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

[Cooler running]

But their physiology is wrong for throwing

Elephants are actually one of the best animals at throwing things besides the great apes. They use their trunk for it, I've seen a video somewhere of an elephant throwing a tree branch at a Rhino to scare it off.

I'd also argue that fairness is for contests of sport or honour and not for serious fights. If I'm fighting for my life, fairness is not even going to be on my list of priorities let alone at the top of it.

Fairness in the sense that the environment or preparations cannot be used to any one parties advantage, although as I hope you understood from the original post, such trifling concerns don't exist in the state of nature.

So the appropriate comparison would be a human using a sling or an atlatl at least.

A human who is trained and willing to fight will win, against an elephant with sufficient will and preparation, was my original point. Even without technology not crafted by their own hands humans, are extremely dangerous when they are trained and willing to kill. Modern persons are pathetic by comparison to our ancient ancestors, that's just the power of society though, we don't all need to be deadly athletes.

 

[Angilion]

Elephants are actually one of the best animals at throwing things besides the great apes. They use their trunk for it, I've seen a video somewhere of an elephant throwing a tree branch at a Rhino to scare it off.

Yes...but elephants aren't as good at throwing as humans and the rest of the great apes aren't that good at throwing. As I said, their physiology is wrong for throwing. Chimps throw things in nature, but not with the same force and accuracy as a human can. Of course, I'm talking about a strong human with relevant training. Although I'd back an average adult human against an average adult any other animal when it came to throwing things for force and accuracy. Having said that, a chimp could pick up and throw a rock with enough force to kill you from close range. They'd probably miss, but they might not. They're not as good at it as humans, but they're not incapable of it. Elephants might be able to throw with more force than humans, maybe. They can apply a lot of strength to the movement of their trunk, but I think the most relevant factor would be length of movement before release.

A human who is trained and willing to fight will win, against an elephant with sufficient will and preparation, was my original point. Even without technology not crafted by their own hands humans, are extremely dangerous when they are trained and willing to kill. Modern persons are pathetic by comparison to our ancient ancestors, that's just the power of society though, we don't all need to be deadly athletes.

How ancient are you talking about? If you're going back to hunter-gatherer days, probably so. For the men, anyway. But that would only be a matter of training and experience and in any case they would still be using weapons. An unarmed human against an elephant is too much of a mismatch for training and will to overcome. A trained and determined human with a spear can kill an elephant, but not an unarmed human. So if the preperation you refer to was extensive training in using a spear to kill an elephant and making a spear, that might do it.

 

[Cooler running]

How ancient are you talking about?

Most humans that pre-dated agriculture and were practised hunters would be able to work out how to kill an elephant, it was fairly common place. It's why there are plenty of sites containing structures built of Mammoth bone.

A trained and determined human with a spear can kill an elephant, but not an unarmed human.

Yes, the whole reason humans are so dangerous is that no sane human would do that. I suppose in retrospect there is no such thing as a fair fight between such creatures, there is no setting which would not servery punish one or the others ability to succeed in a fight.

 

[wolfie138]

"Most humans that pre-dated agriculture and were practised hunters would be able to work out how to kill an elephant, it was fairly common place. It's why there are plenty of sites containing structures built of Mammoth bone."
yes, but they weren't doing it alone and they weren't doing it unarmed.
there's no way one man unarmed could beat an elephant, it's just not physically possible.

 

[R.P.L]

Didn't we have a thread here where someone reckoned they could do in a Chimpanzee with their bare hands?
Yeah, good luck with that. After it's ripped your knob off I'm not sure you'd really have much fight left in you.

I think this thread has basically now become that thread, but with elephants.

 

[Angilion]

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.

Earlier humans were right in amongst "tooth'n'claw nature" and still thrived. There are costs to the ways humans evolved, but clearly the benefits outweigh the costs.

One of the drawbacks you mentioned is humans needing clothes to survive in harsher climates whereas animals in those climates don't. I think that's more of a benefit than a cost. Initially, that adaptation greatly improved one of the most important strengths for early humans - distance running in a hot environment. Persistence hunting, especially in a hot environment, was hugely beneficial to earlier humans. Being able to shed heat more efficiently was a key part of that. A few species of animals can outrun humans if it's cold enough but none can do so in hotter environments. Later, the same adaptation helped make it possible for humans to live in a wide range of environments. To some extent, it's the specialist/generalist thing. Being very well adapted to something usually means being poorly suited to other things. A polar bear would not do well in the plains of the Serengeti. Humans are decent generalists in most ways, so we get beaten by many animals in their specialised area. Even in details within an area. Random example - humans, cats and eyesight. The low light vision of cats exceeds that of humans by a huge margin both in how quickly the sight adapts to different levels of light and how far it does so. But human eyesight exceeds that of cats by a huge margin in colour vision and visual acuity at close range. Human eyesight is generalist and pretty good in all ways. Cat vision is much more specialised.

 

[R.P.L]

Random example - humans, cats and eyesight. The low light vision of cats exceeds that of humans by a huge margin both in how quickly the sight adapts to different levels of light and how far it does so. But human eyesight exceeds that of cats by a huge margin in colour vision and visual acuity at close range. Human eyesight is generalist and pretty good in all ways. Cat vision is much more specialised.

So what you're saying is, I could take a lion if I stay really close to them and dress in colourful clothing?

 

[Angilion]

So what you're saying is, I could take a lion if I stay really close to them and dress in colourful clothing?

That might succeed in confusing them long enough for you to take them. It's worth a try! (*)





* Do not take this advice.

 

[Angilion]

This thread reminded me of an older Tier Zoo video. The channel is an oddly interesting idea - zoology framed as an MMO game called "Outside".

How humans broke the game:

Top comment is about the forthcoming global pandemic balance patch. It was from 2 years ago, i.e. before the current global pandemic started. It was only a matter of time before another pandemic hit and some people knew that years ago.

Are humans OP?: