fight back crap, 'kay?
Thanks.
Was Zorro the one who started the panda hate thread a while back? That was a good one.
Poodles. Definitetly poodles. I don’t think a poodle could beat me.
Wiener dogs. Children five years and younger. 'Course I wouldn’t win; I just wouldn’t lose. Call it a draw.
WSLr: what’s the scoop on the duckbilled platypus? Looks harmless, but who knows? I’d probably drown if the match took place in water but on land might be a different story entirely.
You know those real mean junkyard dogs? I always wondered what I would do if I was attacked by one. Couldn’t you just choke it to death? That would also go for wild wolves if they didn’t hunt in packs. Would that work?
And if I were a martial arts expert, like at the Bruce Lee level, and I had to fight a really huge gorilla or some other really strong, ferocious ape, I figure my best bet would be to punch him in the face, then dart away as fast as I could, and repeat. Just keep punching and darting, punching and darting, until finally he became punch drunk and you could, again, choke him to death. Would that work?
I figure that for every dangerous animal, there has to be one fighting technique that gives you the best possible odds. You would have to assemble a panel of experts on the particular animal to determine what that technique would be though.
Back in Sept of '76 the master addressed the issue of chimp strength…
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_001b.html
“A male gorilla could probably heft an 1,800-pound weight and not think twice about it.”
cuauhtemoc - I think all that punching and dodging would only serve to piss off the gorilla, which is normally a shy and retiring animal. Ever seen the canines in their mouths? You would think they were carnivores. As soon as the gorilla grabs you you’re done. It could rip your limbs off at it’s leisure or simply bite your head off.
I think the fight with the chimp would go even more poorly as they don’t have their larger cousins mild temperament. One handed pulls in excess of 1200 pounds and the ability to dead lift 600 pounds equate to us getting our asses kicked.
Orangutans have those exceedingly long arms and strength that probably falls into the chimp range.
Man… as far as apes go… we suck.
Maybe we could take out a lemur or a marmoset but that might even be a stretch.
Hah! You wish.
Wow…I didn’t even think about aquatic critters! I could whip just about anything short of a whale or a Great White if I could get it on land!
Bring it fish! I’m ready for ya!
Haven’t you ever heard of the poisonous sub-species of goldfish, the piscis conticeo? Touch me. I dare you.
Unless you’re careful, the platypus would have you crying for mother pretty quickly.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/shorter/story.htm
“and the much under-recognised platypus, whose bashful personality hides a set of poisonous spurs that cause the most exquisite, excruciating pain.”
I don’t know about you, but my evolution included a club. And running for a long, long time.
Everything gets nasty when it’s in a corner-- although people survive encounters with sharks and bobcats, so…
How about what animal can you tackle on an open field?
Obviously you never saw Fox’s When Animals Attack when the panda tried to pull some guy through the bars of the cage.
Being a native Texan, I, of course, can whip my weight in wildcats.
Show me your baddest 'skeeter.
Oh, mammals? I can do collections agents with one hand on my back pocket.