Dogo Argentino vs Cougar

[grippingwhiteness]

Oct 8, 2023 20:26:19 GMT Hardcastle said:

Intended to respond last night, but ran out of time, hopefully tonight.

I had to edit it slightly to add the part about the little leopard cub dying but mortally injuring a larger robustly built stray dog lol. 

[Bolushi]

Oct 9, 2023 14:28:29 GMT grippingwhiteness said:

Oct 8, 2023 20:26:19 GMT Hardcastle said:

Intended to respond last night, but ran out of time, hopefully tonight.

I had to edit it slightly to add the part about the little leopard cub dying but mortally injuring a larger robustly built stray dog lol. 

I saw that a while back. Not a bad feat for either tbh.

[grippingwhiteness]

Oct 9, 2023 15:32:41 GMT Bolushi said:

Oct 9, 2023 14:28:29 GMT grippingwhiteness said:

I had to edit it slightly to add the part about the little leopard cub dying but mortally injuring a larger robustly built stray dog lol. 

I saw that a while back. Not a bad feat for either tbh.

Well I didn't add it to hype the leopard, just to make clear how harmless a pariah dog would be for a fully grown leopard since they are able to lose even to 6 month old cubs. It was just to make clear the difference between a gripping dog and a pariah dog.

If a pariah dog survives a leopard, that's luck. 
If a gripping dog survives a leopard, it's because OF the gripping dog. Not because of luck, but because of the gripping dog's tenacity. That's the difference.

[Hardcastle]

Oct 8, 2023 14:43:07 GMT grippingwhiteness said:

I think that it depends. By my estimate , the opposite is probably true in terms of frequency (which means it is not always the case). I generally analyzed and counted in details all accounts favoring cougars and accounts favoring dogos - and from what I've seen 90% of best dogo performances are in pens while nearly 70% of cougar best performances lie in the wild. My guess is that sometimes habituation of captive cougars to human and world overall makes them way less likely to develop a defensive killer instinct that a wild cougar is likely to develop, and obviously the chances to create a pampered wuss wuss are way more likely.

Oh for sure the likelihood of pampered wuss, even if unintentional, is definitely more likely with captive pumas than wild pumas. There's a "basement" for wild pumas that is going to be higher, there's a lowness possible with captive pumas that is not possible in wild populations. All wild pumas are going to be at a certain level of rugged and tough just to survive into adulthood, or even past infancy probably.

But two caveats to that-
a) The wild ones can still be broken
b) some captive ones won't be pampered wusses (just as some captive dogs won't be).

And I think when you are talking about the best... I don't know for sure, but it may be that sparring with dogs regularly possibly gets some captive pumas up to a higher level than wild pumas, at least in the specific art of fighting a dog.

I also think capturing an adult wild puma, and then throwing it in a pen with dogs, actually gets worse results than raising a cub to fight dogs. And I think this was noted pretty clearly in records of the roman arena as well. They basically said it is not possible to make a wild caught cat fight well in the arena. The captives raised to fight were the only way you could put on those spectacles where the lions would eat the christians or fight the gladiator or whatever. Or perform like "victor". He wasn't a wild caught puma, he was raised from a baby in captivity, and needed to be.

A wild cougar for example has never seen a human or a dog in it's entire life and obviously getting surrounded by such weird animals is so unusual and alien for it that it will display a way more aggressive performances more often than not.

Is that good? Being all aggressive and freaked out in an alien situation is generally not considered to facilitate better performance than being calm and composed and familiar with a situation. A professional sports team will show up to the city they are playing in a week in advance and get accustomed to the pitch or stadium or whatever. Fighters spar constantly so they aren't a fish out of water with too much nervous energy in a fight.

I think ideally for even the wild cougar in a wild setting it has the mentality of "ok, here we go again, another rival predator has a problem *cracks knuckles*", rather than "wtf is this?! What are those things?! Whats going on?!?!". The former mental state is more conducive to performing well.

I really don't know how to explain this "habituation" thing well. Obviously I'm not claiming that it's always the case, the cougar who defeated caru, the cougar who defeated Tupac and the alleged experienced fighter Tarzan who likely defeated multiple dogos in separate 1v1 pens in the course of his life are the exceptions. But overall, my take is that a wild cougar is more likely to show off a more aggressive defense than a captive cougar more often than not.

One way we differ is I don't think aggressive defense is necessarily a good thing. In general you are often impressed with it (with paw trapped pumas, with the leopards surrounded by lions, etc_ and I see it as "posturing" and not actually impressive performance. It is trying to convince the attacker to please go away. Good performance is performed in a calm steady confident state.
This is why cats impress me during their ambush assassinations, in that situations they seem like elite professionals because they are "chill" and calm and confident and utilising minimal wasted movements of their body, making minimal noise and minimal fuss, just executing the perfect kill.

The dogs I like show similar body language and mental clarity and composure in a fight. They aren't worked up, they aren't "aggressive", they are just executing the gameplan smoothly and professionally.

Now, the aggressive defense of cats DOES also cause damage, and sometimes a lot of damage, which I understand makes it kind of complicated and the line is blurry between "aggressive display" and "fighting" with wildcats, whereas for dogs it isn't. In dog vs dog, the aggressive displaying dog is basically definitely doomed and stands no chance against the calm composed dog. Does don't really have an effective defense to ward off attackers, wolves kind of do, and coyotes, and dogs like german shepherds and even to some extent collies and heelers and some other dogs kind of do, where they bare their teeth and growl and can kind of deliver snapping painful bites. In the case of wolves genuinely deadly ones at times, german shepherds probably do the best defensive bites out of any domestic dog I'm familiar with, but it is all kind of lame compared to the calm offensive attack of a dog focussed on actually winning who doesn't want to "ward off", but rather wants to kill.

So that is why even with cats when they are in the defensive state I'm just not really impressed. I'm impressed with the reflexes and agility and explosive acrobatics they might display in that state, but as far as fighting I am wanting to see them be more calm and offense-minded. A couple of fights with dogos seem to showcase something more like that, and those are- like I have said many times, the cases where the puma is able to actually grab the dog and pin it out and bite it. I think even one paw-trapped puma did that, and in those photos I believe it was the caru case or whatever. Those are when I'm like "ok, I see you cat".
The defensive aggression doesn't really butter my biscuit, but maybe I need to open my mind a little because it can do damage as well. In that way they differ from dogs and human beings.

But given all I said above, in accordance with what impresses me performance wise, I think an experienced captive dog-fighting puma is probably more likely to be able to achieve that mental state in a fight, because it has seen it all before and knows the game.

Even though also I agree they are also more liable to be total pussies. There are total pussies, savage rugged "wild" hard-men, and then calm confident professional.

A much bigger percentage of captives are total pussies, maybe no wild specimen is a total pussy.
A much bigger percentage of wild specimens are savage hard-men, most. Some captives would also be savage hard men, but much less.
I think calm confident professionals are probably more prevalent among experienced captive dog sparring partners. But also some would exist in the wild as well. Just macho males who are not scared and "know" in their heart they can destroy any dog in front of them. But I do believe this level of composure and confidence in a dog-fight would be more common in captives used for that purpose.

All in all... maybe the wild specimens are more likely to put up at least some kind of decent performance that isn't totally shit. But I think we shouldn't scoff at the good captives either, and don't pressume "if a captive can do that... WELL absolutely a wild one would do SOO much worse". I don't think that is true (and lots of people always used to say that).

I don't think the wild crazy defensive aggression is the best way to play with these dogs, it might serve to cause good damage (we have multiple cases now where it did), but it is designed to intimidate and hurt antagonists and make them quit. We know that is kind of "barking up the wrong tree" with these dogs. It is better if you are just "all in" on really winning via full blown offense. Don't waste any energy trying to scare the dog, you will need that energy. That is what I think.

That's because a wild cougar will always fight the enemy like an alien species, very hard for me to define that. I guess that does also happen with hunans - we give the strongest and fiercest resistance to new intruders and enemies than with people we are used to interact with.

I know what you are saying, the wild ones will always AT LEAST do that, but I am more impressed with the ones who don't treat the dog like an alien species, and instead treat it like "just another enemy" like it is no big deal. I think a couple have done that, and those are the performances that impress me. I am just less impressed than you are with aggressive frenzies, we may never see eye to eye on that. And I'm not even gonna say I'm right you are wrong, because the fact is aggressive frenzies work sometimes too. Coco looks like they got "aggressive frenzied" really really bad, nearly to death. That style can be effective for cats and I should acknowledge that. But I'll always be more impressed with the calm and composed combatant.

Of course the total pampered wuss who knows nothing of violence is by far the least impressive. Such specimens abound in both species, and yes they are all in the "captive" category.

Hope I somehow managed to explain how I view it, it's obviously a frequency matter - I don't deny a captive cougar can perform better than a wild one. My take is that they won't perform as good in terms of frequency - because captive like can sometimes raise a cougar with less aggressive and savage defensive nature.

I think I can agree, frequency of doing decently is much higher in wild than in captive. Frequency of doing nothing and being a sheltered naive wuss, much much higher in captive than in wild (possibly absent in wild).

You once claimed this on Wildanimalwarfare, it's weird because based on how you worded it it would seem like you have my same identical view at least on the frequency thing :

That's why a wild animal in the wild is a challenge. Because they are going to compete with an attitude not of "poor me, why?! this is horrible!!!" but rather, "Oh yeah? You think you're gonna get me you fuckin dog?! Try this on for size you mother fucker *ruck and gore and attack* Yeah!! haha! Fuck you!". A wild one in the wild would me more of a challenge, because it's not habitual for it to be in such situation with a dog and it will act the more aggressive it can if it gets attacked - on defense

Yeah so the last two words are key though - on defense.

I think I've actually turned a corner on cats in a positive way, in that I now believe they CAN adapt to "captive gladitorial" and learn to live that life and be about it, which to me is actually to their credit. I didn't used to think they had it in them. Wild boars do, and bears do. They can actually learn to enjoy fighting and take to it, accept it is their life now, accept it is their normal, and actually get their kicks and pleasure from beating things up in a pit/pen/cage. In my mind cats were SO non-combative they could never take to this because they are so averse to being seen and being persecuted and assailed. Especially leopards and pumas, with lions possibly taking to it (as evidenced by the accounts of the roman arenas, and others, even wallace).
But then I heard about victor, then I heard about these scattered "famous" captive dog killer pumas, the leopard in the circus that killed the boarhounds, etc etc. Even the jaguars who did well... these all seem indicative of cats rolling up their sleeves and accepting they are captive fighters now and learning to make lemonade with those lemons. For that I give them credit.

Your point is right, that wild animals will at least be savage mean bastards, captives may not be. But I believe there is a higher level than savage mean bastard- actually confident and composed fighter who likes it. That is the pinnacle. So sure they will win, that they will enjoy doing it and take pleasure calmly doing it, and feel no need to try and "communicate" aggression. Such individuals have shown themself in the wild and in captivity. Its that "macho swagger" thing I have talked about that you sense in some individual males (almost exclusively, but I can think of 1 or 2 leopardesses maybe that demonstrated some, and also some lionesses I have seen in docos over the years). The thing is they AREN'T aggressive, but its even worse news for their opponents.

Dogs like serious apbts and good dogos and etc are just bred like this as a rule (and duds pop up, often, but should be culled from serious working lines. AREN'T in bad lines, and that is where you see the complaints like "nerve issues" and "fear biting" and etc).
They don't display aggression, they even whine like a little baby if they are held back from fighting. Like no need to try and act tough and mean and scare the opponent, they sincerely want to fight. That is the real deal. And yes I think it can exist in cats.

They all have this attitude when they are ambushing their preferred prey, that look in the eyes of a stalking cat. It WANTS the smoke.


On the other hand, this tiger-

It's savage snarl might send a chill up your spine, it looks more intimidating than the first pic, but the poor thing is actually scared. The top cat is not.

Go in that cage and it will slash you to pieces, but it's a defensive fearful attack, and that attack is actually not it's peak performance. Lots of superfluous energy wasting movements.

When a cat can have the attitude of the tiger in the top photo, but in a face to face fight? Just sincere desire to engage? That is peak. I have seen it from time to time in the most macho and confident experienced boss cats.
And yes it defines the gripping dog lineage. They want to fight, sincerely, because evolutionarily that was their path to optimal breeding success. And scaring away the opponent wasn't an option.

killed by a female leopard 

I know that account, I don't think it was a female leopard - isn't "panther" a feminine term? Maybe that's why it was referred as "her". In Italian it's feminine, "pantera". Tiger is also a feminine word in italian, maybe that's why it referred as "her" while not actually referring to the sex of the leopard?
That's why I don't think it was a female.

No in that account from Fredrick Hick it is definitely a female. There was a male and a female courting, and he tried to line them up so he could shoot them both with one bullet, he shot the big male and the bullet went through it but only wounded the female in a limb. So he took the crazy bulldog to track the leopardess and then it ran ahead of him and got into a fight with it in rocky hilly country where the guy couldn't access. When he finally climbed up and down the rocky escarpments he ultimately found the dog dead from a bite to the back of the skull. He then shot the wounded leopardess.

So, full credit to a female in that instance. Not even a "kill from the bottom accumulating injuries", it directly killed the dog which I like to see for a decisive dominating victory. And did so pressumably while nursing a wounded limb.
The dog to be frank was assuredly smaller than her, like I said it is rare to find a "bulldog" from the late 1800s that is bigger than 40 lbs, maybe 60 lbs at most. Typically that will be a bull-mastiff, but they call bulldogs, bull-terriers and bull-mastiffs all "bulldogs" in casual conversation. Still, EVEN bull-mastiffs are often described as 40 lbs. Weirdly different to what we understand today. So.. quite confident the dog was outweighed by the leopardess, probably half its size, maybe less. Female or not, we should keep that in mind.

But I definitely can't argue the dog wasn't legit. It killed many animals, including multiple hounds, a pony, a donkey and a bull.

It also fought a leopard earlier with no help and survived-

The first blood-trail I put him on to was that of a cheetle stag which I had wounded. The dog went off without hesitation and I and my men followed as best we could ; but after a time the blood-trail stopped, so having nothing further to go on, we were obliged to give up the chase and as night was approaching we returned to camp, leaving the perverse beast to find his way back as best he could ; though I secretly hoped he never would, for I was always in dread that he might some day kill one of my favourite dogs. Indeed, there seemed little chance of his returning, as the place swarmed with panthers and pantherets, so I was a bit surprised next morning to see a forlorn-looking spectacle turn up, torn and bleeding from head to tail ; it was very evident that he had had a right royal turn up with a panther or pantheret, and his presence showed that he had got the better of him too— may be had killed him, unless he escaped by getting up a tree, for I am convinced the dog would otherwise have fought on until either one or the other were killed.
However, I doctored the pitiful object, and in a few days' time he was as right as ever and 'spailin' for another fight. In this I was able to gratify him.

The author is even of the opinion the dog won that fight (possibly even killed the leopard he says - though I agree this speculation is baseless and far-fetched), so full credit to the female leopard in the end who killed it.


I think I actually butchered the quote as I look back at it, so no wonder you didn't get the full story, copy and pasting from free old book files is often choppy I have found. Yes... looking now at the book again a whole page failed to be copied. I swear I didn't even realise-

I was so taken up in watching these antics that I did not at first notice that there was a second spectator to the scene, namely, another panther, a female, the one on the ground being a male. The latter, after rolling the goat about for a bit, got up and began to purr, walking up and down by the side of the outstretched goat ; then, suddenly turning round, he went up to his mate and punted her in the side with his head and rubbed himself along the side of her body, a caress which was received by the lady with a growl. I should here mention that this was the breeding season. It was a pretty sight, but as the male turned to repeat his importunities, the hunter's instinct in me got the better of my softer mood, and realizing that this was an opportunity to bag two panthers with one bullet, I waited until the two animals were again parallel with each other, and aiming high up on the shoulder of the male, I fired. The male dropped on the spot, but the female dashed away to my right, roaring loudly, I having failed to get in my second barrel on account of the smoke which hung densely in the damp evening air, this being in the days when smokeless powder was unknown. I heard the female panther roar at intervals several times as she went along a hillside behind me, which made me think that she was only hit in the forearm or paw and was expressing her opinion in unladylike language each time she tried to use the injured limb.

After putting another bullet into the male panther, to make sure, I got down from my tree, when, to my utter astonishment, the goat jumped up, and commenced to show his delight at seeing me by bleating loudly. On examining the little beast, I was still more surprised to find that he had scarcely a scratch on htm.He must have been paralyzed with fright, for I can hardly credit a kid with sufficient sense as to sham.

Next morning I brought out my bull-dog with the object of putting him on the trail of the wounded panther, though in doing so I felt that I was sending him to his " happy hunting ground," but it was infinitely better for him to die in this way than by my bullet, which was what it had come to, for of late he had become an intolerable nuisance and a constant danger to my other dogs, in whose company, of course, I could never hunt him.

The moment he smelt the blood of the panther on the ground, he became terribly excited and strained at his leash ; as soon as he was let go, he scurried off on the scent at such a pace, that we had no chance of keeping up with him.

We followed as fast as we could, but the going was very rough and steep, so that it was some time before we reached the crest of the ridge, where we halted a few moments to regain our wind.

Below us, on the further side of the ridge, was a densely-wooded dell filled with an undergrowth of dense grass and bushes, through which trickled a narrow stream of water. Suddenly, from this spot arose a tremendous uproar, for the plucky old dog had found the wounded panther, and without any further hesitation or delay had tackled it ; while the latter, rendered furious by its wound, was quite willing to meet him halfway in the matter.

A revulsion of feeling now came over me, and I would have given anything to save the brave dog's life. I dashed down the hillside regardless of obstacles, with the inevitable result that I soon found that I was travelling faster than my legs would carry me, and finally, taking a header down about thirty yards of hillside, I fetched up in a thorny bush. By the time I recovered my legs, the uproar below me had ceased, and I realized that I was too late, and that it was all over with the brave old dog ; but I could avenge him, and that was my one thought, as 1 again dashed forward to the spot which I had previously marked from above.

On reaching it, I almost stumbled over the body of the dog. It was stone dead, killed by a bice in the back of its head. At the same time I heard a noise on the other side of the nalla, and on looking up, I saw the panther making off along the opposite side of the ravine. I was only able to get a snapshot, but it told on her, for she spun round roaring, and came blundering down the hillside straight for me. I waited until she neared the edge of the water before I gave her the contents of my second barrel. The bullet struck her in the nape of the neck, breaking the vertebra, and of course killing her instantly, though her impetus carried her on until she toolt a header into the nalla below, burying her head and forequarters deep in the ooze.

On pulling her out, we found that my bullet of the night before had completely shattered her forearm ; but we found more than this, namely, that a large portion of the skin and a part of the flesh of the forearm was torn off. On examining the dog, we found the missing portions in his mouth. We took him back to camp in a hammock made out of cloth, with the dead panther slung on a pole behind him. It was a sorrowful and yet a triumphant return, for what more glorious end could a dog have !

We buried him at the foot of a Peepul tree, the " Ficus religiosa " of India.

That hopefully makes it more clear, definitely a female.

In leopard country it does to be very rare and most of the time it was group of hunting dogs from what I've seen (even in Cape town where leopards are boergreyhound sized mostly

First- just remember that group or not is beside the point when it comes to viability. If you are talking free-running catch dogs- boarhounds like dogo argentinos, you can have a pack all you want, the reality is each individual dog is liable to find and lug up the animal by itself when no other dog and no person is around. With lead-in catch dogs used with bay dogs it is different, you can wait until you can see the animal and then release 2 or 3 or 4 or whatever catch dogs at the same time so that they all work as a team to subjugate the target. But with running catch dogs you can't orchestrate the hunt to that extent, and that is why they train dogos to fight pumas 1 on 1 in pens, as opposed to train a team of dogos to fight pumas in pens.
Just have to get that point out of the way again, it was also noted in the old book by sanderson with his little bulldogs. It is imperitive to use them as lead-in catch dogs and release them as a team, if they run free on the hunt then 1 is going to get into it with a panther or whatever by itself, and be killed.
When you use running catch dogs it is a given they WILL end up in 1 on 1 fights with the quarry. That is why Baker, as opposed to sanderson, had 100-130 lbs dogs. Vs Sanderson's 35-40 lbs dogs. Thats running catch dogs vs lead-in catch dogs. Running catch dogs need to be able to fight alone far from help.

That is the first thing.

Second- it is rare, and that is significant and worthy of consideration. To me, if I was a catfan, that would be my preferred argument. Like you have all these boarhounds in australia and new zealand and argentina and hawaii, and historically all over medieval europe, but it is oddly quiet with such dogs in North America, in Brazil, in Africa, Asia, Russia...

That argument makes me a little nervous if I'm being honest. These historical books from India and Sri Lanka are a bit of a saving grace, but only 1 of these 3 I keep using features running catch dogs. The other two have lead-in catch dogs (and in one, the problem with one small lead-in catch dog being allowed to run ahead was realised in dramatic fashion, in the other the author explicitly outlines the problem with it).
Samuel Baker and his big boarhounds Smut and Pirate and Brinn and etc (can't remember all their names) are kind of holding the fort down for running catch dogs in leopard country. The absence or scarcity is still concerning. There are maritsane/steekhar in south africa, and the boergreyhound guy did also have a very cool looking boerboel/boergrey hybrid for warthogs. There's a bit of a running catch dog presence in SA, and seems to be a bit of one in Pakistan too. Historical USA had "old southern boarhounds" (though it seems they may have actually been slave dogs more so than actual boar hunters). But still you can't ignore that running catch dog scenes seem to generally be few and far between and go quiet coincidentally where cats get big and problematic.

That's ... something. Something to dwell on.

But equally, the strong presence of free running boarhounds in argentina amongst the puma in that location at least (and targetting the puma), that is also something. That is a big thing. These two observations are equally significant and hold a decent amount of weight. It implies maybe boarhounds can generally (not consistently without risk or hazard, but generally) best pumas in fights in argentina, and it also sadly implies maybe it is too hazardous in north america, canada (they don't seem to have any catch dogs at all), africa north of the bushveld, in India... kinda seems like you need lead-ins even historically. In pakistan seems to be kind of ok and sri lanka seems ok, both still kind of subdued and quiet. Not a peep in Russia...

If you looked at humans as the simple apes they are and boarhounds as a natural animal, you could start wondering if they aren't being "supressed" in some areas, noting their distribution and density around the world... possibly see a correlation with cats...

I love this argument and hate it at the same time... love it because it is interesting, hate it because it is actually pretty strong and may be damning to boarhound supremacy.

and even there there's around 5 cases of boarhounds like Boerboels getting killed or seriously maimed despite leopards being small

Just let me stop you- boerboels are not boarhounds, they are bulldogs, and they are explicitly long retired bloated useless bulldogs. Seeing the boerboels dancing around the snared leopard and barking at it fearfully... (like I said, except for the one taking a shit who didn't care either way), that says it all. I don't argue that the average boerboel can beat anything. I have seen a very select few legit boerboels, most are awful and most would lose to leopards and brown hyenas and everything. And they have lost to all those and I don't mind, because I have already said they will.
(although, once or twice I may have envisioned an optimal boerboel and argued for it, I actually want to start moving away from doing that).

whereas there's also a report from an old book telling that Bloodhounds, mastiffs and Bullmastiffs going in close quarters with large game including leopards had the dogs killed or terribly injured - makes me guess-estimate that it wasn't a good end for the dog for most time it was alone in close quarters with leopards.

I have seen that and I see it as a warning of what "can" happen, and I don't doubt that can happen. I think they would readily word the danger of boars in the same way, it doesn't actually mean the dogs CAN'T do it, rather means they CAN be killed doing it. I think the book talking about such dogs doing it is of more interest than that flippant remark.

We also have them explicitly using boarhounds, bloodhounds and wolfhounds to tame circus cats that lose their shit and go haywire, that is not a small thing. Like the dogo situation, like the Baker in Ceylon situation, we are seeing that such dogs are a viable tool to subjugate and make mild these impressive majestic wild cat species. I think that is something that should be known.

They do seem to be a dangerous quarry, even at smaller size considering I'd bet these cats weren't any large than 100-120 lbs. I also did one for dogos and pumas, we apparently have 9 cases (can increase to 10-11 if we include tarzan or images where it seems the cougar is getting the best) of pumas performing better and winning against 7 cases of dogos (5 of which pens) getting the upper hand. Apparently it's not a 50-5 difference but more a 50-50 difference when it comes to results and 95% of this is at lower sizes (90-110 lbs), with the only exceptions of the alleged dogo-slayer named Tarzan and the cougar who defeated Tupac claimed to be "large".

There is still room for interpretation on what actually qualifies as "getting the better of". I readily heap superfluous praise on the cats when they do the pin and kill, or even pin and nearly kill. That to me is actual domination.
I'm less hyped than you about the spaz-outs, injuries not withstanding. As pained over earlier in this post, there is a big difference for me. The "messy damage inflicted all over the dog's body", and some of the other cases where you are really "high" on he cat performance, I am considerably less high and some I deem insignificant. Even the "kills from the bottom" are kind of not truly convincing to me. It's kind of dog domination, in fact. Thing is I feel much more strongly about the simple fact the dogs can control and dominate the cats in the grapple, rather than necessarily kill the cats or cause injury on the cats. I don't assert those are strengths of the dog, I specifically believe their lugging/subjugation prowess/skill is what is better than cats up to a certain weight at parity. Given that, I have seen, for me, more support for the dogs. More support for my assertion, that the dogs more often than not are pinning the cats rather than vice versa.
The exceptions seem to nearly always be much bigger cats. Though not always.

We have different perspectives and different things we are focussing on. Which can be a problem, but could also be seen as us not actually disagreeing as much as it seems about "reality", rather just having different values as to what we deem important and what we choose to be focussing on.

The largest leopard a working dog has ever dealt with, in my opinion, was probably that sri lankan leopard from Nuwara Eliya described to be a "giant" that killed the favorite working mastiff of a professional hunter of the place ( so that was probably a working boarhound and a very powerful one to be "his favourite") which I could estimate to be 170-178 lbs whereas the dog might have been I don't know anywhere from 100 - 125 lbs perhaps even 130 lbs.


Here's the extract -

"It was when I left. A pantheon of hills near Ella's Gap, a few miles from Bandarawela and Nuwara Eliya, covered with bushes of Camellia thea, the finest Assam indigenous plants. A steep undulating rainy tea garden where the water drains without washing away the soil. Some years we get six hundred pounds of tea an acre, nearly half again the average.

The estate backs onto the jungle near two great rocks where Derrick's father once lay out all night with his rifle and shot a giant leopard that had killed his favorite mastiff, right on the steps of the verandah. He always said it was the long-tailed forest monkeys that helped him hunt the leopard, their natural enemy." Alexander had grown interested. "Everyone has one."
She smiled at this male interest in the details of hunting. "You could never see or hear the leopard, but one could hear the monkeys, howling as they swung through the jungle canopy above the cat. Mr. Hammond was nodding asleep just before sunrise after a long night on one of the rocks that stand like giant gateposts where the forest meets the verge of the plantation. Then the monkeys began crying at the edge of the forest. For the first time he heard the sawing cough of the leopard as it answered them. The cat finally stepped out between the base of the rocks below him. He said it was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. More than nine feet long, nose to tail. Nearly black, since its

Here's the book :

books.google.it/books?id=U-BHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT255&dq=leopard+kills+mastiff&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=leopard%20kills%20mastiff&f=false

Eh... I read a lot of stuff from this time period. Believe it or not, "Mastiff" already meant "retired show-dog english mastiff" and had for hundreds of years (before dog shows were invented).

I just detailed this story on bestiary. It is very unique in dog history. The pet english mastiff took out the "trademark" on the "mastiff" term very early in history. Then when the English travelled around they started calling other big dogs from other exotic countries mastiffs (like tibetan mastiffs and turkish mastiffs and even alpine mastiffs for St Bernards), and later started calling bloated pet bulldogs mastiffs as well. BUT in their little world of english dogs, mastiffs were uniquely non-working by the 1800s. The mastiff was being "preserved" by Lyme Hall since 1415. Prior to that, its ancestors were mongrel boarhounds. A lot of those paintings of random mongrel dogs hunting boars, the ones that look like bull arabs, are actually the working ancestors of the english mastiff.

Boars went extinct in england in the 1600s, actually started getting rare earlier still, but working mongrel boarhounds went extinct in the 1600s.

However, earlier, a man by the name of "Sir Piers Legh of Lyme" famously had his Boarhound protect him in the battle of Agincourt when he was wounded. Him and his family were so stoked with that dog, that they started breeding these "mastiffs" for the sake of it. No longer hunting boars, no longer using them in wars, just breeding them and keeping them around. That started in 1415, but mongrel boarhounds (which some people called mastiffs, the word is derived from "mansuetere" meaning "to tame" as they "tame" wild beasts) continued working and hunting in england for another couple of hundred years while the "Mastiffs of lyme hall" lineage were just being bred as pets. And bred to be big.
By the 1600s they still looked pretty cool, and kind of like boarhounds-

But see what it is doing in this image? That was their job, just hanging around the house with kids. They even called them "chamber hounds".

The working boardogs go extinct, along with boars, and then all you have are these "mastiffs of lyme", these chamber dogs. For hundreds of years they are bred as pets and show dogs to be big, before showdogs even get invented. They were "the mastiff". When the english went abroad in the 1800s and wanted to hunt big game in exotic locations they only had bull-terriers, bull-dogs and bull-mastiffs (gripping dog wise), which were all working as fighting/baiting dogs, the latter a bit as poacher-hunting dogs. If they wanted boarhounds, they crossed these dogs with greyhounds, deerhounds and wolfhounds (and sometimes foxhounds as well). This is how they made both "boarhounds" and "bloodhounds". They were reinvented as the mutts they originally were, "the mastiff" was too far gone and just a big couch potato. Its lineage had been non-working since 1415.

By the 1800s mastiffs already looked like these-



So let me correct you, it would not have weighed 100-130 lbs, it probably weighed 180-200+ lbs. But it would have been a worthless lump of crap.

Leopards can prey on any dog anyway, including good working dogs, and including huge dogs, like the huge alabai being dragged away by a leopard-



And the enormous wolfhound Jane Goodall reported being dragged away by a leopard.

I'm not trying to say a leopard couldn't kill a good big boarhound or whatever (especially a 9 foot male beast like that one), but I'm just saying that was almost definitely a bullcrap dog if he was calling it "mastiff". Mastiff with no qualifier among the british at that time was established as synonymous with "the english mastiff", long retired (400+ years retired) big pet dogs.
If he said bloodhound or boarhound or wolfhound or seizer it would be safe to assume huge working gripping dog type dog (and bulldog, bull-terrier or bull-mastiff would mean compact gripping dog), but mastiff actually means couch potato pet in the 1800s.

I don't think that a dog being severely injured and torn open from head to tail indicates that the dog had the upper hand, it is way more likely to be a stalemate where neither is controlling the other but the cat is on the uprise to surpass the dog in damage delivering department which , if it goes on till the end, would make the dog collapse like Herkules or that Pakistani mastiff against a leopard in Herat.

I agree to some extent, wounds all over a dog has stalemate, or period of undecided action, implications. After that period one may gain control, however.

Smut wasn't one case btw. He multiple times fought leopards.

He had several pitched battles with leopards, from which he has returned frightfully torn, but with his yellow hair bristled up, his head and stern erect; and his deep growl, with which he gave a dubious reception to both man and beast, was on these occasions doubly threatening.

He disappeared from camp and come back with leopard scratches, multiple times. He'd seek them out in his free time.
One specific case is given a little more detail in another book, very similar to the bulldog case above where the humans gave up on a trail but the dog continued and then returned home hours later with leopard wounds but didn't let anyone tend to them (was surly and people aggressive, unlike many boarhounds).

The wounds could mean stalemate, could also mean took him a few attempts to gain control, the absence of any severe injuries is still pretty telling.

Because of who the dog was and his other accomplishments (like even how he died, was an accomplishment), I naturally lean towards guessing the leopards did not have a good time. But we will never really know.

Most pens where dogos have controlled and subdued cougars had few scratches damage, 90% on their face, few injuries indicates that they were able to overpower the cat and take way less damage as the cat couldn't rake it off enough to fend it off. On the other hand a dog frightfully torn and severely bleeding covered in gashes and bite punctures all over the body (imo in Smuts it was worse than coco because coco likely had it for a few minutes, I think Smuts survived longer) indicates a dog that was unable to control the cat by the neck and was likely going to be outlasted in damage department.

They never specify where and how Smut was torn other than frightfully, he may have been frightfully torn about the face.

Also bites are the problem, bites are deep and prone to infection (I know this from my own dogs, the germs get deep, the relatively narrow hole seals shut with a scab and then the germs grow in "safety" underneath and get out of control), scratches are far less of an issue. No issue, until they become actual lacerations. Coco had bites, I don't get the impression smut necessarily had any bites, and don't get the impression his scratches were deep lacerations. The lack of treatment or any mention of ailment from infection makes this likely. Bites in Sri Lanka in the 1800s would probably need treatment or cause very memorable noteworthy illness if not death.

I don't know, this to me feels like a reach/nitpick. I'd chalk the smut case up to one of the case where the dog got the better of the action. Call it a "rare" case if you want, but the tone and details of everything we have available implies he did not do badly at all.

Obviously it's up to speculation and that's my take on it based on how dogos that subdued cougars look. They can get a bit scratched sometimes but it's never as close to the "frightfully torn" Coco, Smut, Herkules or the Pakistani mastiff against the Leopard may have experienced for comparison .

You're choosing to compare smut to coco and hercules and the pakistani mastiff, for no apparent reason. I don't see the comparison. Those all died or nearly died. Smut was totally fine. Smut is more like "Morocho", who also could definitely have been described as "frightfully torn but fine".


Have to cut a bit short, but think I said all I need to for now.

[grippingwhiteness]

Oct 9, 2023 18:37:17 GMT Hardcastle said:

Oct 8, 2023 14:43:07 GMT grippingwhiteness said:

I think that it depends. By my estimate , the opposite is probably true in terms of frequency (which means it is not always the case). I generally analyzed and counted in details all accounts favoring cougars and accounts favoring dogos - and from what I've seen 90% of best dogo performances are in pens while nearly 70% of cougar best performances lie in the wild. My guess is that sometimes habituation of captive cougars to human and world overall makes them way less likely to develop a defensive killer instinct that a wild cougar is likely to develop, and obviously the chances to create a pampered wuss wuss are way more likely.

Oh for sure the likelihood of pampered wuss, even if unintentional, is definitely more likely with captive pumas than wild pumas. There's a "basement" for wild pumas that is going to be higher, there's a lowness possible with captive pumas that is not possible in wild populations. All wild pumas are going to be at a certain level of rugged and tough just to survive into adulthood, or even past infancy probably.

But two caveats to that-
a) The wild ones can still be broken
b) some captive ones won't be pampered wusses (just as some captive dogs won't be).

And I think when you are talking about the best... I don't know for sure, but it may be that sparring with dogs regularly possibly gets some captive pumas up to a higher level than wild pumas, at least in the specific art of fighting a dog.

I also think capturing an adult wild puma, and then throwing it in a pen with dogs, actually gets worse results than raising a cub to fight dogs. And I think this was noted pretty clearly in records of the roman arena as well. They basically said it is not possible to make a wild caught cat fight well in the arena. The captives raised to fight were the only way you could put on those spectacles where the lions would eat the christians or fight the gladiator or whatever. Or perform like "victor". He wasn't a wild caught puma, he was raised from a baby in captivity, and needed to be.

