African Buffalo (Cape Buffalo) vs Kodiak Bear

[theundertaker45]

I remember this being a fairly popular thread on other platforms; my take on it is pretty clear by now.


If you compare weight data, anyone will notice that the average weight of the cape buffalo will be significantly higher than the average weight of the Kodiak bear. However, if you dig deeper, you'll see that the two face very different conditions. Summarizing all the cape buffalo weights in literature, you'll probably end up at an average in the mid-high 600kg region containing adult bulls of different age classes but notably a lot of prime individuals at the peak of their powers. The same can't be said about the Kodiak bear, only a few of individuals have been weighed by bear biologists and 80% of them can be labelled as not fully grown. In total there are about 4 weights of fully grown Kodiak bears floating around and over 15 of what you could consider "teenagers" but would classify as "adult" due to their sexual maturity. Hence the total average will be somewhere around 330kg but it wouldn't make sense comparing it with the buffalo when the vast majority of the bears were young adults way off their prime.

This is the reason why I slowly shifted away from comparing "averages" as they don't really mean shit if the age class and body condition of every single individual isn't clearly specified. Nowadays I solely want to imagine the best of both going against each other and by "best" I refer to "biggest". Of course it could be that the biggest individual might not be the best but in wild animals dominance strongly correlates with body mass. The dominant bears/bulls are normally the biggest specimens or let's say within tangible range of the biggest. 

Hence, we'd talk about a 750kg brown bear squarring off against a 900kg buffalo. 150kg may seem like a lot of weight but relatively it isn't; it would be the equivalent of your usual 200kg Yellowstone grizzly trying to snatch some 240kg cattle. Now, I also often hear that Kodiak bears lack experience of dealing with things like a buffalo but what experience does the cape buffalo have? The toughest individual carnivore he has to face would be a very large male lion; roughly 2.5-3x smaller than a very large Kodiak bear, much weaker, much smaller skull, much less durable, much lower damage output. 

My argumentation is that the overall package of the Kodiak bear is p4p so much superior that at relatively close sizes it would turn out to be a mismatch. Thin, inflexible limbs moving a big barrel of meat and shaking your head around won't do it against an opponent who is a jack of all trades. Who can grapple well with immensely powerful and flexible limbs, who has a huge, heavy skull (potentially able to just nape-bite the buffalo and break his neck) with deeply-rooted canines and who can take quite a beating himself. So yeah, in my eyes placing an alpha male brown bear like "Van" against some bull who is barely bigger would result in a one-sided slaughter and a good meal for the bruin. I've read about what brown bears at times can do to significantly bigger animals by using their strength (I specify "at times" because there are a bunch of reports of brown bears dying to significantly larger herbivores) and reducing the size gap to barely 20% makes me think the bear would obliterate the buffalo in the worst way possible. And I know how much of a pain in the ass it is for all the big cat fanatics that those champion bulls look like an ordinary prey item next to a gigantic brown bear; I hope I do not hurt their feelings.

To illustrate my point, I'll post a size comparison between the biggest Kodiak bear (the 751kg individual is the official record; there was another Alaskan giant who measured 305cm over the curves and was estimated at the same weight; equations would indicate this too) and the biggest cape buffalo of all time (a 900kg bull from WP Game Reserve, I didn't find any higher weight on trophy hunted bulls) . I don't know about you but when I look at the comparison I just know that the bear would have an easy time if he wants to kill:

[Deleted]

What is the weight of an average Kodiak bear? Isn't it like 400-500kg? And what, an African buffalo 600-700, maybe up to 800kg? If so, I'd back the buffalo at average sizes.

[Deleted]

I think UT is off on this one. The bear is trashed 99/100x. I don't favor any extant land carnivore over a bull cape buffalo. They have gored and plowed through lion prides.
I don't know if any mamillian carnivore in history would win this more often than not.
The bear would need to hold the buffalo with full control and spend 20 or more minutes killing. Aaah no, it gets gored.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2023 1:10:10 GMT Bolushi said:

I think UT is off on this one. The bear is trashed 99/100x. I don't favor any extant land carnivore over a bull cape buffalo. They have gored and plowed through lion prides.
I don't know if any mamillian carnivore in history would win this more often than not.
The bear would need to hold the buffalo with full control and spend 20 or more minutes killing. Aaah no, it gets gored.

Bit of a stretch there mate.

Edit: didn't realise you said "any mammalian carnivore in history"

[Deleted]

Well actually it is a stretch because of aquatic creatures... actually know what, I'l just shut up.

[Hardcastle]

I think theundertaker45 's post is great and also I don't agree. Lots of good points, the one critical point of difference I have is I actually DON'T think bears are good grapplers insofar as controlling large game, and I think it will fail to secure control of the buffalo.

There are free ranging cattle that live alongside gigantic coastal brown bears in Alaska for 6 months of the year totally unsupervised. Come roundup the ranchers notice some scratches on the backs of the cattle from failed attempts and maybe have lost a calf or two, but no big deal and it's absolutely viable practice to graze cattle there totally unprotected. You can see some of this culture in the TV show "Alaska The last frontier", and you can at times see the behemoth bears wandering around among the cow herds. They aren't well equipped to grapple down a bovine, counter-intuitively.

Now, put them in a proverbial "phone booth" (would have to be bigger, obviously, but a confined space) and wait till one dies, then sure I think the buff will die more often than the bear. I just want to stress that bears, no matter how big, have a very hard time tackling and killing bovines (and the bigger bears may even have a harder time than smaller ones).

[CoolJohnson]

M. Bison wins this round.

[theundertaker45]

Hardcastle

Are you sure the infrequency of cattle kills by brown bears is a sign of incapability or something else? Cougars, coyotes and wolves are all attributed higher cattle mortality rates than brown bears or black bears by cattle farmers, yes. But anyone of those three has no other option but to eat meat. A brown bear is a generalist and doesn't need to; especially on Kodiak Island grabbing 20 salmons a day has higher nutritional value and much less risk than raiding a herd of bulls/cows. I've seen pictures and footage of black bears/brown bears entering the zone of cattle/domestic pigs and a lot of their attempts just seem half-hearted and basically like "I don't care, my Plan B is just as good or even better".

So in my eyes this wouldn't seem like a sign of incapability; just that there are better things to do for a brown bear. I am not aware of any regions where vegetation is so scarce that brown bears turn into pure hypercarnivores but some Tundra grizzlies (they probably weigh 140-150kg on average in males) kill muskoxen frequently (by bear standards) and they don't prefer calves over adults. I think to verify your hypothesis (that they are not capable and poor at tackling) you'd basically need to place a brown bear and cattle in an area with awful vegetation and leave no other option to the bear but to kill cattle in order to survive. Otherwise you'll always have the bear evaluating the situation and taking the easy way of preserving mass for hibernation and being in shape for breeding season as those are the two most important things in his life.

[Hardcastle]

theundertaker45

I think those are also really good points, but one could argue you're just outlining WHY bears are kind of inefficient and sloppy with killing large animals. Over millions of years, the fact they don't have to bother and have lots of other options, might just have left them less capable of doing so. All the physical strength and everything is obviously there, but the ability and nouse for subjugating and killing large prey seems diminished. That "lack of urgency" you describe to me IS part of who they are. There's a "use it or lose it" aspect to performance, and as you note they don't really need to tackle big game with great frequency, I believe this evolutionary condition has left them less capable to do so.
The polar bear to me is basically a brown bear where urgency and efficiency when it comes to killing large animals has been enhanced due to the necessity of it.

All this said, I'm feeling quite on the back foot from all the extensive testimonies of bear vs bull fights from the 1800s presented by "king bison" in the cesspit. I'm sure over the years I've heard/read them all before, but I kind of got "indoctrinated" into the widespread narrative that old accounts can be dismissed. I now think that's actually bullshit, but to be consistent I have to then revisit LOTS of old accounts, and now the time has come to revisit those...

It looks like brown bears can indeed kill healthy bulls. I would just say I'm still not totally wrong on my original assessment; Where I said- if forced into a confined space and they have to fight until one dies, the bear will probably eventually win more often than not. This seems well supported by the old accounts.
I still also maintain I'm not necessarily wrong when I say that bears aren't good at securing, subjugating and killing bovines. Without the confined space the likelihood of the bovine moseying off after an initial failed attempt seems high.
I think putting bears into this "defensive" situation is actually bringing the best out of them. Which is interesting. I think it brings the WORST out of felines but bears may elevate as killers when motivated by self-defense.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2023 12:41:21 GMT Hardcastle said:

theundertaker45

I think those are also really good points, but one could argue you're just outlining WHY bears are kind of inefficient and sloppy with killing large animals. Over millions of years, the fact they don't have to bother and have lots of other options, might just have left them less capable of doing so. All the physical strength and everything is obviously there, but the ability and nouse for subjugating and killing large prey seems diminished. That "lack of urgency" you describe to me IS part of who they are. There's a "use it or lose it" aspect to performance, and as you note they don't really need to tackle big game with great frequency, I believe this evolutionary condition has left them less capable to do so.
The polar bear to me is basically a brown bear where urgency and efficiency when it comes to killing large animals has been enhanced due to the necessity of it.

