Posted on 05/17/2021 10:51:49 AM PDT by SJackson
Humans (particularly men) have a bit of a tendency to believe they are tougher than they actually are, at least if quick glances at any YouGov poll are to be believed.
Take for example the 12 percent of men who think they could win a point in a match against Serena Williams, as if when a ball is being hit towards them at over 100 mph they could hope to achieve anything other than shielding their crotch
A new poll has looked at what animals humans think that they could beat in a fight while unarmed, with much the same overconfidence shining through.
The 1,224 US adults surveyed by YouGov were most confident that they could take a rat unarmed combat, with 72 percent of respondents believing they would win the fight, which seems fair enough. This was about the only non-controversial part of the survey responses, which saw 7 percent of men believing they could take down a grizzly bear, 16 percent saying that they could beat a wolf, and a whopping 22 percent willing to say for the record that they could take out a chimpanzee.
Weirdly, fights against lions were the only grudge matches that women were more likely to believe that they could win than men (7 percent vs 8 percent). Against the larger animals, differences were minimal, but always with men more likely to think they'd emerge against (e.g. a crocodile) being anything other than dead. 8 percent of all respondents believed that they could win a fight against an elephant – an animal which as well as having skin 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) thick, we very much stress is the size of an elephant.
Where differences between the genders became really apparent was with medium-sized and smaller animals. Despite great PR and aggression levels to back it up, a whopping 71 percent of men believed they could beat a goose in a fight. To this, the online response has mainly been: have you ever actually seen a goose?
There is, of course, ambiguity in how the survey was worded. For instance, are we fighting the animal in their natural habitat or the depths of space where they are most disorientated due to their lack of knowledge about gravity? Are they surprising us, say by popping up through the toilet, or do we get to jump down on them from a tree?
Perhaps the men of the poll believe that they will be treated to boxing rules, in which the fights are publicized months in advance, giving them time to study medium-sized dogs in combat and perhaps switch to southpaw to surprise them on match day. Or, maybe, people are wildly overestimating their abilities to fight wild animals, long after our civilizations have rendered having those skills (almost entirely) unnecessary.
I don’t think a human, of either sex, could defeat ANY cat (house or lion).
Adult chimpanzees should be up there with grizzly bears, lions/tigers, and elephants.
Those things can destroy a person one-on-one.
I suppose it depends what take in unarmed combat means. I've been boped in the head by songbirds on several occasions. I wave my arms, in surprise but could be combat, they flee to a tree, I leave the field of my own volition. A victory, I guess. Though I doubt I could catch a robin distracted by a meaty worm. From grizzly through eagle I suspect the poll was done at a local bar. Dog to rat I'm skeptical for most people. I'll never know, of the animals I've seen on the list I've not usually been unarmed. Which imo is reasonable when in the vicinity of dangerous animals. Wish they'd included humans.
I've hit baseballs going that fast. Probably not be able to do it today though.
People think they would lose to rats, cats and geese? The nation is in deeper doo-doo than I thought!,
I know two men who were attacked by grizzly/brown bears - one survived, the other did not and was mostly eaten. The guy who lived was scalped, lost an eye and an ear. He looks bad but is still walking around.
Fought a goose before. At the college I worked, they have ample geese running around and they tend to attack anyone nearby. Kicked a goose coming at me and it turned and flew away.
I then feared someone might u/l the campus security video of it to twitter and I would get called into the dean’s office.
Unarmed, in my non professional opinion, those are all zeros. Even Daniel Boone used a knife.
Agreed! Rip your arms and legs of without even exerting itself. Then there's the wicked bites.
Chimps also like to humiliate other apes they attacked by chewing off the face and eating all of the fingers. Savage.
I don’t think a human, of either sex, could defeat ANY cat (house or lion).
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Rats are questionable as well.
Everything above Goose will kill unarmed woman and everything above Eagle will kill unarmed man - as you go up the scale, the time it takes for the kill decreases dramatically until the top 3 or 4 when the kill time is measured in seconds.
This link goes to the story of one of my friends from Kennedy Space Center and a buffalo encounter several years ago that he survived:
https://www.varminthunters.com/threads/varmint-tale-a-co-workers-buffalo-encounter.6175/
Eagle, huh?
Guaranteed that if an eagle gets ahold of your hand, it will never be the same. Those talons will go through it like a hot knife through butter:
https://www.hawkquest.org/TA/XL/Gripping.pdf
I am pretty sure a Cobra Chicken could take me.
Medium dog, maybe I could win.
Wow, a wolf? LOL - a healthy wolf could kill an adult human. Same for a lion - in the case of the lion, it will bite and sever your spinal cord. Dead in minutes.
People are pretty full of themselves.
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