A wild cougar for example has never seen a human or a dog in it's entire life and obviously getting surrounded by such weird animals is so unusual and alien for it that it will display a way more aggressive performances more often than not.

Is that good? Being all aggressive and freaked out in an alien situation is generally not considered to facilitate better performance than being calm and composed and familiar with a situation. A professional sports team will show up to the city they are playing in a week in advance and get accustomed to the pitch or stadium or whatever. Fighters spar constantly so they aren't a fish out of water with too much nervous energy in a fight.

I think ideally for even the wild cougar in a wild setting it has the mentality of "ok, here we go again, another rival predator has a problem *cracks knuckles*", rather than "wtf is this?! What are those things?! Whats going on?!?!". The former mental state is more conducive to performing well.

I really don't know how to explain this "habituation" thing well. Obviously I'm not claiming that it's always the case, the cougar who defeated caru, the cougar who defeated Tupac and the alleged experienced fighter Tarzan who likely defeated multiple dogos in separate 1v1 pens in the course of his life are the exceptions. But overall, my take is that a wild cougar is more likely to show off a more aggressive defense than a captive cougar more often than not.

One way we differ is I don't think aggressive defense is necessarily a good thing. In general you are often impressed with it (with paw trapped pumas, with the leopards surrounded by lions, etc_ and I see it as "posturing" and not actually impressive performance. It is trying to convince the attacker to please go away. Good performance is performed in a calm steady confident state.
This is why cats impress me during their ambush assassinations, in that situations they seem like elite professionals because they are "chill" and calm and confident and utilising minimal wasted movements of their body, making minimal noise and minimal fuss, just executing the perfect kill.

The dogs I like show similar body language and mental clarity and composure in a fight. They aren't worked up, they aren't "aggressive", they are just executing the gameplan smoothly and professionally.

Now, the aggressive defense of cats DOES also cause damage, and sometimes a lot of damage, which I understand makes it kind of complicated and the line is blurry between "aggressive display" and "fighting" with wildcats, whereas for dogs it isn't. In dog vs dog, the aggressive displaying dog is basically definitely doomed and stands no chance against the calm composed dog. Does don't really have an effective defense to ward off attackers, wolves kind of do, and coyotes, and dogs like german shepherds and even to some extent collies and heelers and some other dogs kind of do, where they bare their teeth and growl and can kind of deliver snapping painful bites. In the case of wolves genuinely deadly ones at times, german shepherds probably do the best defensive bites out of any domestic dog I'm familiar with, but it is all kind of lame compared to the calm offensive attack of a dog focussed on actually winning who doesn't want to "ward off", but rather wants to kill.

So that is why even with cats when they are in the defensive state I'm just not really impressed. I'm impressed with the reflexes and agility and explosive acrobatics they might display in that state, but as far as fighting I am wanting to see them be more calm and offense-minded. A couple of fights with dogos seem to showcase something more like that, and those are- like I have said many times, the cases where the puma is able to actually grab the dog and pin it out and bite it. I think even one paw-trapped puma did that, and in those photos I believe it was the caru case or whatever. Those are when I'm like "ok, I see you cat".
The defensive aggression doesn't really butter my biscuit, but maybe I need to open my mind a little because it can do damage as well. In that way they differ from dogs and human beings.

But given all I said above, in accordance with what impresses me performance wise, I think an experienced captive dog-fighting puma is probably more likely to be able to achieve that mental state in a fight, because it has seen it all before and knows the game.

Even though also I agree they are also more liable to be total pussies. There are total pussies, savage rugged "wild" hard-men, and then calm confident professional.

A much bigger percentage of captives are total pussies, maybe no wild specimen is a total pussy.
A much bigger percentage of wild specimens are savage hard-men, most. Some captives would also be savage hard men, but much less.
I think calm confident professionals are probably more prevalent among experienced captive dog sparring partners. But also some would exist in the wild as well. Just macho males who are not scared and "know" in their heart they can destroy any dog in front of them. But I do believe this level of composure and confidence in a dog-fight would be more common in captives used for that purpose.

All in all... maybe the wild specimens are more likely to put up at least some kind of decent performance that isn't totally shit. But I think we shouldn't scoff at the good captives either, and don't pressume "if a captive can do that... WELL absolutely a wild one would do SOO much worse". I don't think that is true (and lots of people always used to say that).

I don't think the wild crazy defensive aggression is the best way to play with these dogs, it might serve to cause good damage (we have multiple cases now where it did), but it is designed to intimidate and hurt antagonists and make them quit. We know that is kind of "barking up the wrong tree" with these dogs. It is better if you are just "all in" on really winning via full blown offense. Don't waste any energy trying to scare the dog, you will need that energy. That is what I think.

That's because a wild cougar will always fight the enemy like an alien species, very hard for me to define that. I guess that does also happen with hunans - we give the strongest and fiercest resistance to new intruders and enemies than with people we are used to interact with.

I know what you are saying, the wild ones will always AT LEAST do that, but I am more impressed with the ones who don't treat the dog like an alien species, and instead treat it like "just another enemy" like it is no big deal. I think a couple have done that, and those are the performances that impress me. I am just less impressed than you are with aggressive frenzies, we may never see eye to eye on that. And I'm not even gonna say I'm right you are wrong, because the fact is aggressive frenzies work sometimes too. Coco looks like they got "aggressive frenzied" really really bad, nearly to death. That style can be effective for cats and I should acknowledge that. But I'll always be more impressed with the calm and composed combatant.

Of course the total pampered wuss who knows nothing of violence is by far the least impressive. Such specimens abound in both species, and yes they are all in the "captive" category.

Hope I somehow managed to explain how I view it, it's obviously a frequency matter - I don't deny a captive cougar can perform better than a wild one. My take is that they won't perform as good in terms of frequency - because captive like can sometimes raise a cougar with less aggressive and savage defensive nature.

I think I can agree, frequency of doing decently is much higher in wild than in captive. Frequency of doing nothing and being a sheltered naive wuss, much much higher in captive than in wild (possibly absent in wild).

You once claimed this on Wildanimalwarfare, it's weird because based on how you worded it it would seem like you have my same identical view at least on the frequency thing :

Yeah so the last two words are key though - on defense.

I think I've actually turned a corner on cats in a positive way, in that I now believe they CAN adapt to "captive gladitorial" and learn to live that life and be about it, which to me is actually to their credit. I didn't used to think they had it in them. Wild boars do, and bears do. They can actually learn to enjoy fighting and take to it, accept it is their life now, accept it is their normal, and actually get their kicks and pleasure from beating things up in a pit/pen/cage. In my mind cats were SO non-combative they could never take to this because they are so averse to being seen and being persecuted and assailed. Especially leopards and pumas, with lions possibly taking to it (as evidenced by the accounts of the roman arenas, and others, even wallace).
But then I heard about victor, then I heard about these scattered "famous" captive dog killer pumas, the leopard in the circus that killed the boarhounds, etc etc. Even the jaguars who did well... these all seem indicative of cats rolling up their sleeves and accepting they are captive fighters now and learning to make lemonade with those lemons. For that I give them credit.

Your point is right, that wild animals will at least be savage mean bastards, captives may not be. But I believe there is a higher level than savage mean bastard- actually confident and composed fighter who likes it. That is the pinnacle. So sure they will win, that they will enjoy doing it and take pleasure calmly doing it, and feel no need to try and "communicate" aggression. Such individuals have shown themself in the wild and in captivity. Its that "macho swagger" thing I have talked about that you sense in some individual males (almost exclusively, but I can think of 1 or 2 leopardesses maybe that demonstrated some, and also some lionesses I have seen in docos over the years). The thing is they AREN'T aggressive, but its even worse news for their opponents.

Dogs like serious apbts and good dogos and etc are just bred like this as a rule (and duds pop up, often, but should be culled from serious working lines. AREN'T in bad lines, and that is where you see the complaints like "nerve issues" and "fear biting" and etc).
They don't display aggression, they even whine like a little baby if they are held back from fighting. Like no need to try and act tough and mean and scare the opponent, they sincerely want to fight. That is the real deal. And yes I think it can exist in cats.

They all have this attitude when they are ambushing their preferred prey, that look in the eyes of a stalking cat. It WANTS the smoke.


On the other hand, this tiger-

It's savage snarl might send a chill up your spine, it looks more intimidating than the first pic, but the poor thing is actually scared. The top cat is not.

Go in that cage and it will slash you to pieces, but it's a defensive fearful attack, and that attack is actually not it's peak performance. Lots of superfluous energy wasting movements.

When a cat can have the attitude of the tiger in the top photo, but in a face to face fight? Just sincere desire to engage? That is peak. I have seen it from time to time in the most macho and confident experienced boss cats.
And yes it defines the gripping dog lineage. They want to fight, sincerely, because evolutionarily that was their path to optimal breeding success. And scaring away the opponent wasn't an option.

I know that account, I don't think it was a female leopard - isn't "panther" a feminine term? Maybe that's why it was referred as "her". In Italian it's feminine, "pantera". Tiger is also a feminine word in italian, maybe that's why it referred as "her" while not actually referring to the sex of the leopard?
That's why I don't think it was a female.

No in that account from Fredrick Hick it is definitely a female. There was a male and a female courting, and he tried to line them up so he could shoot them both with one bullet, he shot the big male and the bullet went through it but only wounded the female in a limb. So he took the crazy bulldog to track the leopardess and then it ran ahead of him and got into a fight with it in rocky hilly country where the guy couldn't access. When he finally climbed up and down the rocky escarpments he ultimately found the dog dead from a bite to the back of the skull. He then shot the wounded leopardess.

So, full credit to a female in that instance. Not even a "kill from the bottom accumulating injuries", it directly killed the dog which I like to see for a decisive dominating victory. And did so pressumably while nursing a wounded limb.
The dog to be frank was assuredly smaller than her, like I said it is rare to find a "bulldog" from the late 1800s that is bigger than 40 lbs, maybe 60 lbs at most. Typically that will be a bull-mastiff, but they call bulldogs, bull-terriers and bull-mastiffs all "bulldogs" in casual conversation. Still, EVEN bull-mastiffs are often described as 40 lbs. Weirdly different to what we understand today. So.. quite confident the dog was outweighed by the leopardess, probably half its size, maybe less. Female or not, we should keep that in mind.

But I definitely can't argue the dog wasn't legit. It killed many animals, including multiple hounds, a pony, a donkey and a bull.

It also fought a leopard earlier with no help and survived-

The first blood-trail I put him on to was that of a cheetle stag which I had wounded. The dog went off without hesitation and I and my men followed as best we could ; but after a time the blood-trail stopped, so having nothing further to go on, we were obliged to give up the chase and as night was approaching we returned to camp, leaving the perverse beast to find his way back as best he could ; though I secretly hoped he never would, for I was always in dread that he might some day kill one of my favourite dogs. Indeed, there seemed little chance of his returning, as the place swarmed with panthers and pantherets, so I was a bit surprised next morning to see a forlorn-looking spectacle turn up, torn and bleeding from head to tail ; it was very evident that he had had a right royal turn up with a panther or pantheret, and his presence showed that he had got the better of him too— may be had killed him, unless he escaped by getting up a tree, for I am convinced the dog would otherwise have fought on until either one or the other were killed.
However, I doctored the pitiful object, and in a few days' time he was as right as ever and 'spailin' for another fight. In this I was able to gratify him.

The author is even of the opinion the dog won that fight (possibly even killed the leopard he says - though I agree this speculation is baseless and far-fetched), so full credit to the female leopard in the end who killed it.


