• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    Well, I’ve been attacked by big dogs, and either “won”, or ran them off, without needing stitches. So that’s all I’m confident about

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Sure, us Americans are obviously delusional, but can we talk about the fact that almost half of all brits think they would lose to a goose? They’re 20 pounds, have no teeth or claws, and their bones are hollow. Have a little confidence, guys, I’m sure you can take poultry in a fight.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
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      3 hours ago

      Less than 80% of people think they could take on a rat in a life or death battle. You could literally pass out and fall on it and probably crit it.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Actually, this does explain why all those brits in Untitled Goose Game let the goose walk all over them.

    • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      Almost half of Brits might not be as able-bodied as you might imagine.

      I’m more interested in the rat fight, because I had my fair share of mouse encounters and rats are bigger, more dangerous and just as quick.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        The rat one would depend very much on what shoes I had on.

        If I had my work boots on, Remy’s getting punted across the room.

      • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        I mean, Americans have huge obesity rates, but apparently, nearly 20% of us think we can take a chimp. I’m sure a rat couldn’t kill me, but I have no idea how I would catch one with my bare hands, so that feels like a draw to me.

          • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            I kinda assumed this was a cage-match, fight-to-the-death kind of thing. I think most animals would rather run away than fight you, unless you’re encroaching on their territory or look like an easy meal.

    • DUMBASS@leminal.space
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      8 hours ago

      Have you ever been attacked by one of those demon spawns? They will not stop attacking you, you can boot it and it will just get up and continue, I’d rather fight a kangaroo, at least when you punch one of them in the face they back off, goose just gets angrier.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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    10 hours ago

    Look at all this shocking overconfidence.

    Meanwhile, over in reality, Billy Big Balls is getting the tendon in his ankle severed in 0.3 seconds while screaming like a banshee and falling down. The only reason people look at even the high-percentage animals this way is that, 100% of the time in daily life, they have no interest in fucking you up for real.

    Edit: Actually, there is one exception: I firmly believe the average person could fuck up a goose if they committed to it. Geese are pushy assholes with surprisingly sharp beaks and humans don’t really like getting in life or death struggle with any organism, by and large, but I’ve seen a person seize a goose by the neck and the goose in question wasn’t so intimidating after that happened.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        10 hours ago

        Yeah. They are scary, sure, but I think a lot of it is that they are clearly very fragile also, and so people are faced with either just letting themselves get bullied or else becoming a monster who’s stomping on this tiny carcass and most people opt for option A.

        • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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          6 hours ago

          A couple (as in male and female) lived next to a bus stop I had to use for a while, I had to fight the male off a few times, my goal was never to hurt it, a few swings with a heavy bag filled with books and it wouldn’t insist. I don’t know if it’s bullying but I didn’t see it as gratuitous violence, I also wouldn’t welcome large animals in my home…

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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            6 hours ago

            Yeah. I feel like city-type humans have gotten too amenable to getting bullied by animals in their environment, and it’s teaching bad lessons. You notice that the geese don’t do the whole “fuck you I chase you hissing” thing if there is a dog anywhere even vaguely in the vicinity of the human, because it knows exactly what the score will wind up at with the dog involved.

            I do get it, nobody wants to be the guy that messed up the happy family because they got a little territorial. It sounds like you struck the right balance.

      • sploosh@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Any reason you shouldn’t just break its neck? I mean, grab the neck near the head, jerk it very fast in any direction a gew times and you’ve turned an angry goose into a nonissue.

        • Vent@lemm.ee
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          1 hour ago

          Goose is ez, grab by neck and swing. I’m taking about dog and cat like animals. Good luck shoving your arm down a Goose’s throat. If you can manage that, the Goose has bigger things to worry about than suffocation.

        • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          The problem is getting the neck in the first place.

          You’ve got wings flapping in your face, making it hard to use your eyes. They’re likely to be pecking and kicking too, since if they’re really coming at you, they’re going to use everything they have in hopes of scaring you off.

