We all know there’s only one way to settle this…
In the red corner, bollock naked, visibly shaking - Dignan!!!
…and in the blue corner,
Fresh from the Woods of Bengal - Tommyyyyy the Tiiiiiiiiger !!!
…and so it begins.
Lyrics if ever I heard some…
I’ve heard that Will doesn’t like it much though… 
In my opinion you could easily take out one of those pathetic black-eyed panda bstrds. I know that strictly speaking, the useless bamboo-munching creatures are bears, but frankly they’re an embarrassment to the bear family. They presumable could rip you to shreds if they wanted to, and maybe they would, but you’d win because the lazy pied gits couldn’t be bothered to actually get up of their idle fat backs and do anything about it.
This is a species that can’t be bothered to save itself from extinction, for goodness’ sake. All they’d have to do is have sex once in a while, and try and eat something else than bamboo shoots, which have the calorific qualities of wholemeal Kleenex and woodshavings. They’re bears! Big scary bears! Bamboo shoots are food for vegans and voles, not bears!
So there you have it. A panda is physically stronger that you, and has a full set of teeth and claws, but at the end of the day, if you cornered it, it would lie on its back and dream of bamboo shoots and bromide whilst you hacked it to death with a butter knife.
Dang. I’s jus’ a country boy. An’ I dida get kicked in the head by a cow when I was a young un. Kinda unconscious there. An’ course we had a den of fox back in the field. Now I tells you a fox won’’ take on no wolf, an’ I woul’n’ go near no fox.
Couldn’ I kills me a fox? Well maybes. But he’s movin’ pretty fast an’ he goes for somethin’ with those jaws.
You all ever been bitten by a dog? One that wants to hold on? Cause pretty soon you’s bleedin’ and a hurtin’ and you may bes able to fight back, but it ain’’ goin’ be easy.
I’s also been chaseded by a goose. Now I ain’ fraid of no goose, cause a goose done splits right in half if it falls on its stomach. But it sure do hurt beforin it does that.
Now someun here is goin’ punch out an ape. I wan’s to see dat fight. I tells you. Cause dey may get in a punch, but then they’s goin’ hurt an awful lot.
See the thing is that you aren’t going to find great glowing news headlines about the bear that ate the camper, or the tiger that took out the village. That 63 year old japanese martial arts expert is the exception. If you face a bull, and that animal lowers its horns and it paws the ground, you better hope for a tree. Cause you won’t out run it, either. Yeah you may be able to run for 15 minutes. But it won’t last that long.
I say we invite Blake to a totally dark room and insert one hungry river rat.
Well, I hope you’re happy. I am now crying, in my office from laughing so hard…
Bad, bad man.
Well, from the OP if the animal is on a mad (but not insane) rush to kill an “average” human, we’re seriously disadvantaged. Humans only have smarts and some decent mobility, we’re not designed for “hand to claw” fighting and cannot take much punishment. We’re pack hunters and tool users. Without tool’s we’re bald apes with sensitive dangly bits.
Also from the op there’s no need to find the animal so I assume it’s a cage match (a fairly large cage I guess) so we could be disadvantaged further depending on where the fight takes place.
I say, anything able to kill us purely by crushing weight would probably be unbeatable. Claws and teeth would hurt, but a human on adrenalin would not be bothered much about this sort of damage unless it’s across the neck. Any close quarter grapling will probably go to the human with a little luck (a good shot right into the throat probably will take out most animals).
Heck, if I were naked, the cat that lives in my house and whines for food and open doors could probably kick my ass if he were so inclined. He’d go all Yoda Fu on me, fast and jumpy and twisty and sharp as hell on the outside. No thanks.
But buy me a beer, and I’ll tell you about the time I fought a wily and determined oyster to a standstill…
There was a story a few years ago of a rodeo rider who saw a moose out in the wild, jumped onto its back, and rode it. The only harm he suffered from it was a fine from the forestry service. I think we can agree that once the human is on the moose’s back, the human can win?
As for a dog: For a dog to seriously injure a human, it needs to reach the neck, and for it to do that, it has to jump. And a non-winged animal can’t dodge in midair. So you wait for the dog to jump, then grab it around the torso. Get it into a one-armed grip, with legs facing away from you, and it can’t do anything but squirm. Meanwhile, you’ve got your other arm free.
Humans don’t have armor. Even my kitten has better protection against wild beasts than I do. We don’t have claws or sharp teeth or much in the way of attacking. We’d have to put our bets on blugeoning or choking something to death- an approch that is rarely used in nature for a reason- and when it is used in nature the object that chokes is an entire python body, not a pair of wimpy human hands. We don’t have much in the way of muscle, we’ve got a wierd center of gravity. There is no way a human is going to take down anything but the dumbest animal anywhere close to their size in this sort of fight.
And animals kill humans all the time- and those humans arn’t even naked and defenseless. Nor is the animal likely particularly intent on killing them
I will add that even if you do not subscribe to these ideas, a sea otter will kill you. They are designed to dive to deep depths, and consequently whatever of their body isn’t fur is muscle. And their jaws are able to crack seashells. They’d go right through any arms, legs, head, chest or whatever gets too near them. I’ve been threatened by an angry sea otter before, and if there wern’t a cage between us, I’d be one very dead human.
A physiological reason why your hand would be pretty much useless after getting 6 quills jammed into it?
Simple - PAIN!!! Ever get a little splinter in your palm then try working with that hand where you continually brush against it? You’ll stop until you’ve dug it out. Now try having 3-6" spines that will twist and flex every time you touch them, and the pain that would cause being lodged in one of the most sensitive parts of your body. A mit full o’ quills would probably set you back through pain as much as having that hand broken (ie you could still use them both, but it’d be so painful you’d have to have no option… some people can deal with that pain but most can’t). So I doubt we should just ignore one of the most immediately influential sensations we can experience when it is guarenteed to happen.
Who has the idea (or agreed with it) a person could choke out a buffalo-sized animal? Lemur866 and bughunter, in addition to Blake.
Who said it was insurmountable? I said that would be something the average person would have to contend with, and most likely fail at due to the choke not working properly again because the average person doesn’t know how to do it. Dignan is not a matador/rodeo clown, experienced native american of 300 years past, champion heavyweight boxer, master grappler, alligator wrestler, tri-athlete, and experienced killer all combined in perfect health and having put together that resume all by age 30… and neither is anyone here or any other human on the planet. My god Blake, I’ve never once even heard of any crazy Vietnam secret service war vet-assasin claiming to be half as badass and deadly as you seem to be indicating any average 30 year-old computer programer sitting in a cubicle is.
OK, we have a few reports of some researchers who took some calipers to several ape cadavers and punched those numbers into a formula that gives an indication that theoretically they may have weaker legs and slower arms than humans. It’s a start but it’s far from conclusive proof of the fact. And exactly how much slower/weaker… 0.02 seconds slower on the right arm extention to gouge my eyes? Having a squat weight 10% higher than a chimp ain’t gonna help me either. I’d want more assurance than that before I mixed it up with an ape.
I’m not sure where to go with the wolf thing… on one hand you’re saying that they can kill healthy adult moose as evidence of how a human could do the same to a moose, yet on the other hand you “doubt any wolf has ever killed a 200lb animal on it’s own” as an example of how an inexperienced office worker could easily kill that wolf bare-handed first try since they’re so ineffective at fighting. So no wolf has ever killed a deer? Doesn’t sound like a very strong stance.
It’s pretty obvious why I’d bet against the average man in a bare-handed deathmatch with a wolf… a wolf is a predator evloved and built to kill big animals with what nature gave them, humans are apes basically designed to walk, think, and make trinkets with their nimble little fingers. Hand-to-hand combat is not our forte, and the fact that we started picking up rocks, sticks, and pointy things to help survive these encounters as soon as we had the brain power to figure it out might indicate that we don’t have the built-in tools to do it very well.