All this said, I'm feeling quite on the back foot from all the extensive testimonies of bear vs bull fights from the 1800s presented by "king bison" in the cesspit. I'm sure over the years I've heard/read them all before, but I kind of got "indoctrinated" into the widespread narrative that old accounts can be dismissed. I now think that's actually bullshit, but to be consistent I have to then revisit LOTS of old accounts, and now the time has come to revisit those...

It looks like brown bears can indeed kill healthy bulls. I would just say I'm still not totally wrong on my original assessment; Where I said- if forced into a confined space and they have to fight until one dies, the bear will probably eventually win more often than not. This seems well supported by the old accounts.
I still also maintain I'm not necessarily wrong when I say that bears aren't good at securing, subjugating and killing bovines. Without the confined space the likelihood of the bovine moseying off after an initial failed attempt seems high.
I think putting bears into this "defensive" situation is actually bringing the best out of them. Which is interesting. I think it brings the WORST out of felines but bears may elevate as killers when motivated by self-defense.

I think we need to remember these are 1000lb lean fighting bears that would beat the shit out of a wild bear. The big game predation and fighting abilities got a lot of practice.

[Hardcastle]

Feb 13, 2023 12:57:01 GMT Bolushi said:

Feb 13, 2023 12:41:21 GMT Hardcastle said:

theundertaker45

I think those are also really good points, but one could argue you're just outlining WHY bears are kind of inefficient and sloppy with killing large animals. Over millions of years, the fact they don't have to bother and have lots of other options, might just have left them less capable of doing so. All the physical strength and everything is obviously there, but the ability and nouse for subjugating and killing large prey seems diminished. That "lack of urgency" you describe to me IS part of who they are. There's a "use it or lose it" aspect to performance, and as you note they don't really need to tackle big game with great frequency, I believe this evolutionary condition has left them less capable to do so.
The polar bear to me is basically a brown bear where urgency and efficiency when it comes to killing large animals has been enhanced due to the necessity of it.

All this said, I'm feeling quite on the back foot from all the extensive testimonies of bear vs bull fights from the 1800s presented by "king bison" in the cesspit. I'm sure over the years I've heard/read them all before, but I kind of got "indoctrinated" into the widespread narrative that old accounts can be dismissed. I now think that's actually bullshit, but to be consistent I have to then revisit LOTS of old accounts, and now the time has come to revisit those...

It looks like brown bears can indeed kill healthy bulls. I would just say I'm still not totally wrong on my original assessment; Where I said- if forced into a confined space and they have to fight until one dies, the bear will probably eventually win more often than not. This seems well supported by the old accounts.
I still also maintain I'm not necessarily wrong when I say that bears aren't good at securing, subjugating and killing bovines. Without the confined space the likelihood of the bovine moseying off after an initial failed attempt seems high.
I think putting bears into this "defensive" situation is actually bringing the best out of them. Which is interesting. I think it brings the WORST out of felines but bears may elevate as killers when motivated by self-defense.

I think we need to remember these are 1000lb lean fighting bears that would beat the shit out of a wild bear. The big game predation and fighting abilities got a lot of practice.

That is something not many people are comfortable acknowledging, but seems to have a lot of anecdotal evidence/testimony. That is that captive "fighting" wild animals can actually become good at it and learn to love it. The animal forums have always sworn up and down it's purely only detrimental to their ability and any captive wild animal is a mere shell of it's wild counterpart.

This is contrasted with testimony from ancient rome, which details how you can't expect a wild-caught lion or tiger to perform at all. They brought them into the arena purely for them to die in confused terror. If they wanted lions and tigers to perform well and kill things, they had to be tame and captive raised. THEN they could learn to love their life and fight with enthusiasm and vigour, and actually achieve a resume of fight experience that probably put them above any wild specimen of their kind in a fight.

Hog Doggers in the USA find a similar phenomenon with tame captive hogs that are raised to be "dog killers". They can be nurtured and trained up to a point where they are a far more epic challenge than any wild-encountered hog ever will be. At the end of the day I think animals are more adaptable than we give them credit for, and can learn to accept their lot in life as a professional fighter. And when they do they can become better at fighting than a wild animal.