I think I actually butchered the quote as I look back at it, so no wonder you didn't get the full story, copy and pasting from free old book files is often choppy I have found. Yes... looking now at the book again a whole page failed to be copied. I swear I didn't even realise-

I was so taken up in watching these antics that I did not at first notice that there was a second spectator to the scene, namely, another panther, a female, the one on the ground being a male. The latter, after rolling the goat about for a bit, got up and began to purr, walking up and down by the side of the outstretched goat ; then, suddenly turning round, he went up to his mate and punted her in the side with his head and rubbed himself along the side of her body, a caress which was received by the lady with a growl. I should here mention that this was the breeding season. It was a pretty sight, but as the male turned to repeat his importunities, the hunter's instinct in me got the better of my softer mood, and realizing that this was an opportunity to bag two panthers with one bullet, I waited until the two animals were again parallel with each other, and aiming high up on the shoulder of the male, I fired. The male dropped on the spot, but the female dashed away to my right, roaring loudly, I having failed to get in my second barrel on account of the smoke which hung densely in the damp evening air, this being in the days when smokeless powder was unknown. I heard the female panther roar at intervals several times as she went along a hillside behind me, which made me think that she was only hit in the forearm or paw and was expressing her opinion in unladylike language each time she tried to use the injured limb.

After putting another bullet into the male panther, to make sure, I got down from my tree, when, to my utter astonishment, the goat jumped up, and commenced to show his delight at seeing me by bleating loudly. On examining the little beast, I was still more surprised to find that he had scarcely a scratch on htm.He must have been paralyzed with fright, for I can hardly credit a kid with sufficient sense as to sham.

Next morning I brought out my bull-dog with the object of putting him on the trail of the wounded panther, though in doing so I felt that I was sending him to his " happy hunting ground," but it was infinitely better for him to die in this way than by my bullet, which was what it had come to, for of late he had become an intolerable nuisance and a constant danger to my other dogs, in whose company, of course, I could never hunt him.

The moment he smelt the blood of the panther on the ground, he became terribly excited and strained at his leash ; as soon as he was let go, he scurried off on the scent at such a pace, that we had no chance of keeping up with him.

We followed as fast as we could, but the going was very rough and steep, so that it was some time before we reached the crest of the ridge, where we halted a few moments to regain our wind.

Below us, on the further side of the ridge, was a densely-wooded dell filled with an undergrowth of dense grass and bushes, through which trickled a narrow stream of water. Suddenly, from this spot arose a tremendous uproar, for the plucky old dog had found the wounded panther, and without any further hesitation or delay had tackled it ; while the latter, rendered furious by its wound, was quite willing to meet him halfway in the matter.

A revulsion of feeling now came over me, and I would have given anything to save the brave dog's life. I dashed down the hillside regardless of obstacles, with the inevitable result that I soon found that I was travelling faster than my legs would carry me, and finally, taking a header down about thirty yards of hillside, I fetched up in a thorny bush. By the time I recovered my legs, the uproar below me had ceased, and I realized that I was too late, and that it was all over with the brave old dog ; but I could avenge him, and that was my one thought, as 1 again dashed forward to the spot which I had previously marked from above.

On reaching it, I almost stumbled over the body of the dog. It was stone dead, killed by a bice in the back of its head. At the same time I heard a noise on the other side of the nalla, and on looking up, I saw the panther making off along the opposite side of the ravine. I was only able to get a snapshot, but it told on her, for she spun round roaring, and came blundering down the hillside straight for me. I waited until she neared the edge of the water before I gave her the contents of my second barrel. The bullet struck her in the nape of the neck, breaking the vertebra, and of course killing her instantly, though her impetus carried her on until she toolt a header into the nalla below, burying her head and forequarters deep in the ooze.

On pulling her out, we found that my bullet of the night before had completely shattered her forearm ; but we found more than this, namely, that a large portion of the skin and a part of the flesh of the forearm was torn off. On examining the dog, we found the missing portions in his mouth. We took him back to camp in a hammock made out of cloth, with the dead panther slung on a pole behind him. It was a sorrowful and yet a triumphant return, for what more glorious end could a dog have !

We buried him at the foot of a Peepul tree, the " Ficus religiosa " of India.

That hopefully makes it more clear, definitely a female.

In leopard country it does to be very rare and most of the time it was group of hunting dogs from what I've seen (even in Cape town where leopards are boergreyhound sized mostly

First- just remember that group or not is beside the point when it comes to viability. If you are talking free-running catch dogs- boarhounds like dogo argentinos, you can have a pack all you want, the reality is each individual dog is liable to find and lug up the animal by itself when no other dog and no person is around. With lead-in catch dogs used with bay dogs it is different, you can wait until you can see the animal and then release 2 or 3 or 4 or whatever catch dogs at the same time so that they all work as a team to subjugate the target. But with running catch dogs you can't orchestrate the hunt to that extent, and that is why they train dogos to fight pumas 1 on 1 in pens, as opposed to train a team of dogos to fight pumas in pens.
Just have to get that point out of the way again, it was also noted in the old book by sanderson with his little bulldogs. It is imperitive to use them as lead-in catch dogs and release them as a team, if they run free on the hunt then 1 is going to get into it with a panther or whatever by itself, and be killed.
When you use running catch dogs it is a given they WILL end up in 1 on 1 fights with the quarry. That is why Baker, as opposed to sanderson, had 100-130 lbs dogs. Vs Sanderson's 35-40 lbs dogs. Thats running catch dogs vs lead-in catch dogs. Running catch dogs need to be able to fight alone far from help.

That is the first thing.

Second- it is rare, and that is significant and worthy of consideration. To me, if I was a catfan, that would be my preferred argument. Like you have all these boarhounds in australia and new zealand and argentina and hawaii, and historically all over medieval europe, but it is oddly quiet with such dogs in North America, in Brazil, in Africa, Asia, Russia...

That argument makes me a little nervous if I'm being honest. These historical books from India and Sri Lanka are a bit of a saving grace, but only 1 of these 3 I keep using features running catch dogs. The other two have lead-in catch dogs (and in one, the problem with one small lead-in catch dog being allowed to run ahead was realised in dramatic fashion, in the other the author explicitly outlines the problem with it).
Samuel Baker and his big boarhounds Smut and Pirate and Brinn and etc (can't remember all their names) are kind of holding the fort down for running catch dogs in leopard country. The absence or scarcity is still concerning. There are maritsane/steekhar in south africa, and the boergreyhound guy did also have a very cool looking boerboel/boergrey hybrid for warthogs. There's a bit of a running catch dog presence in SA, and seems to be a bit of one in Pakistan too. Historical USA had "old southern boarhounds" (though it seems they may have actually been slave dogs more so than actual boar hunters). But still you can't ignore that running catch dog scenes seem to generally be few and far between and go quiet coincidentally where cats get big and problematic.

That's ... something. Something to dwell on.

But equally, the strong presence of free running boarhounds in argentina amongst the puma in that location at least (and targetting the puma), that is also something. That is a big thing. These two observations are equally significant and hold a decent amount of weight. It implies maybe boarhounds can generally (not consistently without risk or hazard, but generally) best pumas in fights in argentina, and it also sadly implies maybe it is too hazardous in north america, canada (they don't seem to have any catch dogs at all), africa north of the bushveld, in India... kinda seems like you need lead-ins even historically. In pakistan seems to be kind of ok and sri lanka seems ok, both still kind of subdued and quiet. Not a peep in Russia...

If you looked at humans as the simple apes they are and boarhounds as a natural animal, you could start wondering if they aren't being "supressed" in some areas, noting their distribution and density around the world... possibly see a correlation with cats...

I love this argument and hate it at the same time... love it because it is interesting, hate it because it is actually pretty strong and may be damning to boarhound supremacy.

and even there there's around 5 cases of boarhounds like Boerboels getting killed or seriously maimed despite leopards being small

Just let me stop you- boerboels are not boarhounds, they are bulldogs, and they are explicitly long retired bloated useless bulldogs. Seeing the boerboels dancing around the snared leopard and barking at it fearfully... (like I said, except for the one taking a shit who didn't care either way), that says it all. I don't argue that the average boerboel can beat anything. I have seen a very select few legit boerboels, most are awful and most would lose to leopards and brown hyenas and everything. And they have lost to all those and I don't mind, because I have already said they will.
(although, once or twice I may have envisioned an optimal boerboel and argued for it, I actually want to start moving away from doing that).

whereas there's also a report from an old book telling that Bloodhounds, mastiffs and Bullmastiffs going in close quarters with large game including leopards had the dogs killed or terribly injured - makes me guess-estimate that it wasn't a good end for the dog for most time it was alone in close quarters with leopards.

I have seen that and I see it as a warning of what "can" happen, and I don't doubt that can happen. I think they would readily word the danger of boars in the same way, it doesn't actually mean the dogs CAN'T do it, rather means they CAN be killed doing it. I think the book talking about such dogs doing it is of more interest than that flippant remark.

We also have them explicitly using boarhounds, bloodhounds and wolfhounds to tame circus cats that lose their shit and go haywire, that is not a small thing. Like the dogo situation, like the Baker in Ceylon situation, we are seeing that such dogs are a viable tool to subjugate and make mild these impressive majestic wild cat species. I think that is something that should be known.

They do seem to be a dangerous quarry, even at smaller size considering I'd bet these cats weren't any large than 100-120 lbs. I also did one for dogos and pumas, we apparently have 9 cases (can increase to 10-11 if we include tarzan or images where it seems the cougar is getting the best) of pumas performing better and winning against 7 cases of dogos (5 of which pens) getting the upper hand. Apparently it's not a 50-5 difference but more a 50-50 difference when it comes to results and 95% of this is at lower sizes (90-110 lbs), with the only exceptions of the alleged dogo-slayer named Tarzan and the cougar who defeated Tupac claimed to be "large".

There is still room for interpretation on what actually qualifies as "getting the better of". I readily heap superfluous praise on the cats when they do the pin and kill, or even pin and nearly kill. That to me is actual domination.
I'm less hyped than you about the spaz-outs, injuries not withstanding. As pained over earlier in this post, there is a big difference for me. The "messy damage inflicted all over the dog's body", and some of the other cases where you are really "high" on he cat performance, I am considerably less high and some I deem insignificant. Even the "kills from the bottom" are kind of not truly convincing to me. It's kind of dog domination, in fact. Thing is I feel much more strongly about the simple fact the dogs can control and dominate the cats in the grapple, rather than necessarily kill the cats or cause injury on the cats. I don't assert those are strengths of the dog, I specifically believe their lugging/subjugation prowess/skill is what is better than cats up to a certain weight at parity. Given that, I have seen, for me, more support for the dogs. More support for my assertion, that the dogs more often than not are pinning the cats rather than vice versa.
The exceptions seem to nearly always be much bigger cats. Though not always.

We have different perspectives and different things we are focussing on. Which can be a problem, but could also be seen as us not actually disagreeing as much as it seems about "reality", rather just having different values as to what we deem important and what we choose to be focussing on.

The largest leopard a working dog has ever dealt with, in my opinion, was probably that sri lankan leopard from Nuwara Eliya described to be a "giant" that killed the favorite working mastiff of a professional hunter of the place ( so that was probably a working boarhound and a very powerful one to be "his favourite") which I could estimate to be 170-178 lbs whereas the dog might have been I don't know anywhere from 100 - 125 lbs perhaps even 130 lbs.


Here's the extract -


Here's the book :

books.google.it/books?id=U-BHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT255&dq=leopard+kills+mastiff&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=leopard%20kills%20mastiff&f=false

Eh... I read a lot of stuff from this time period. Believe it or not, "Mastiff" already meant "retired show-dog english mastiff" and had for hundreds of years (before dog shows were invented).

I just detailed this story on bestiary. It is very unique in dog history. The pet english mastiff took out the "trademark" on the "mastiff" term very early in history. Then when the English travelled around they started calling other big dogs from other exotic countries mastiffs (like tibetan mastiffs and turkish mastiffs and even alpine mastiffs for St Bernards), and later started calling bloated pet bulldogs mastiffs as well. BUT in their little world of english dogs, mastiffs were uniquely non-working by the 1800s. The mastiff was being "preserved" by Lyme Hall since 1415. Prior to that, its ancestors were mongrel boarhounds. A lot of those paintings of random mongrel dogs hunting boars, the ones that look like bull arabs, are actually the working ancestors of the english mastiff.

Boars went extinct in england in the 1600s, actually started getting rare earlier still, but working mongrel boarhounds went extinct in the 1600s.