I’m not saying that the human can’t use their intellegence to figure out a better stratagy than the Zebra. I am saying it’s not really a fight as described in the OP. Want a boxing ring to maneuver in? Sure… I’d give ya even twice that area. But there has to be some chance of making contact. Boxers will run and dodge until the other fighter gets winded, but not from 100 yards out. One’s gonna take punches and have to work his way out of it at least once a minute if not every 30 seconds or more. Yes, that’s a fight. To call it a fight with a zebra you’d have to side-step a kick and contend with the rearing and stomping from “striking range” just as often. Jogging around an unfenced million-acre prairie ain’t the same thing. Even in a space as small as a boxing ring you sometimes hears “booos” and get terrible fights when one fighter litterally runs from the other. I’ve seen George Forman complain about a fighter who just ran from him and never fought… (I believe he was pissed off the guy never got close enough for Foreman to hit him, and yes George won by decision). It’s two entirely different things to say “I whooped and hollered and ran around for 6 hours and got some buffalo to run over a cliff” and “I ran right at a buffalo, man-handled him to the ground, and ripped open his jugular with my bare hands” when it comes to describing your fighting ability as opposed to hunting ability.
Oh and in response to the latest few posts… grappling may well go to the human as far as points for keeping the other animal from where it’s dangerous and killing us, but we still have that having to kill them thing to deal with. How do you throw a “good shot to the throat” when you’re laying on your side with your arms and legs wrapped around a 300lb hog? I once wrestled around with a 75lb german shepard, and it took everything I had to keep him from wriggling away or turning his muzzle around to where he could bite me. I was on no position to pick multiple accurate shots, so I’d have had to try and strangle him had this been for real.
I’m not gonna agree that a human who managed to get on a moose’s back has much of a chance to win. Again there’s a big difference between keeping out of another animal’s range and killing them. I still haven’t heard how we are going to kill this moose since it hasn’t been run for 3 hours and still has some juice left (right?). Gouging the eyes is again a way to help stop it from killing you. And shinnying up a moose neck to do it without getting thrown or stomped off will be more than most people are capable of. What’s our finishing move again??? the fabled “ungulate choke” that nobody has any clue how to pull off on that kind of neck, or is it the “three stooges double nose plug”? Oh yes I have on tape from the news video footage of a moose killing a human very easily… almost accidently (just to even up the human vs moose score ;)).
As for the dog-fighting strategy, :rolleyes: no comment… go check one of the numerous human vs dog threads for all kinds of discussion.
OK, firstly many if not most big cat kills are acheieved through choking.
Secondly, saying that ‘We don’t have much in the way of muscle’ is just plain wrong. We have at the very least high average muscle for body weight, and probably well above average. Male humans average at about 45% muscle mass. Compare that to 35% for rodents, 25-45% for monkeys, 45% for horses, 35% for cattle, 40% for cats and 50% for dogs.
And I can’t understand how you can claim that “There is no way a human is going to take down anything but the dumbest animal anywhere close to their size in this sort of fight”. Humans indisputably have taken down animals close to their size and larger in these sorts of fights.
You seem to have a distorted view of just where humans place and how susceptible we are to damage or how much damage other species will take. Contrary to popular belief there is no evidence that pound for pound humans are more fragile or less capable of dealing damage than other species. We just deal damage in an odd manner, which makes it hard to judge what we can achieve.
Well in that case it’s not even a consideration. Even the most average person will ignore the most tremendous pain in a life and death situation. As any war veteran, bombing survivor or trauma surgeon will tell you, people almost never feel pain until after the danger has past. So we can discount that one.
Who said anyone said it was insurmountable?
Well since you presented that as a factual statement, and since this is GQ:
CITE!
