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.
Gotta love the jig, the speed bag fisticuffs, and the round house kick.
wasn’t that Davy Crockett that killed a bear when he was only three?
Just keep the talons away.
I banded several Great-horned Owls - their talons could also go through your hand, but not with the long-term damage an eagle could do.
Well, at least they did not put a badger or wolverine on the list. I guess people have some limits!
One time I was up to my neck in the Salmon river, cleaning the intake screen on an irrigation pump. A local farmers drake came swimming toward me, dipping his head in the water as he came. I thought, “This can’t be a good thing”, so when he got close, I smacked him along side the head. I had to do it again before he got the idea it would be good to leave. (I always wondered what would have happened if I had ducked under, grabbed his feet and pulled him down....)
I want to see the person who could beat a cat that hasn't been declawed and was really trying to fight. Ain't gonna happen!
Animals I’m fairly confident I could beat in a fight: Frog; poodle; Kuola bear; garden snake; mole; sparrow; robin. There may be others.
“Oh, look! An eagle!”
Darn, you just reminded me - there's a great book I need to find again and order that is about the tactics that wolf packs use to take down prey. Very coordinated, very intelligent.
Though in baseball you stand to the side of the direction of the ball.
Right, the average chimp is three times stronger than the average man. We were seriously screwed in the natural abilities area.
That said, I’ve taken a goose and won. Technically, I wasn’t unarmed, but the goose was subdued before he got the axe (Literally).
And at any rate, I don’t know as it’s a “fair fight” to put an unarmed human against ANY of these animals. They are all armed. We aren’t naturally. We’re fairly weak for our size class, our teeth are a joke, we have no claws, and no fur or feathers for natural armament. The human in question should at least be issued with a good knife.
All that said, the average human can’t even take a tree on and win. Just one tree has colossal size, hundreds of hit points, natural armor, and enough limbs to make a dozen attacks. As if that isn’t bad enough, they tend to travel in packs.
Wait a minute, males, females? There are no such mammals anymore, I thought.
So the story goes, though I doubt with a knife. Boone is said to have killed several with a knife, though that could have been a secondary weapon.
Here's one that's documented, a five year old taking a 445 pound black bear.
One swipe from any of the four limbs on a griz or big cat would disembowel any human. What are you gonna do, grab it around the neck? Punch it in the nose? Heck, an adult chimp can beat any man. We are designed to outsmart them, not outmuscle them. From the survey, it seems many fail the former. They will surely fail the latter.
As a general rule cows will hurt you but bulls will kill you.
Only 76% of men think they can take out a rat?
This country is done, and don’t waste a fork stickin it.
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