[theundertaker45]

@hardcastle

I want to clarify that I didn't say you're wrong. I generally avoid doing this when arguing about what the reason of infrequency is. There are like thousands of interpretations in this case and any of those could be right. Brown bears may have lost the know-how necessary to bring down big bulls due to them not depending on meat, as you said; they may also never really commit to a kill and their true capability will never show. I could even go as far as saying that brown bears are extremely intelligent and have learned over the past 300 years that raiding livestock will lead to getting exterminated. It often is the case that generalists show a certain degree of what I call "food intelligence" where they evaluate what the best solution is in order to stay healthy and live quite some time. So it could also be that they've learned not push cattle rangers to the edge.

What makes me think that brown bears can do well but don't show it is that in the pit-fights of the Old West it is mentioned how they came out on top regularly. I am very critical of historical information as the bandwidth of reliability is huge, from bullshit to actually documented case. In this case I am inclined to believe that the majority of what is written in there is true due to the amount of detail we have. They describe how they'd capture wild bears and throw them into the arena. And even if the bear killed the bull, they'd throw in another until the bear died from injuries. Those bears, the Californian grizzlies were on the large end as described by many trappers and historical naturalists. They estimated a fully grown adult to weigh roughly 800lbs which would make it larger than a typical interior grizzly of said age but smaller than a coastal grizzly/Kodiak bear. In Spain the fighting bulls normally average about 1200lbs I think, I don't know about the Old West but it should be pretty clear that the bears had to fight bulls considerably larger than themselves, at least 50% heavier. The difference is that the bulls were selectively bred for said fights and accustomed to all the psychological stress. The bears weren't and they were treated like shit. All brown bears in the USA were treated like shit during this time and they were driven extinct in many states. They were terrified from being forcefully thrown into a noisy arena, chained on a pole and having to fight a switched-on bull ready to kill them. If they succeded, they wouldn't get rest. They'd throw in as many bulls as necessary to leave the bear a bloody pulp. And still, the bears somehow succeeded and kept a better track record. This suggests to me that a brown bear has kind of a natural "talent" if you will and I think this mostly comes from the way he is built when looking at his morphology. Even with low experience the typical Ursus arctos build was too good to be defeated regularly by perfectly trained fighting bulls considerably heavier.

You mentioned that captive animals raised to fight may be better. I can't evaluate this but I can understand the argumentation on why it should be the case. It would probably need decades or centuries to fine-tune the genetics and it would be a question of how the fighting experience is acquired and if the fights go until the very end which means death. The truth s that we will never know, wild animals should live in the wilderness and that's it; we need them to survive. I could very well imagine that pit-fights started out with discussions we hold here, the difference being us doing them on a public forum and the people of the past doing so with each other in person and making it reality. At the end of the day, the important thing is that you gather new information and gain something from discussing; I think this thread is a pretty good one as it covers the whole spectrum. We have "Cape Buffalo wins 99% of the time", we have "It's a mismatch in favor of the brown bear" and we have a middle ground. And so far no war has broken loose which is nice to see as it is very rare.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2023 17:10:40 GMT theundertaker45 said:

@hardcastle

I want to clarify that I didn't say you're wrong. I generally avoid doing this when arguing about what the reason of infrequency is. There are like thousands of interpretations in this case and any of those could be right. Brown bears may have lost the know-how necessary to bring down big bulls due to them not depending on meat, as you said; they may also never really commit to a kill and their true capability will never show. I could even go as far as saying that brown bears are extremely intelligent and have learned over the past 300 years that raiding livestock will lead to getting exterminated. It often is the case that generalists show a certain degree of what I call "food intelligence" where they evaluate what the best solution is in order to stay healthy and live quite some time. So it could also be that they've learned not push cattle rangers to the edge.