:rolleyes:
Yes, I claimed that.
What I have pointed out is that average, everyday programmer type shave fought off wild animals. It is up to you to show why this is impossible. People can clearly do remarkable things when the need arises.
I never said any such thing, so please stop the strawmen.
SO basically mmmiiikkkeee your position seems to rest on two points. Firstly a grown man being unable to defend his life because he has splinters in his hand, and will simply collapse on the ground in agony. Secondly when matador dodges and weaves away from a bull he isn’t fighting the bull. The first is silly. The second is sematics.
Good point, Blake. Shall we assume that Dignan is operating under the influence of adrenaline for this discussion, and is thus able to ignore debilitating amounts of pain?
I don’t favor my chances against any of the big cats, great apes, or large herbivores unarmed.
As for dogs and other canids, Having been attacked by a rottweiler and won; I can tell you this. Dogs have a tendancy to jump up to attack at the arms, or face. My solution to this problem was to wait for the jump, grab a foreleg and swing for the fences. Our advantage is the ability to grab, and grapple, plus our considerable upper-body strength. The dog’s leg dislocated, it’s head met a tree on the spin, and he was done. Damage to me consisted of several nasty scratches, a pulled muscle in my shoulder, and a torn up shirt.
So Deagan, are you a drug crazed Vietnam vet? Because apparently on they could do what you did.
Given that Dignan wants to kill this animal, isn’t interested in running and knows it intends to kill him I think we’d have to.
I have never heard of an account of any animal attack survivor reporting intolerable apin at the time. Even people partially disembowelled by sharks only reported a sharp pain like a stitch.It’s only after they got to the beach that pain and shock set in. Everyday Israeli cubicle jocks who have been injured in terrorist attacks report the same thing. There is no pain until they sit down on the sidewalk after the event. Then they feel the limb that has been amputated.
I don’t think that pain is a major consideration when killing a hedgehog.
I don’t know that you can actually expect a moose to die from having a human on his back. How do you suggest administering the coup de grace to Mr. Moose?
Does the Romans and feeding christians to the lions have any bearing here?
Average people vs. animals. To the death.
I don’t recall hearing the christians coming out on top.
As far as hedgehogs go, couldn’t you just kick them?
This sounds like a legend to me, but I’ll throw it in anyway. A friend of mine was out West last summer, and in a little town in Montana, he says, there was a statue put up to commemorate the life of some mountain man. This guy had allegedly killed a bear by biting it in the jugular. The bear was on display in the town, although my friend said it was hard to tell whether the bear’s neck was torn up.
ANimals in a fight don’t like predators on thtie back. They will try to throw you off and exhaust themselves. You can encourage this by biting them. Once they are suficiently tired you can then reach around and dig their eyes out. After that it’s just a matter of time. They will die.
Ah me. And the whole “trying to throw you off” doesn’t strike you as a bit of a hurdle to clear? World class bull riders are routinely bucked off within 8 seconds, and they have a freaking rope!!! How exactly do you propose remaining on the back of this? Just for reference, if he’s full-grown, he’ll be weighing in at 2000-2500lbs, and the top of the hump will be about 6’ off the ground. Don’t expect him to be slow and lumbering, either - he tops out at 30mph, and can turn on a dime at full gallop.
I must say, though, I’m most amused by the whole biting thing. There’s enough hair on those things to make long pointy canines damn near useless, much let alone your insignificant dental apparatus.
I’m also a bit confused by how you plan on getting onto his back in the first place. He’s as tall as you are, and unlikely to be cooperative.
And finally, assuming you do manage to get on top and hang on for 8 seconds, what’s your plan for when he decides to roll over on his back? Remember, 2500lbs…
Frankly, this whole grappling arms trump 10:1 weight advantages thing you’ve got going is rather baffling. Tool use trumps the weight advantage. Human physiological peculiarities? Not hardly.