          So targeting a neck that’s moving, when you have to do it by feel sp you don’t take eye damage takes a bit of “luck” because some part of the grab attempt is going to be almost impossible to predict. The neck is moving, the body is moving, so where you think you should grab might not be where you think it is.

          Source : have been sent running a few times while fishing, and the fuckers are hard to grab.

          I have a rooster now, and he used to get frisky in his “teenage” hormone laden time. Even grabbing all of him was difficult until I had some familiarity with how he moves. Most people are only going to run into an angry goose a few times their entire life, so that lack of practice makes it harder than it would seem as well

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    10 hours ago

    14 May 1805: Narrow Escape

    One of their most harrowing experiences with a grizzly occurred on 14 May 1805, on the bank of the Missouri River between the Milk and Musselshell rivers. Clark wrote:

    Six good hunters of the party fired at a Brown or Yellow Bear Several times before they killed him, & indeed he had like to have defeated the whole party, he pursued them Seperately as they fired on him, and was near Catching Several of them one he pursued into the river, this bear was large & fat would way about 500 wt

    Lewis described the climax of the incident:

    he pursued two of them seperately so close that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and poucnes and throw themselves into the river altho’ the bank was nearly twenty feet perpendicular; so enraged was this animal that he plunged into the river only a few feet behind the second man he had compelled to take refuge in the water, when one of those who still remained on shore shot him through the head and finally killed him.

    When they butchered the animal, they found that a total of eight rifle balls had entered its body in different directions.

    https://lewis-clark.org/sciences/mammals/bears/grizzly-bear-encounters/


    You will not beat a grizzly bear unarmed. You might not beat a grizzly bear armed.

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      8 hours ago

      I love that the original word for bear has been lost to the annals of time because it was feared that saying the word for bear out loud would summon a bear and that was instant total party kill for everybody involved.

      Bears are the original boogie men.

  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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    10 hours ago

    anyone honestly saying they could win a fight with a bear is someone who hikes with a .45 and thinks that will do anything for them before the bear has already killed them

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      8 hours ago

      Park rangers are advising hikers and campers in national parks to be alert for bears and take extra precautions to avoid an encounter.

      They advise park visitors to wear little bells on their clothes so they make noise when hiking. The bell noise allows bears to hear them coming from a distance, so they won’t be startled by a hiker accidentally sneaking up on them, which might cause a bear to charge.

      Visitors are told they should also carry a pepper spray can just in case they encounter a bear. Spraying the pepper into the air will irritate the bear’s sensitive nose and it will run away.

      It is also a good idea to keep an eye out for fresh bear droppings so you have an idea if bears are in the area. People should be able to recognise the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat.

      Black bear droppings are smaller and often contain berries, leaves, and possibly bits of fur. Grizzly bear droppings tend to contain small bells and smell of pepper.

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        8 hours ago

        note that none of that is shooting a bear with a gun or fighting the bear because those “hikers” are the goddamn dumbest

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Leaving to hike in bear woods right now! With a 9mm. And a .22 rifle. TBF, there are only black bears around here. :) (But one is a momma.)

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Over 30% don’t believe they would prevail over a house cat.

    Would like to hear their story.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Mom had two female cougars she raised from the bottle, as house pets. They were abandoned for whatever reason, can’t remember. Declawed for safety, but still.

      Tasha had a thing for men wearing hats. Any hat. Any man. So my 20-something dumbass decided to start a little shit. 90lb. cat vs. 130lb. me. Got down on the living room floor wearing my straw cowboy hat and stared her in the eye. “Let’s go bit-…”

      All I saw was a tawny blur and fighting to get on my knees. She got the hat and a monster hank of my long hair. I let her keep the hat. And the hair.

      I now have zero illusions as to fighting animals.

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      9 hours ago

      My girlfriend’s cat got very sick one day and we had to feed her through a tube.

