The title tells us of an interesting and I think startling statistic based upon a YouGov survey. YouGov is a polling company based in Britain and they surveyed Americans and Britons on their thoughts about unarmed combat with a range of wild animals becoming progressively more dangerous namely: rat, cat, goose, medium-sized dog, Eagle, big dog, chimpanzee, king cobra, Kangaroo, Wolf, crocodile, gorilla, lion, elephant and grizzly bear.
Below is a chart which tells you what American respondents to the survey thought when asked if they could beat these animals in a direct flight while being unarmed.
On PoC I discuss the same survey while focusing on the domestic cat. You can see that on average Americans think that they can beat a domestic cat in a fight 69% of the time. And Americans believe that they can beat a grizzly bear 6% of the time even though they are unarmed.
The kangaroo is a formidable fighter being very muscular and they kick their opponents by holding onto them with their arms. Although my research indicates there had been very few if only a single case of a kangaroo killing a person in Australia. Perhaps people realise that they should respect the kangaroo despite the fact that hundreds of thousands are shot at night annually to keep down the population.
As mentioned in the title, 17% of Americans in general think they can beat a chimpanzee in an unarmed fight. This can be broken down into 12% of women think they can beat a chimp and 22% of men. That is one in five men think they could beat a chimpanzee which is very similar to the number who think they can beat a king cobra in a fight.
Remarkably, 7% of men think they can beat a lion in a fight and 8% of women think the same thing! 8% of women believe they can beat an elephant in a fight. The percentage climbs to 9% for men.
The biggest gap between American men and women concerns medium-sized dogs. While 60% of men believe they can beat a medium-sized dog in a fight only 39% of women think the same thing.
It appears that American women are frightened of geese because a mere 51%, just over half, thought they could beat a goose in a fight whereas American men are far more confident at 71%.
9% of women and 16% of men they can beat a wolf in a fight. 8% of women and 9% of men believe they can defeat a gorilla in an unarmed fight.
23% of women and 38% of men believe they can beat an eagle in a fight.
8% of women and 10% of men believe they can beat a crocodile in a fight.
6% of women and 7% of men think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight.
The difference between Americans and Brits is confidence. For example, at the easier end of conflicts, 72% of Americans but only 67% of Britain’s were confident of beating a rat. And whereas 6% of Americans feel they can beat a grizzly bear as mentioned above, only 2% of Brits felt the same way.
The biggest difference between Americans and Brits concerns the goose. 61% of Americans feel they can beat a goose in a fight but only 45% of Brits had the same confidence. And for the eagle the difference is 30% against 18%.
Here is a chart on the Brits and their feelings about fighting wild animals:
To return to the chimpanzee. It appears that Americans are overconfident because two experts on chimpanzees said the following.
“A man would stand no chance at all. A chimp will go for your eyes so you can’t see, then hands so you can’t fight back.” – Jan Garen, owner of Wales Ape and Monkey Sanctuary in Powys.
“Anyone who has ever actually observed fully grown chimpanzees would never assume they could take on a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees have been known to tear off people’s faces and leave men with a little less manhood than they had before the encounter. The chimpanzee would be fearing for his life, so it would do everything in its very impressive power to incapacitate the threat.”-Sarah Bell, science communicator at Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
On the Internet there are some pretty horrible pictures of people being severely injured by chimpanzees.
Below are some more articles on apes.