What makes me think that brown bears can do well but don't show it is that in the pit-fights of the Old West it is mentioned how they came out on top regularly. I am very critical of historical information as the bandwidth of reliability is huge, from bullshit to actually documented case. In this case I am inclined to believe that the majority of what is written in there is true due to the amount of detail we have. They describe how they'd capture wild bears and throw them into the arena. And even if the bear killed the bull, they'd throw in another until the bear died from injuries. Those bears, the Californian grizzlies were on the large end as described by many trappers and historical naturalists. They estimated a fully grown adult to weigh roughly 800lbs which would make it larger than a typical interior grizzly of said age but smaller than a coastal grizzly/Kodiak bear. In Spain the fighting bulls normally average about 1200lbs I think, I don't know about the Old West but it should be pretty clear that the bears had to fight bulls considerably larger than themselves, at least 50% heavier. The difference is that the bulls were selectively bred for said fights and accustomed to all the psychological stress. The bears weren't and they were treated like shit. All brown bears in the USA were treated like shit during this time and they were driven extinct in many states. They were terrified from being forcefully thrown into a noisy arena, chained on a pole and having to fight a switched-on bull ready to kill them. And still, the bears somehow succeeded and kept a better track record. This suggests to me that a brown bear has kind of a natural "talent" if you will and I think this mostly comes from the way he is built when looking at his morphology. Even with low experience the typical Ursus arctos build was too good to be defeated regularly by perfectly trained fighting bulls considerably heavier.

You mentioned that captive animals raised to fight may be better. I can't evaluate this but I can understand the argumentation on why it should be the case. It would probably need decades or centuries to fine-tune the genetics and it would be a question of how the fighting experience is acquired and if the fights go until the very end which means death. The truth s that we will never know, wild animals should live in the wilderness and that's it; we need them to survive. I could very well imagine that pit-fights started out with discussions we hold here, the difference being us doing them on a public forum and the people of the past doing so with each other in person and making it reality. At the end of the day, the important thing is that you gather new information and gain something from discussing; I think this thread is a pretty good one as it covers the whole spectrum. We have "Cape Buffalo wins 99% of the time", we have "It's a mismatch in favor of the brown bear" and we have a middle ground. And so far no war has broken loose which is nice to see as it is very rare.

Yeah that first paragraph makes some sense, I've heard cougars and leopards would rather fight dogs on the ground than tree sometimes as if it knows the guy has a gun and it has better odds just fighting. Could it be that they learn instinctively?

[Hardcastle]

Feb 13, 2023 17:10:40 GMT theundertaker45 said:

@hardcastle

I want to clarify that I didn't say you're wrong. I generally avoid doing this when arguing about what the reason of infrequency is. There are like thousands of interpretations in this case and any of those could be right. Brown bears may have lost the know-how necessary to bring down big bulls due to them not depending on meat, as you said; they may also never really commit to a kill and their true capability will never show. I could even go as far as saying that brown bears are extremely intelligent and have learned over the past 300 years that raiding livestock will lead to getting exterminated. It often is the case that generalists show a certain degree of what I call "food intelligence" where they evaluate what the best solution is in order to stay healthy and live quite some time. So it could also be that they've learned not push cattle rangers to the edge.

Realising over time that hostile retaliations are associated with killing livestock is plausible. A counter point to that though may be looking at how viable free-ranging sheep are in bear country, and it seems the answer is "not very". In one study in Norway 94% of ewes killed by predators were killed by brown bears. Bears apparently have a strong preference for adult ewes over lambs, with bears being responsible for "only" 42% of lamb kills (sharing the load with wolves, wolverines, eagles, lynx, fox and dog).
link

In the study 51 out of 234 radio-collared ewes ended up being killed by bears. Just over 20%. Pretty significant. To my Australian eye that's an insane percentage of livestock to lose to predators. Farmers here would not just shoot the bear, they'd also shoot themselves if they had that proportion of their livestock killed per year.

Maybe Norweigans are just easy-going? And the bears know it?

There is also quite a bit on bears, black bears and brown bears, killing calves. There is also SOME on them killing adult cattle, don't get me wrong. But there seems to be an aversion to adult cattle, in addition to a general aversion to livestock.

Basically "a little of all of the above" would be my estimation. Careful about killing livestock due to human retaliation (perhaps varying from region to region based on the humans) is a factor, calculating (subconsciously, we should probably pressume) that the energy expenditure required for killing adult cattle is not optimal for weight gain (and therefore not really applying themselves on their half-assed attempts), that's another factor. AND also a little bit of a natural reduction in ability due to these factors causing diminished practice. A dulling of ability, vs the sharpening of ability that they would experience if they were doing it regularly and relying on cow meat to survive.

We don't have to choose one.

