Animal Strength Feats

[Shadow]

(05-26-2019, 03:20 PM)Charan Singh Wrote:

(05-26-2019, 01:33 PM)Shadow Wrote:

(05-26-2019, 11:56 AM)Charan Singh Wrote: To me, it is evident that what matters is skill set.

Lions and other animals practise their skills over the years and then master the skill. These animals are like martial artist, who knows where to attack and how to avoid the counter attack.

I had seen a video of single lion killing an adult bull buffalo in its prime. 
Lion broke the leg tendons making it impossible for the buffalo to stand properly but buffalo was still powerful enough to keep lion at bay therefore lion waited for buffalo to fell/sit down and kill in night - same strategy as followed by lioness to kill giraffe in above post.

Something that I learned from observing lions hunt, is that fear of death sends a most animals into absolute taruma (their eyes buggles out) where they don't take any rescue actions - but that happens when attacked at specific places like choking etc. 

Another thing to observe is that cats have different tactics to kill different animals. for Zebra or Wildebeest you aren't going to see lions attack hind legs but choke mouth or cut the neck windpipe after jumping from back but in case of buffaloes they try and immobilized the animal first by breaking tendon and spine and only then move towards neck or mouth. When attacking another lion they break hip joints, spine making gashes & punctures, often attacking testiscles - most of times hind legs and spine is broken after the fight.

Hyenas and dogs rely on numbers and continuous attacks and tiring the animal. Hyena have special tactic to kill bull buffaloes - attack the testiscles first and other underbelly points and then specific joints - eating the animal mostly alive.


Honey badger proves a tough nut for lions to crack, small it may be. Thus size doesn't matter much as compared to skills.

There can be of course different kind of points of view, but when we are talking about strength of big cats I am waiting to see how animal drags clearly heavy carcass, climbing to a tree with carcass or something else, where it uses purely strength. Of course there can be some hunting situations, where they use a lot of strength too. Naturally in situations where tiger or lion attack in full speed some buffalo and go straight to neck bite, it is very impressive and naturally it demands a strong animal able to do that. It is not easy to stay there biting, while bigger animal try to get rid of predator. 
Then again if wanting to compare with each others, looking at how they drag carcasses etc. are for me more interesting. But not easy by any means even then to compare too good. It is one thing to drag on wet grass, another on dry ground....

But based on what I have seen on videos I think, that many old myths how big cats drag animals about 1 000 kg like nothing seem to be just myths. I haven´t seen any video indicating such strength. One thing, which is maybe more to lion predation thread is also how differently things can be seen are for instance honey badgers. Tough nut? Maybe looking like that in videos where cubs are playing with them, but adult lions seem to kill those little ones if irritated. I think, that not so tough nut, but just not so interesting, it is quite small and uses bad smell too, funny little devils :)

I agree that to carry the carcass requires pure strength and is a fascinating to watch but to compare different animals with the same yardstick is bit off because cheetah has speed giving away bit of strength; lion and tiger are about raw power but their functionality doesn't have same strength ratio as that of a leopard and a jaguar when carrying a carcass.

In this aspect the way Jaguar simply kills and runs away with much larger kills is quite something to watch and similarly a leopard climbing a tree with kill more than its own weight, where lion struggles to climb without a kill.


Maybe it's only me but I haven't seen lion hunt a Honey Badger but have seen quite a few videos of Honey Badgers teasing lions.

Yes, there are some differences between these animals. I don´t dare to say which one is strongest when looking at "powerhouse" big cats, like tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars, there we go to pound to pound discussion immediately when looking at weight differences and those discussions tend to be waste of time. But all of these four (and maybe we should include puma too in this category) show time to time impressive strength. 

I approach this subject like that, that I´ve seen many claims, one praising one animal some other another one. But based on what I´ve seen I haven´t been able to convince myself, which one of these should be considered as "the one". Naturally biggest individuals tend to be strongest. So I don´t try to convince anyone else too. But I am always interested to see what someone has to say and is it reasoned good or not. 

And those little grumpy ones, yes there are funny videos where they are usually facing with lion cubs and young ones. Quite entertaining :) But naturally there are many cases showing what happens when adult lion makes serious attack. There is that thin line drawn in water, when things get serious and when it happens, bluff isn´t enough anymore. Honey badger lives in dangerous environment and naturally does what it can to survive there. One moment bluff is a good idea but it can change in split second and then it is all about it, that is there some safe place to run and fast.

Here quote and one example how fast situation can change:

This incredibly went on for about 20 minutes, which must have been exhausting for the young badger, but all credit to him he battled hard inflicting a lot of pain on the lions. It was a fascinating scene, with 8 sub-adult lions battling 1 honey badger and I can tell you one thing, the badger was winning. The lions would move in and then back off, again and again with constant vocalisation.

The constant back and forth would turn deadly, as one of the lionesses, decided enough was enough, deciding the cubs game was now over.  She circled around behind the badger and with one swift bite to the back of the badger’s head, the game was over. Once the badger was dead, the cubs moved in now, brave of course, started to play with the body, bringing us to the flashback Friday image. Reply