However, earlier, a man by the name of "Sir Piers Legh of Lyme" famously had his Boarhound protect him in the battle of Agincourt when he was wounded. Him and his family were so stoked with that dog, that they started breeding these "mastiffs" for the sake of it. No longer hunting boars, no longer using them in wars, just breeding them and keeping them around. That started in 1415, but mongrel boarhounds (which some people called mastiffs, the word is derived from "mansuetere" meaning "to tame" as they "tame" wild beasts) continued working and hunting in england for another couple of hundred years while the "Mastiffs of lyme hall" lineage were just being bred as pets. And bred to be big.
By the 1600s they still looked pretty cool, and kind of like boarhounds-

But see what it is doing in this image? That was their job, just hanging around the house with kids. They even called them "chamber hounds".

The working boardogs go extinct, along with boars, and then all you have are these "mastiffs of lyme", these chamber dogs. For hundreds of years they are bred as pets and show dogs to be big, before showdogs even get invented. They were "the mastiff". When the english went abroad in the 1800s and wanted to hunt big game in exotic locations they only had bull-terriers, bull-dogs and bull-mastiffs (gripping dog wise), which were all working as fighting/baiting dogs, the latter a bit as poacher-hunting dogs. If they wanted boarhounds, they crossed these dogs with greyhounds, deerhounds and wolfhounds (and sometimes foxhounds as well). This is how they made both "boarhounds" and "bloodhounds". They were reinvented as the mutts they originally were, "the mastiff" was too far gone and just a big couch potato. Its lineage had been non-working since 1415.

By the 1800s mastiffs already looked like these-



So let me correct you, it would not have weighed 100-130 lbs, it probably weighed 180-200+ lbs. But it would have been a worthless lump of crap.

Leopards can prey on any dog anyway, including good working dogs, and including huge dogs, like the huge alabai being dragged away by a leopard-



And the enormous wolfhound Jane Goodall reported being dragged away by a leopard.

I'm not trying to say a leopard couldn't kill a good big boarhound or whatever (especially a 9 foot male beast like that one), but I'm just saying that was almost definitely a bullcrap dog if he was calling it "mastiff". Mastiff with no qualifier among the british at that time was established as synonymous with "the english mastiff", long retired (400+ years retired) big pet dogs.
If he said bloodhound or boarhound or wolfhound or seizer it would be safe to assume huge working gripping dog type dog (and bulldog, bull-terrier or bull-mastiff would mean compact gripping dog), but mastiff actually means couch potato pet in the 1800s.

I don't think that a dog being severely injured and torn open from head to tail indicates that the dog had the upper hand, it is way more likely to be a stalemate where neither is controlling the other but the cat is on the uprise to surpass the dog in damage delivering department which , if it goes on till the end, would make the dog collapse like Herkules or that Pakistani mastiff against a leopard in Herat.

I agree to some extent, wounds all over a dog has stalemate, or period of undecided action, implications. After that period one may gain control, however.

Smut wasn't one case btw. He multiple times fought leopards.

He had several pitched battles with leopards, from which he has returned frightfully torn, but with his yellow hair bristled up, his head and stern erect; and his deep growl, with which he gave a dubious reception to both man and beast, was on these occasions doubly threatening.

He disappeared from camp and come back with leopard scratches, multiple times. He'd seek them out in his free time.
One specific case is given a little more detail in another book, very similar to the bulldog case above where the humans gave up on a trail but the dog continued and then returned home hours later with leopard wounds but didn't let anyone tend to them (was surly and people aggressive, unlike many boarhounds).

The wounds could mean stalemate, could also mean took him a few attempts to gain control, the absence of any severe injuries is still pretty telling.

Because of who the dog was and his other accomplishments (like even how he died, was an accomplishment), I naturally lean towards guessing the leopards did not have a good time. But we will never really know.

Most pens where dogos have controlled and subdued cougars had few scratches damage, 90% on their face, few injuries indicates that they were able to overpower the cat and take way less damage as the cat couldn't rake it off enough to fend it off. On the other hand a dog frightfully torn and severely bleeding covered in gashes and bite punctures all over the body (imo in Smuts it was worse than coco because coco likely had it for a few minutes, I think Smuts survived longer) indicates a dog that was unable to control the cat by the neck and was likely going to be outlasted in damage department.

They never specify where and how Smut was torn other than frightfully, he may have been frightfully torn about the face.

Also bites are the problem, bites are deep and prone to infection (I know this from my own dogs, the germs get deep, the relatively narrow hole seals shut with a scab and then the germs grow in "safety" underneath and get out of control), scratches are far less of an issue. No issue, until they become actual lacerations. Coco had bites, I don't get the impression smut necessarily had any bites, and don't get the impression his scratches were deep lacerations. The lack of treatment or any mention of ailment from infection makes this likely. Bites in Sri Lanka in the 1800s would probably need treatment or cause very memorable noteworthy illness if not death.

I don't know, this to me feels like a reach/nitpick. I'd chalk the smut case up to one of the case where the dog got the better of the action. Call it a "rare" case if you want, but the tone and details of everything we have available implies he did not do badly at all.

Obviously it's up to speculation and that's my take on it based on how dogos that subdued cougars look. They can get a bit scratched sometimes but it's never as close to the "frightfully torn" Coco, Smut, Herkules or the Pakistani mastiff against the Leopard may have experienced for comparison .

You're choosing to compare smut to coco and hercules and the pakistani mastiff, for no apparent reason. I don't see the comparison. Those all died or nearly died. Smut was totally fine. Smut is more like "Morocho", who also could definitely have been described as "frightfully torn but fine".


Have to cut a bit short, but think I said all I need to for now.

I really don't know if that's really always the case, generally with the technology of such time I'd guess that some of the reasons why they allegedly almost used wild ones could be because capturing and transporting actual large and aggressive wild beasts like those on ships could have been a very dangerous task - Chui once posted this on CF :

At some point, in the ancient Rome for "venationes" and "damnatio ad bestias", they start ( due to the high costs of transporting adult specimens of leopards, the high mortality in the transport of them)  to catch mothers with cubs and  yes, grow them and train them.

How do we know this? The mosaics in places near Rome show this trend in detail,historians and archaeologists have discovered this years ago.

So the leopards were trained, so we arrive to one of the most iconic leopards in history of Roman Coliseum Victor..

But at the same time there IS evidence that they did capture animals directly from the wild with very weird and hazardous materials and techniques, probably sound extremely dangerous to us considering there was no real technology back then. The "nest" trap seems almost unrealistic by how dangerous it looks like based on mosaics, I can't imagine just a big nest trap where MULTIPLE lions AND leopards were for example caught together -

A representation here :


"Capturing Leopards with the Help of Nets and Cages Baited with Mirrors, plate 15 from Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium (Of Hunting: Wild Beasts, Birds, Fish) engraved by Jan Collaert (1566-1628) published by Phillipus Gallaeus of Amsterdam (hand coloured engraving) by Straet, Jan van der"

While I DO agree that pure wild animals put all together in an arena would spaz out and act very schizo and agitated because of the mess and they just would rather escape the pit rather than fighting - I just don't think this would be the case (at least not always) with a single animal in a cage being confronted. A wild animal gets scared, sure, it gets exactly like that second tiger you sent.

It's on the defense - showing off its weapons and praying you to not approach. It doesn't want to fight, but it WILL perform and "fight" if it has to defends itself. That's what matters to me at least. It's still ready to "fight" and give hell for the sake of its own safety.

Just look at this man eating leopard here, sure, you could tell it's absolutely terrified and just wants to bolt away at A-train's speed if it could. But it's also true that if anything sticks its head or face inside there and tries to confront it the Leopard will charge it and tear it to pieces. 

That's also what these jaguars would do. It's a defensive act sure, but it's meant still for the same reason : tearing apart the opponent that wasn't impressed by the warning .

One way we differ is I don't think aggressive defense is necessarily a good thing. In general you are often impressed with it (with paw trapped pumas, with the leopards surrounded by lions, etc_ and I see it as "posturing" and not actually impressive performance. It is trying to convince the attacker to please go away. Good performance is performed in a calm steady confident state.

This is why cats impress me during their ambush assassinations, in that situations they seem like elite professionals because they are "chill" and calm and confident and utilising minimal wasted movements of their body, making minimal noise and minimal fuss, just executing the perfect kill.

The dogs I like show similar body language and mental clarity and composure in a fight. They aren't worked up, they aren't "aggressive", they are just executing the gameplan smoothly and professionally.

Now, the aggressive defense of cats DOES also cause damage, and sometimes a lot of damage, which I understand makes it kind of complicated and the line is blurry between "aggressive display" and "fighting" with wildcats, whereas for dogs it isn't. In dog vs dog, the aggressive displaying dog is basically definitely doomed and stands no chance against the calm composed dog. Does don't really have an effective defense to ward off attackers, wolves kind of do, and coyotes, and dogs like german shepherds and even to some extent collies and heelers and some other dogs kind of do, where they bare their teeth and growl and can kind of deliver snapping painful bites. In the case of wolves genuinely deadly ones at times, german shepherds probably do the best defensive bites out of any domestic dog I'm familiar with, but it is all kind of lame compared to the calm offensive attack of a dog focussed on actually winning who doesn't want to "ward off", but rather wants to kill.

So that is why even with cats when they are in the defensive state I'm just not really impressed. I'm impressed with the reflexes and agility and explosive acrobatics they might display in that state, but as far as fighting I am wanting to see them be more calm and offense-minded. A couple of fights with dogos seem to showcase something more like that, and those are- like I have said many times, the cases where the puma is able to actually grab the dog and pin it out and bite it. I think even one paw-trapped puma did that, and in those photos I believe it was the caru case or whatever. Those are when I'm like "ok, I see you cat".

The defensive aggression doesn't really butter my biscuit, but maybe I need to open my mind a little because it can do damage as well. In that way they differ from dogs and human beings.

But given all I said above, in accordance with what impresses me performance wise, I think an experienced captive dog-fighting puma is probably more likely to be able to achieve that mental state in a fight, because it has seen it all before and knows the game.

Even though also I agree they are also more liable to be total pussies. There are total pussies, savage rugged "wild" hard-men, and then calm confident professional.

A much bigger percentage of captives are total pussies, maybe no wild specimen is a total pussy.

A much bigger percentage of wild specimens are savage hard-men, most. Some captives would also be savage hard men, but much less.

I think calm confident professionals are probably more prevalent among experienced captive dog sparring partners. But also some would exist in the wild as well. Just macho males who are not scared and "know" in their heart they can destroy any dog in front of them. But I do believe this level of composure and confidence in a dog-fight would be more common in captives used for that purpose.

All in all... maybe the wild specimens are more likely to put up at least some kind of decent performance that isn't totally shit. But I think we shouldn't scoff at the good captives either, and don't pressume "if a captive can do that... WELL absolutely a wild one would do SOO much worse". I don't think that is true (and lots of people always used to say that).

I don't think the wild crazy defensive aggression is the best way to play with these dogs, it might serve to cause good damage (we have multiple cases now where it did), but it is designed to intimidate and hurt antagonists and make them quit."

That is true, the persuasive aggressive display is certainly useless when you face something that won't be persuaded such as those types of dogs. No matter if the defensive performance later will be successful and the enemy will be killed or deterred, it's still an useless display. The presence of that display does give me the idea though that 100% that cat in the cage will give the opponent hell if the opponent dares to get too much close. I'm sure it will . At first sight a too "quiet" cat might be just a scaredy wuss wuss, and in worst cases, a pampered one. Obviously it's not always the case, what I mean is impression.

Sure, there has been a killer cat that is just very quiet himself and gives the idea of being too calm. 

But how can I be sure at first glance?
At least the aggressive display does show that the cat means business if confronted.

I know you all overlook at the fact that the cat behaving aggressively (Ears flat, deep growl) is also losing likely 40 lbs of bodyweight by spitting diarrhea all over because it's scared and doesn't want to fight. And that's obviously right, you're not wrong on it at all.

I get it, I do respect it. 