What makes me think that brown bears can do well but don't show it is that in the pit-fights of the Old West it is mentioned how they came out on top regularly. I am very critical of historical information as the bandwidth of reliability is huge, from bullshit to actually documented case. In this case I am inclined to believe that the majority of what is written in there is true due to the amount of detail we have. They describe how they'd capture wild bears and throw them into the arena. And even if the bear killed the bull, they'd throw in another until the bear died from injuries. Those bears, the Californian grizzlies were on the large end as described by many trappers and historical naturalists. They estimated a fully grown adult to weigh roughly 800lbs which would make it larger than a typical interior grizzly of said age but smaller than a coastal grizzly/Kodiak bear. In Spain the fighting bulls normally average about 1200lbs I think, I don't know about the Old West but it should be pretty clear that the bears had to fight bulls considerably larger than themselves, at least 50% heavier. The difference is that the bulls were selectively bred for said fights and accustomed to all the psychological stress. The bears weren't and they were treated like shit. All brown bears in the USA were treated like shit during this time and they were driven extinct in many states. They were terrified from being forcefully thrown into a noisy arena, chained on a pole and having to fight a switched-on bull ready to kill them. If they succeded, they wouldn't get rest. They'd throw in as many bulls as necessary to leave the bear a bloody pulp. And still, the bears somehow succeeded and kept a better track record. This suggests to me that a brown bear has kind of a natural "talent" if you will and I think this mostly comes from the way he is built when looking at his morphology. Even with low experience the typical Ursus arctos build was too good to be defeated regularly by perfectly trained fighting bulls considerably heavier.

Yes they are pretty good testimony for the brown bear. Described as mixed results but more often the bear won.

I find myself in the very unfamiliar territory of arguing "yeah but those are fights, not a predation scenario". Usually I'm debating cat fans in the opposite direction.
And some of the same principles hold up.
Cat fans love to argue that cats don't fight rival predators because it's foolish and why risk injury and it's smart and etc etc etc, all true, but there is a knock on effect then where if you don't do it for hundreds of thousands of years because it's smart not to, the end result is still that you have a diminished ability to do it, from not doing it.
No one is arguing it's not smart. But if your evolution encourages you to be "smart" in that way and very cleverly and carefully avoid risky conflict, then eventually you are an animal that no longer can perform well in risky conflict. If your instincts are telling you to be smart and not fight, that means they will punish you with feelings of dread and negativity when you do fight, and your performance will be shit. In the end you might be something that can look impressive killing things in a sneaky ambush that aligns with your instinct's idea of "smart" violence, but then look like crap and out of your depth when you find yourself embroiled in "dumb" violence (facing ogg a dangerous animal in a fair fight).

The bear seems to be experiencing the opposite of this. Under threat in a combative conflict scenario, it's rising to the challenge and performing quite well by beating up bulls. But in predation scenarios it's "wisely" not wasting it's energy and performs crappy. It seems more comfortable and confident and skilled with being assailed in a fight and defending itself, than when trying to secure and bring down something that wants to get away.

At the end of the day we're arguing "fights", so that's good news for bears. I just thought it worth pointing out that like cats look shitty in fights, bears sometimes look kind of shitty in predation attempts.

You mentioned that captive animals raised to fight may be better. I can't evaluate this but I can understand the argumentation on why it should be the case. It would probably need decades or centuries to fine-tune the genetics and it would be a question of how the fighting experience is acquired and if the fights go until the very end which means death. The truth s that we will never know, wild animals should live in the wilderness and that's it; we need them to survive. I could very well imagine that pit-fights started out with discussions we hold here, the difference being us doing them on a public forum and the people of the past doing so with each other in person and making it reality. At the end of the day, the important thing is that you gather new information and gain something from discussing; I think this thread is a pretty good one as it covers the whole spectrum. We have "Cape Buffalo wins 99% of the time", we have "It's a mismatch in favor of the brown bear" and we have a middle ground. And so far no war has broken loose which is nice to see as it is very rare.

Make no mistake, I think it's unethical either way to be making animals fight. Even if they get used to it and perform well and even look forward to the fights and seem to exhibit excitement. It's still totally F'd up. My point is more about people saying their performance is drastically diminished, that they're super depressed and atrophied from not patrolling territory and nothing compared to a wild specimen which will be much stronger and much more formidable and dangerous.

I don't think that's true. What seems to be true is a PAMPERED pet specimen has their performance greatly reduced. A wild animal that is fussed over and babied and treated well has drastically reduced fighting performance. But an "abused" fighting animal actually doesn't seem to, from the available indications. In fact it seems they can potentially surpass their wild counterparts.