      Well one day she got better and decided that she wasn’t going to put up with tube feeding. I am a 6ft, 230lb man and I shit you not, I had to put my entire body weight on her to keep her from squirming. Every ounce of my strength went into holding her down so that the tube wouldn’t rip out of her throat as the food was going down. I couldn’t believe how strong a kitty could be when you try to get them do do something they don’t want to do.

      So no I don’t think I could take a house cat in a fight.

      • Xbeam@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        But she got fed so in a way you did beat an angry cat in a fight. I’d call this a win.

        • Psythik@lemm.ee
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          6 hours ago

          Yeah but there’s a difference between fighting because you don’t want something, and fighting for your life. I imagine that a housecat would put a lot more effort into winning a deathmatch. I wouldn’t take that bet

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      10 hours ago

      Cats are literally made of weapons and they are very assertive about their rights.

      I don’t know what precise definition you want to use for “win the fight,” but in think in most cases, you will either kick the cat before it attaches itself to you or else it will do a significant amount of damage for which you should go to the hospital and then take its leave. I think the second outcome is probably a lot more likely if the cat has decided it’s go time and I would generally define that as “win.”

      • Cypher@lemmy.world
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        19 minutes ago

        Winning the fight in this case just means accepting some pain.

        Getting hold of the cat will probably hurt. Breaking its neck doesn’t take a lot once you’ve got hold.

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      I feel I could walk away victorious from a fight with a cat, but I’ll probably bleed out on my way to the hospital. Similar results to a knife fight.

  • ExtantHuman@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    I’m surprised by eagle being so low. Like, they don’t exactly have a ton of mass, and can’t pick you up. If you can avoid getting blinded, there’s not a whole lot they can do to you that isn’t superficial scratches. If you can grab them, it’s over.

    • sploosh@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I think you are underestimating how much an eagle talon can fuck up your face and neck, and difficult it would be to restrain one unarmed.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      9 hours ago

      Okay, I grabbed it and now it opened two of my arteries. What should I do next?

      Everyone thinks they could win a fight against a little person until they find out he’s holding knives in each hand and another in his mouth. Also eagles are huge.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I’ll stop at eagle, but it would be a close match, and I’d need the ER. Eagles aren’t heavy, and if you can get your hand around it’s neck, it’s all over–swing it like a chicken. A large dog would be a toss-up, and no one is beating a chimp. No one. More people could beat a cobra than a chimp. There was the video of the guy besting a kangaroo, but that would not be me. The rest are fantasy.

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      8 hours ago

      I’m 6’1", 250 lbs and hulking and my ancestors were dog soldiers who would bring dogs with us to war and in winter when food was getting a little scarce we would toss Fido in the pot.

      I said that to say I can and have sucessfully fought a large dog before, but not a rabid large dog, just angry large dog.

      That being said, If the dog is rabid, all bets are off.

      If someone put a gun to my head and said, fight the chimp to the death or die right now, I would do my best, but unless I get really lucky, maybe, maybe 30% of the time I win.

  • selkiesidhe@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    I’m gonna go ahead and claim defeat over the possible fight with anything. Hell I lost a fight with hair curlers once.

    • neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      One of those big white ducks with the red gullet things once trapped my son and I in a bathroom at a zoo. We were heading there anyway and my son stopped to look at it, then it start following us a little too fast so we booked it. We did our business and I forgot about the duck until I open the door and it tried charging in. I ended up throwing a roll of toilet paper behind him and while he was distracted we snuck by.

      All in all 9/10 zoo day. My son still talks about the time I outsmarted a duck.

  • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Every single creature on this list would kick my ass no problem.

    Please do not make me have to explain to my mother I lost a fight against a rat.

    She’d understand if I lost a fight against a cat though. None of us win against an angry cat.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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    10 hours ago

    It says ‘unarmed’ but it doesn’t clarify if you’re unprotected. I assume not and you’re in the standard issue Spandex shorts of fighting. So I would likely bleed out as a result of everything past rat, which is hardly a victory.

    I had a wounded squirrel I thought my cat had killed lacerate the fuck out of my arm once. My cat would not have been as stopped at the tendon like that squirrel. And she knew it.