Rumble in the jungle: what animals would win in a fight?

Somnambulist

Somnambulist

Somnambulist

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And what wild beasts do Americans think they themselves can take on?

Our survey puts 34 different animals – including humans – against one another to see which Americans think is the mightiest.

We showed people seven random pairings of animals from the list and asked them which of the two they thought would win in a fight. Animals are ranked by their “win percentage”, that is, how often Americans thought that animal would win in a head-to-head matchup when it was one of the two animals shown.

The results show that the elephant wears the crown in the animal kingdom – but only slightly. Elephants had a win rate of 74%, just fractions of a percent ahead of their single-horned cousins – the rhinoceros – in second place, also on 74%.

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But what if that unarmed human was one of our respondents themselves? We took a further selection of animals and asked Americans if they thought they could triumph in battle against them without weaponry.

The results show that Americans aren’t confident in their abilities. Most Americans are convinced they could beat a rat (72%), a house cat (69%) and a goose (61%) in a fight. Nevertheless, 17-24% still feel like they would lose in a struggle with such creatures, with the rest unsure.
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What's wild here is there were more than 0.1% of people crazy enough to that think they'd actually win a fight against 3/4 of that list - just lol if you think you're winning against an elephant, hippo, grizzly, gorilla, chimp or even an eagle... have you seen those talons?

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How does OCUK rate it's chances? Think you could get a chimp to back off before it ripped off your face or tore off your genitals? Confident going toe to toe with one of those jacked kangaroos? How big does the dog have to be before you no longer rate your chances? Fight!
 
Hotwired said:
Odd that an eagle gets that much respect.

Yes its got big claws but a human weighs about 10x as much as it does and it has hollow bones.
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I guess it might depend on the terrain and/or if it's starting off on the ground - they're pretty good at yeeting mountain goats off the sides of cliffs and letting gravity do the work, plus dive bomb at high speed so those talons turn into flying daggers - I'm going to assume it won't just adopt the geese tactic of the flappy winged charge.

potatolord said:
Any animal of a decent size is likely to take a lump out of you, regardless of you "winning". Even a badger (uk, not honey) is a scary prospect.

I'm astounded anyone thinks they would beat a bear with their bare hands. I'm assuming those people have never seen a bear close up...
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I wouldn't even mess with a honey badger, those things are psychos.
 
There's a certain irony I think about occasionally when I train or watch people much stronger than me compete in strength sports or athletics - we humans can get incredibly jacked and lift what seem like huge weights relative to our bodyweight, but out in the wild nearly everything bigger than us (and some quite a lot smaller than us) who just go about their business trying to exist and don't have the luxury of food on tap and a gym are stronger, have greater gripping/biting force, can out-run/climb us, typically have keener senses and don't need clothes to survive in harsher climates.

Intelligence came at a cost it seems, although it's not something you think about much when your species has largely walled off tooth'n'claw nature and in many places (like here) eliminated anything that would happily eat you given the chance.
 
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