And I don't even mean genetics. I just mean within an individual's life.
Like Tyson Fury could have been raised boxing and fighting, or he could have been raised lounging around painting flowers. His genes are the same regardless, but those are 2 extremely different hypothetical animals. A 3rd Tyson fury perhaps was raised as a wilderness survivor, hunting and running and building shelters and lets even say fighting some neighbours sometimes. That's a badass Tyson Fury, but it's still going to lose to the one that focussed on fighting the whole time. 3 different animals, same exact genes. The disparity in fighting between them would be huge.

But yes it could also take on another different level if the fighting tyson fury breeds with other female fighting tyson furies for generations, while the painting tyson fury breeds with painting female tyson fury's etc, the gap widens over the generations and they alter genetically to be more suited to their different lifestyle. Mentally and physically. But even the first gen Tyson fury was still altered by his own lifestyle to be a sharp fighting conditioned individual. Captive animals it seems can experience that "perk" also (with this in no way downplaying or diminishing the fact they are being abused).

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2023 20:23:25 GMT Hardcastle said:

Feb 13, 2023 17:10:40 GMT theundertaker45 said:

@hardcastle

I want to clarify that I didn't say you're wrong. I generally avoid doing this when arguing about what the reason of infrequency is. There are like thousands of interpretations in this case and any of those could be right. Brown bears may have lost the know-how necessary to bring down big bulls due to them not depending on meat, as you said; they may also never really commit to a kill and their true capability will never show. I could even go as far as saying that brown bears are extremely intelligent and have learned over the past 300 years that raiding livestock will lead to getting exterminated. It often is the case that generalists show a certain degree of what I call "food intelligence" where they evaluate what the best solution is in order to stay healthy and live quite some time. So it could also be that they've learned not push cattle rangers to the edge.

Realising over time that hostile retaliations are associated with killing livestock is plausible. A counter point to that though may be looking at how viable free-ranging sheep are in bear country, and it seems the answer is "not very". In one study in Norway 94% of ewes killed by predators were killed by brown bears. Bears apparently have a strong preference for adult ewes over lambs, with bears being responsible for "only" 42% of lamb kills (sharing the load with wolves, wolverines, eagles, lynx, fox and dog).
link

In the study 51 out of 234 radio-collared ewes ended up being killed by bears. Just over 20%. Pretty significant. To my Australian eye that's an insane percentage of livestock to lose to predators. Farmers here would not just shoot the bear, they'd also shoot themselves if they had that proportion of their livestock killed per year.

Maybe Norweigans are just easy-going? And the bears know it?

There is also quite a bit on bears, black bears and brown bears, killing calves. There is also SOME on them killing adult cattle, don't get me wrong. But there seems to be an aversion to adult cattle, in addition to a general aversion to livestock.

Basically "a little of all of the above" would be my estimation. Careful about killing livestock due to human retaliation (perhaps varying from region to region based on the humans) is a factor, calculating (subconsciously, we should probably pressume) that the energy expenditure required for killing adult cattle is not optimal for weight gain (and therefore not really applying themselves on their half-assed attempts), that's another factor. AND also a little bit of a natural reduction in ability due to these factors causing diminished practice. A dulling of ability, vs the sharpening of ability that they would experience if they were doing it regularly and relying on cow meat to survive.

We don't have to choose one.

What makes me think that brown bears can do well but don't show it is that in the pit-fights of the Old West it is mentioned how they came out on top regularly. I am very critical of historical information as the bandwidth of reliability is huge, from bullshit to actually documented case. In this case I am inclined to believe that the majority of what is written in there is true due to the amount of detail we have. They describe how they'd capture wild bears and throw them into the arena. And even if the bear killed the bull, they'd throw in another until the bear died from injuries. Those bears, the Californian grizzlies were on the large end as described by many trappers and historical naturalists. They estimated a fully grown adult to weigh roughly 800lbs which would make it larger than a typical interior grizzly of said age but smaller than a coastal grizzly/Kodiak bear. In Spain the fighting bulls normally average about 1200lbs I think, I don't know about the Old West but it should be pretty clear that the bears had to fight bulls considerably larger than themselves, at least 50% heavier. The difference is that the bulls were selectively bred for said fights and accustomed to all the psychological stress. The bears weren't and they were treated like shit. All brown bears in the USA were treated like shit during this time and they were driven extinct in many states. They were terrified from being forcefully thrown into a noisy arena, chained on a pole and having to fight a switched-on bull ready to kill them. If they succeded, they wouldn't get rest. They'd throw in as many bulls as necessary to leave the bear a bloody pulp. And still, the bears somehow succeeded and kept a better track record. This suggests to me that a brown bear has kind of a natural "talent" if you will and I think this mostly comes from the way he is built when looking at his morphology. Even with low experience the typical Ursus arctos build was too good to be defeated regularly by perfectly trained fighting bulls considerably heavier.