You guys like the non-cur dog nature most of all, you find more badass an animal that just quietly wants to fight and isn't on the defense but rather confident. You'd find more badass a calm leopard that just quietly slaughters an opponent (a rival male , a dog, a hyena, a wolf, whatever) than one that also defeats and slaughters an opponent while growling as warning in the meantime. I also would, overall. 

That speaks true confidence and badassery for that individual cat. 

But - there's always a but. This "but" relies on actual subjectivity to be fair so an actual objective debate is not possible, also because I do already agree with what you said on this matter. 

I have to admit that I'm also very impressed by cats when they are masters at being sneaky killers that know what they are doing and do it calmly, with that quiet but deadly look.

I've once read a pro tiger argument on YouTube claiming "tigers don't bark they kill instantly". 

I do think that's what you'd consider the ideal cat behaviour that would impress, as it does also impress me.

At the end of the day tho I've always been fascinated by the look of an "aggressive" behaviour in an animal. 

I've always found wolf growls badass - not only by the sound but also by the look : teeth exposed, snarl, eyes giving you a very vibrant gaze full of anger. Same goes with cats growling, not only I find it esthetically badass and beautiful but I also love the sounds. I've always been interested and liked roars from monsterverse movies and from dinosaur movies aswell, cats do also fall in that category. I just like the "angry" and "aggressive" animal because it gives me an idea of the untamable. And I'm saying this as a person with a complete different attitude, I'm honestly a very quiet guy in real life, sometimes too quiet and serious at the same time, for which I'm very good at giving the impression I'm pissed but I'm actually ok. You know I don't refer to  "pissed" as with an actual angry expression but just with some kind of deathstare. 

One guy I'm now friends with in the barracks has told me once that based on my serious expression I do look like if someone just shitted on my scrambled eggs and I'm just staring at him deeply. Similarly with Homelander in this short -

And it's actually interesting that as opposed to my serious and calm attitude I do actually like a lot the opposite of me, a very active showcase of anger and aggressiveness from wild animals.

Leopard and tigers imo produce the most chilling growls in the entire animal world, I don't think there's even a bear able to match that :

Now you'd say :

"yes it may look scary, it's what it wants you to think, because the cats there are actually way more scared than you are if they behave like this. I find silence way scarier than noise. The silent maneater leopard and the silent tiger that just quietly sneak up and slaughter you when you don't expect it with no hesitation, that's scarier to me".

I do actually agree, that IS scarier, that IS the more dangerous animal.

That's due to the reason for which it will attack you no matter what, while these are not willing to attack you, they are actually warning you because they are looking an avoidance of that.

But they'll still give the fiercest defence they can give if obliged, I overlook at the reasons why things happen, while I do acknowledge them, I just care about the action and the course of the events and give a more neutral view on it. 
Maybe because I'm a person that fights on the defense in real life aswell? Could be, I'm more of a defensive person than an attacker and I'd attack first only if one of my friends or my sister is in danger, you get the point. 

I associate myself more with this 


Than this

So, full credit to a female in that instance. Not even a "kill from the bottom accumulating injuries", it directly killed the dog which I like to see for a decisive dominating victory. And did so pressumably while nursing a wounded limb.
The dog to be frank was assuredly smaller than her, like I said it is rare to find a "bulldog" from the late 1800s that is bigger than 40 lbs, maybe 60 lbs at most. Typically that will be a bull-mastiff, but they call bulldogs, bull-terriers and bull-mastiffs all "bulldogs" in casual conversation. Still, EVEN bull-mastiffs are often described as 40 lbs. Weirdly different to what we understand today. So.. quite confident the dog was outweighed by the leopardess, probably half its size, maybe less. Female or not, we should keep that in mind.

So it was a female then - kudos to her. Female leopards weigh an average of 90 lbs in india. So we can't know how large she was compared to the Bulldog.

He disappeared from camp and come back with leopard scratches, multiple times. He'd seek them out in his free time.

One specific case is given a little more detail in another book, very similar to the bulldog case above where the humans gave up on a trail but the dog continued and then returned home hours later with leopard wounds but didn't let anyone tend to them (was surly and people aggressive, unlike many boarhounds).

The wounds could mean stalemate, could also mean took him a few attempts to gain control, the absence of any severe injuries is still pretty telling.

Because of who the dog was and his other accomplishments (like even how he died, was an accomplishment), I naturally lean towards guessing the leopards did not have a good time. But we will never really know.

I guess I'll agree to disagree on the bolded part especially, while taking also into account and agreeing about the fact your analogy is possible.

I'm just too taken by that "frightfully torn", and frightfully does mean "serious" and "terrible" actually:

No dogo/dog that has ever successfully controlled a cougar or a leopard had a severe gash and wasn't even that torn to be claimed as such - this is the worst I've ever come across where the dogo had gained a very secure dominant position on the cougar (it's one of the 2 cases in the wild were dogos were ever successful in record, the police case).

You see, they aren't even "torn", just a bit scratched. It indicates the cat was indeed able to cause a bit of damage but it failed to hit and rake successfully the dog to make it release the grip, for which there are no serious or frightful wounds on the dog.

And that makes sense, if the cougar fails to rake over their face with the perfect precision to damage it and keep its head away from the cat's body to later start the devastating "random biting and clawing all over the body" it's going to get subdued with a neck bite. 

If the dog fails in these first seconds/minute to secure a decisive neck old it's going to fight a more prolonged battle struggling to secure the hold on the cat, what it's going to pay is his body condition in that case as the cat would be on its back shredding to ribbons anything above its torso, whereas the cat wouldn't be experiencing a lot of damage given the dog dentition isn't made to "tear apart".

A dogo subduing a cougar isn't "fighting" the cougar . The actual "fight" is when the dogo has to grab the cougar from a vulnerable part, the rest is just the dogo maintaining the cougar pushed down, but it's over, its in a position where the cougar can't successfully rake back or slash it, for which it's NOT presenting any serious injury apart from some scratches and sometimes not even one (like the cliff video one). 

It's not much of a fight anymore. 

You can see it's nothing compared to what you'd imagine a "frightfully torn" animal.

It's just a few scratches that look house cat sized over the face, a dog winning is going to look like this.

We really can't say much about what happened there, but "frightfully" actually means something pretty serious had happened there and I also do expect that Smuts did present severe injuries, it's just that they were nothing close to what obviously that boar could do and did to him. 

I actually think it would make more sense for the dog to have performed better if the "frightful" injuries were all extended to its whole body, and it was injured from head to tail. We already imagine it was a mess if it was all over the body, imagine if that was only on the head. 

No, that doesn't look like a good situation, the paw trapped cougar instance is an example. 

Dogos that have subdued cougars weren't torn in the face to be claimed "frightfully", because cougars from that vulnerable position can't properly rake over, most of the actual claw damage is caused by their forelimbs, who just "hold" the dog but don't cause much damage at all as you see.

That's a dogo winning. No considerable injuries, not really looking like a mess.

Frightfully torn open in the face means that rakes were considerably present, and since a cat held by the neck can difficultly reach that zone accurately multiple times, it means (to me) that Smuts failed to secure a hold and had its face concentrated in the Cougar's chest or abdomen and as consequence very much exposed to the hindlimb rake damage.

That's also what happened to the pawtrapped cougar you've mentioned earlier , the dogo ambushed the cougar but failed to get a hold and had the face in the cat's belly, the cougar started so severely raking its face several times so that the dogo tried to get its head away to concentrate on the cat's forelimbs or even neck, but the damage was already considerable so the cougar was ready to counter by grabbing it first by the head and then by the face, as result tearing it apart with the teeth while getting stabbed.

See? The dogo's face in the aftermath looked like a torn mess, but it didn't do a good job , it was getting smashed.

Now I'm NOT implying that Smuts got the same result, just that frightfully torn (especially if on the face although that's speculation) gives me the idea it must have had a bad time dealing with those leopards, not all obviously, he had several encounters. Just that when it came home frightfully torn open I'm confident that it didn't work well on subduing the cat and was consequently getting beaten and the cat escaped successfully. That's my take.

I'm only referring to those where it was frightfully torn. We know that if it was to win it wouldn't look like mess.

Morocho also was badly torn and wounded (and I'm sure it was lead to an hospital aswell to recover) - by the looks of some images it seems to have bite puncture wounds on both the chest and side of the biceps .

Indicating another stalemate where it was getting the worst and the owner stabbed the cat shortly after, just wasn't as deeply damaged and injured as Coco because it happened in less time while Coco dealt longer - but all are cases where the cougar managed to rake and bite back savagely.

Coco's injuries were serious but not THAT serious even then.

Coco was likely getting smashed as you claimed, but it wasn't in a near death situation yet. 

Near death is another thing, sure it heavily bled but I wouldn't call him near death yet. It wasn't mortally wounded, it just presented a good amount of serious deep bites and lacerations indicating it failed at controlling the cougar by the neck and was getting shredded as a result by the cougar's desperate defensive capacity.

Just to Note that Coco didn't make a single whimper and had its head up the entire moment, if it wasn't for that limp its aftermath situation would have been like Smuts, just less of a growler because Coco itself wasn't anything close in temperament to Smuts. Smuts was also cut in half by a boar but was totally fine and kept attacking angrily the boar for a while before succumbing to bloodloss, crazy what adrenaline can do. Smuts is easily more dame than most dogos, bot more game than Akela. Him and Akela are on the same level. Akela got gored through the jugular vein by a hog but kept fighting till it collapsed.

Long story short, I'm open for both outcomes with Smuts, just more confident that when it got frightfully torn (which means severely injured) , not everytime, it wasn't having a good time and getting similarly with Coco.

It failed to properly control the Leopard (who also failed to control the dog) and was getting maimed and shredded all over the body or in the face. It would have lacked a good amount of injuries if it successfully subdued the cat. 

I'm open to claim it was having the better of other leopards when it wasn't injured, 

I'm also open to say the leopard/s got the "better" of him and fought him off after savagely tearing him as defense.

Similarly to how that this young hyena tried to steal the kill off a male leopard but targeted the leopard instead and - didn't end well. Got frightfully torn.

We can again agree to an extent - and the rest is because of actual speculation.

You do know that I'm not denying Smuts victory wasn't possible, just when it didn't come out as if it went through a woodchipper, a severely torn dog gives me the idea that it wasn't having a good time in controlling the cat and likely leading to get outlasted in damage department.

That wasn't always the case, sure. Not doubting that.

Regarding to boerboels - ok they are bulldogs.

The accounts I'm referring to are of the 1900s, the most recent one is of 1971 and the victim was a Boerboel x Ridgeback so definitely a large working bulldog , the same "mix" that killed a large 185 lb hog in Australia if I'm not mistaken. So all of those were at least valuable farm dogs or catchdogs, considering two of those instances happened on a hunt. Back then Boerboels were valuable. Today they aren't for the MOST part. 200 lb Boerboel vs 200+ lb leopard you get a 400+ lb leopard as a result.

And the enormous wolfhound Jane Goodall reported being dragged away by a leopard.

How enormous was it? But wasn't it a farm dog as well? 

Retired boardogs.

They don't look that bad IIRC in those 1800-1900 paintings.

They seem like what a genuine 140-150 lb dog would look like in that image. 

This is how a 200 lb obese mastiff looks like.

Also bites are the problem, bites are deep and prone to infection (I know this from my own dogs, the germs get deep, the relatively narrow hole seals shut with a scab and then the germs grow in "safety" underneath and get out of control), scratches are far less of an issue. No issue, until they become actual lacerations. Coco had bites, I don't get the impression smut necessarily had any bites, and don't get the impression his scratches were deep lacerations. The lack of treatment or any mention of ailment from infection makes this likely. Bites in Sri Lanka in the 1800s would probably need treatment or cause very memorable noteworthy illness if not death.

Now this interesting as argument, but I would add one thing. I think you might be downgrading dog immunity system too much at the level of humans.

Aren't dogs just,since always, much...much more resistant when compared to us to general infections their wounds may face? 

I mean, we civilized hominids are the softies of this world, we're the ones able to die because of a fucking cold (lol covid is the proof) nowadays, but back then how many times were hunting dogs badly maimed and still lived up to their day even when medical attention wasn't so strong or developed (the first veterinary hospital was opened in 1750s afaik) ?