Yes they are pretty good testimony for the brown bear. Described as mixed results but more often the bear won.

I find myself in the very unfamiliar territory of arguing "yeah but those are fights, not a predation scenario". Usually I'm debating cat fans in the opposite direction.
And some of the same principles hold up.
Cat fans love to argue that cats don't fight rival predators because it's foolish and why risk injury and it's smart and etc etc etc, all true, but there is a knock on effect then where if you don't do it for hundreds of thousands of years because it's smart not to, the end result is still that you have a diminished ability to do it, from not doing it.
No one is arguing it's not smart. But if your evolution encourages you to be "smart" in that way and very cleverly and carefully avoid risky conflict, then eventually you are an animal that no longer can perform well in risky conflict. If your instincts are telling you to be smart and not fight, that means they will punish you with feelings of dread and negativity when you do fight, and your performance will be shit. In the end you might be something that can look impressive killing things in a sneaky ambush that aligns with your instinct's idea of "smart" violence, but then look like crap and out of your depth when you find yourself embroiled in "dumb" violence (facing ogg a dangerous animal in a fair fight).

The bear seems to be experiencing the opposite of this. Under threat in a combative conflict scenario, it's rising to the challenge and performing quite well by beating up bulls. But in predation scenarios it's "wisely" not wasting it's energy and performs crappy. It seems more comfortable and confident and skilled with being assailed in a fight and defending itself, than when trying to secure and bring down something that wants to get away.

At the end of the day we're arguing "fights", so that's good news for bears. I just thought it worth pointing out that like cats look shitty in fights, bears sometimes look kind of shitty in predation attempts.

You mentioned that captive animals raised to fight may be better. I can't evaluate this but I can understand the argumentation on why it should be the case. It would probably need decades or centuries to fine-tune the genetics and it would be a question of how the fighting experience is acquired and if the fights go until the very end which means death. The truth s that we will never know, wild animals should live in the wilderness and that's it; we need them to survive. I could very well imagine that pit-fights started out with discussions we hold here, the difference being us doing them on a public forum and the people of the past doing so with each other in person and making it reality. At the end of the day, the important thing is that you gather new information and gain something from discussing; I think this thread is a pretty good one as it covers the whole spectrum. We have "Cape Buffalo wins 99% of the time", we have "It's a mismatch in favor of the brown bear" and we have a middle ground. And so far no war has broken loose which is nice to see as it is very rare.

Make no mistake, I think it's unethical either way to be making animals fight. Even if they get used to it and perform well and even look forward to the fights and seem to exhibit excitement. It's still totally F'd up. My point is more about people saying their performance is drastically diminished, that they're super depressed and atrophied from not patrolling territory and nothing compared to a wild specimen which will be much stronger and much more formidable and dangerous.

I don't think that's true. What seems to be true is a PAMPERED pet specimen has their performance greatly reduced. A wild animal that is fussed over and babied and treated well has drastically reduced fighting performance. But an "abused" fighting animal actually doesn't seem to, from the available indications. In fact it seems they can potentially surpass their wild counterparts.

And I don't even mean genetics. I just mean within an individual's life.
Like Tyson Fury could have been raised boxing and fighting, or he could have been raised lounging around painting flowers. His genes are the same regardless, but those are 2 extremely different hypothetical animals. A 3rd Tyson fury perhaps was raised as a wilderness survivor, hunting and running and building shelters and lets even say fighting some neighbours sometimes. That's a badass Tyson Fury, but it's still going to lose to the one that focussed on fighting the whole time. 3 different animals, same exact genes. The disparity in fighting between them would be huge.

But yes it could also take on another different level if the fighting tyson fury breeds with other female fighting tyson furies for generations, while the painting tyson fury breeds with painting female tyson fury's etc, the gap widens over the generations and they alter genetically to be more suited to their different lifestyle. Mentally and physically. But even the first gen Tyson fury was still altered by his own lifestyle to be a sharp fighting conditioned individual. Captive animals it seems can experience that "perk" also (with this in no way downplaying or diminishing the fact they are being abused).

I've talked to some Norwegian guys and incidentally they were soft spoken pacifists. Not sure how it holds up for rugged farmers though.