I'm also pretty resistant sometimes despite not being a dog / closer to wildanimal status. I've been bitten a good amount of times by mangy foxes in my reserve and since the anti-mange injections and antibiotic therapy would last for at least half an hour if not even for one hour I couldn't disinfect or clean the bite immediately, I had to wait because Doc needed me in the ambulatory. Add to the fact that after capturing the fox from its stabilization we had to transport it to yue ambulatory first and it was a long walk, if mange wanted it had all the time to penetrate me.

Never had mange myself, never felt an itch where I was bitten and never ever was my skin swollen. But I bled, considerably . Have got no images about that because I was in hurry, but I got images about how a small ratsnake was able to injure me so let alone an adult mangy fox. Really goes to show how shitty delicate primate skin is lol. No wonder why gorillas suffer terribly from leopard claws.

I've also been bitten countless of times by rat snakes when they got stuck in the nets of the aviaries (mfs tried to steal the frozen chicks we feed kestrels and small falcon species with) and while I was freeing them they constantly bit my hands, this is the worst that had ever happened to me with a rat snake. Call me dumb and stupid but I never disinfected them, just washed with water .

So if as a softie human I've survived mange and infections many times despite disinfecting myself either too late or not even one bit - I'm sure that infections in dogs can be also not that norm. Sure not saying it can't happen but they have just a way stronger immunity system than us humans.

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[grippingwhiteness]

We have different perspectives and different things we are focussing on. Which can be a problem, but could also be seen as us not actually disagreeing as much as it seems about "reality", rather just having different values as to what we deem important and what we choose to be focussing on.

That is not a problem, we don't really disagree overall, just about when Smuts was frightfully torn which imo indicates the leopard was the one delivering much more damage and successfully defended itself and escaped.

But we can agree to disagree, I don't see a problem there.

We aren't enemies anymore actually, so I don't see that as a problem.

I'm even open for the creation of an agreement called "Pact of Mutual Defence" between me, you and Reindog as opposed to how AE on Bestiary sometimes specifically targets and attacks both you and even me as the fanatics with no life and a lot of free time. 
Which means as a problem like that ever happens I'll intervene and take the defenses of both of you. Just that at least you're not seen as the bad guys of the place. The P.D.M.

I'm open for that.

[Hardcastle]

Very good posts overall, will respond to it properly and clarify things when I can.

In the meantime, yes I am surprised how much I don't hate you considering how much I thought I did. Lol

You came in pretty hot, and now I understand it was due to me disrespecting cats, which is an attitude born from decades of frustration with cat fans, but at the same time the logical side of my brain agrees with you of course that it is bullshit to hate on the animal or disrespect the toughness of a savage wild animal roughing it in nature. They deserve full respect and reverence for that.

I also think part of you got swept up in the carnivora narrative that I'm a kook, which is also bullshit. I'm a very measured and rational reasonable person who listens and considers counter arguments thoughtfully. Which also you are doing, and that is the main thing. The most important thing and most significant divide between good posters and shit posters is the ability to listen and absorb info and then say "yes, I understand that, but..." Or "yes that is true and that means ..." Etc etc. There are people who do that, and then others like AE who just ignore, reject, deny. Use dishonest tactics and weaponise their ignorance to their benefit. There is no hope for such people, no prospect of growth or improvement. That is not you, and I value posters like that whether they agree or disagree. You don't shy away from the arguments I'm making, you take them in, acknowledge them, demonstrate understanding, and then assert points of difference and give your own interpretations and perspectives and I can't complain when someone does that.

So yes, definitely not enemies and it turns out one of the better sparring partners I have had.

I don't even need to argue with much but will just go through and comment on some things when I am settled to focus properly.

[Deleted]

Who is "gripping whiteness" on carnivora?

[Bolushi]

Oct 11, 2023 15:49:20 GMT @thehunter said:

Who is "gripping whiteness" on carnivora?

Menvidas

[grippingwhiteness]

Oct 11, 2023 15:49:20 GMT @thehunter said:

Who is "gripping whiteness" on carnivora?

andreavitanza305
menvidas

[grippingwhiteness]

Oct 11, 2023 12:29:42 GMT Hardcastle said:

Very good posts overall, will respond to it properly and clarify things when I can.

In the meantime, yes I am surprised how much I don't hate you considering how much I thought I did. Lol

You came in pretty hot, and now I understand it was due to me disrespecting cats, which is an attitude born from decades of frustration with cat fans, but at the same time the logical side of my brain agrees with you of course that it is bullshit to hate on the animal or disrespect the toughness of a savage wild animal roughing it in nature. They deserve full respect and reverence for that.

I also think part of you got swept up in the carnivora narrative that I'm a kook, which is also bullshit. I'm a very measured and rational reasonable person who listens and considers counter arguments thoughtfully. Which also you are doing, and that is the main thing. The most important thing and most significant divide between good posters and shit posters is the ability to listen and absorb info and then say "yes, I understand that, but..." Or "yes that is true and that means ..." Etc etc. There are people who do that, and then others like AE who just ignore, reject, deny. Use dishonest tactics and weaponise their ignorance to their benefit. There is no hope for such people, no prospect of growth or improvement. That is not you, and I value posters like that whether they agree or disagree. You don't shy away from the arguments I'm making, you take them in, acknowledge them, demonstrate understanding, and then assert points of difference and give your own interpretations and perspectives and I can't complain when someone does that.

So yes, definitely not enemies and it turns out one of the better sparring partners I have had.

I don't even need to argue with much but will just go through and comment on some things when I am settled to focus properly.

I appreciate the compliments, I can also say that you're among the best debaters I've ever interacted with. Likely number one for real. And what is also interesting is that both me and you shared very similar separated views on the concept of civilization. I do admit I was hyping up too much my likely roman roots too much, whereas too much civilization isn't a good thing on the long term.

On the other hand I'm very happy that my dig knowledge especially on grupping dogs and "gameness" as a whole has developed. Ad if I was partly dog-ized. Though I already had part of this nature in me already (since a kid) so it was way easier and with way more impressive results to get me in this position. People who just hate dogs will never come to change - Comfylounge as example, 8Avian as another example.

Most of what carnivora had brainwashed me about you was that you actually were a cat hater than claimed cats are cowards in a mean sense of the term. But obviously it wasn't true. Glad I've found out you do respect cats and defend them when needed.

At the end of the day, allies is a good word.

[s]

Oct 11, 2023 12:29:42 GMT Hardcastle said:

Very good posts overall, will respond to it properly and clarify things when I can.

In the meantime, yes I am surprised how much I don't hate you considering how much I thought I did. Lol

You came in pretty hot, and now I understand it was due to me disrespecting cats, which is an attitude born from decades of frustration with cat fans, but at the same time the logical side of my brain agrees with you of course that it is bullshit to hate on the animal or disrespect the toughness of a savage wild animal roughing it in nature. They deserve full respect and reverence for that.

I also think part of you got swept up in the carnivora narrative that I'm a kook, which is also bullshit. I'm a very measured and rational reasonable person who listens and considers counter arguments thoughtfully. Which also you are doing, and that is the main thing. The most important thing and most significant divide between good posters and shit posters is the ability to listen and absorb info and then say "yes, I understand that, but..." Or "yes that is true and that means ..." Etc etc. There are people who do that, and then others like AE who just ignore, reject, deny. Use dishonest tactics and weaponise their ignorance to their benefit. There is no hope for such people, no prospect of growth or improvement. That is not you, and I value posters like that whether they agree or disagree. You don't shy away from the arguments I'm making, you take them in, acknowledge them, demonstrate understanding, and then assert points of difference and give your own interpretations and perspectives and I can't complain when someone does that.

So yes, definitely not enemies and it turns out one of the better sparring partners I have had.

I don't even need to argue with much but will just go through and comment on some things when I am settled to focus properly.

Dale/Bolushi do you favour any dog more often than not over the largest Puma populations of British Columbia, Colorado and South Patagonia, in which males average close to 70kg? 

[Bolushi]

Oct 19, 2023 12:46:44 GMT s said:

Oct 11, 2023 12:29:42 GMT Hardcastle said:

Very good posts overall, will respond to it properly and clarify things when I can.

In the meantime, yes I am surprised how much I don't hate you considering how much I thought I did. Lol

You came in pretty hot, and now I understand it was due to me disrespecting cats, which is an attitude born from decades of frustration with cat fans, but at the same time the logical side of my brain agrees with you of course that it is bullshit to hate on the animal or disrespect the toughness of a savage wild animal roughing it in nature. They deserve full respect and reverence for that.

I also think part of you got swept up in the carnivora narrative that I'm a kook, which is also bullshit. I'm a very measured and rational reasonable person who listens and considers counter arguments thoughtfully. Which also you are doing, and that is the main thing. The most important thing and most significant divide between good posters and shit posters is the ability to listen and absorb info and then say "yes, I understand that, but..." Or "yes that is true and that means ..." Etc etc. There are people who do that, and then others like AE who just ignore, reject, deny. Use dishonest tactics and weaponise their ignorance to their benefit. There is no hope for such people, no prospect of growth or improvement. That is not you, and I value posters like that whether they agree or disagree. You don't shy away from the arguments I'm making, you take them in, acknowledge them, demonstrate understanding, and then assert points of difference and give your own interpretations and perspectives and I can't complain when someone does that.

So yes, definitely not enemies and it turns out one of the better sparring partners I have had.

I don't even need to argue with much but will just go through and comment on some things when I am settled to focus properly.

Dale/Bolushi do you favour any dog more often than not over the largest Puma populations of British Columbia, Colorado and South Patagonia, in which males average close to 70kg? 

No but a handful of dogs have a chance. Maybe a 140lbs elite Tosa or 165lb elite boarhound could win a few encounters. Maybe...

[Hardcastle]

I have to basically say "no" at this point.

I think the tosa is unusually problematic though. Somewhat uniquely too, which is rare in dogs. Saying something is unique to a breed should usually be a big red flag that the person saying it has infantile dog knowledge, but this is a rare exception to that IMO.

I don't think it kills a 70 kg puma, but I also think the puma has an almost impossible time killing it. I'd genuinely be curious to see what they could do with it, and I struggle to see really any outcome other than the puma giving up and running away.
This is an animal with skin looser and thicker than a honey badger, bones proportionately more robust, far more offensive retaliation output, and far far larger and stronger. I think cats struggle with tanks that can retaliate while being grappled and pinned, which is why Hyenas are so annoying for them. They are hard to kill, and then when pinned can often swing their snake neck around and deliver a very dangerous bite. Leopards are largely like "F_ that". Leopards are also a bit like "F- that" with honey badgers. A tosa is almost a perfect storm of those two things. It can fully rotate around in its skin and retaliate in basically any position, it is weirdly flexible and maleable with loose joint sockets allowing it's limbs to rotate in all sorts of directions, and combined with its loose skin it can kind of squirm out of anything, always find footing to regain its balance and return to its feet, and always find a way to fight back. When the puma is struggling and failing to keep the tosa still, and struggling and failing to land a killer bite, and finds its claws aren't doing the damage they normally can (even to a dogo), and finds it can't prevent this large dog (with, for what its worth the hardest proven bite force of a canine ever recorded) what can the puma do but just give up and realise it picked the wrong target? An impossibly rubbery uncontrollable impenetrable goo pile that can fight back indefinitely.






My official answer is "no", my "but maybe" exception to the rule is the tosa. But no dog can kill a 70 kg puma 1 on 1 IMO.

[s]

A bit unrelated, but this Chilean/Argentinian school math problem i randomly found when searching for rumours of 120kg Pumas is funny.

"un puma de 120kg corre para alcanzar a su presa a una velocidad de 100 m/s ¿cual es su energia cinetica?"

"A 120kg Puma runs at a speed of 100 meters per second to catch it's prey, what is it's cinetic energy?"

Didn't know 120kg Pumas had superpowers allowing them to run at 360 kilometers per hour.