Animal fighter tier list

[Supercommunist]

Thought this might be a fun thread to have.

Rate animals on how good you think they are at fighting.

S = Highest

F= Lowest.

Realistically, they should also be seperated into different weight classes, but that might be too much trouble and make this thread less fun:

Also I think it would be cool if we could have a community based discussion to determine where animals should be placed.

For instance: where you do you guys think komodos fall?

Personally, I'd say A-S. They have incredibly lethal jaws, are heavily armored, flexible and capable of biting animals from many angles and are surprisingly good at penetrating armor despite having a weak bite force.

[Infinity Blade]

I'd say ratites are D (or D-) tier. They most certainly have the potential to deal very dangerous damage, even to animals roughly their size, and I've posted a bunch of accounts documenting the kind of damage ratites can do. The problem is, kicking isn't their main defense, running is, and it shows. The only ratite I know of that has been documented to actually fight back against predators is the cassowary (the one with the most specialized weapon among ratites).

[Supercommunist]

Yeah I roll my eyes whenever people treat cassowaries as if they were JP raptors. They are killed by free roaming dogs on a semi-regular basis.

Oryx/gemsbok are suprisingly good fighters and have been known to seriously injure lions:



https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/b7risu/lion_that_got_shanked_by_an_oryx/

Funnily enough I think that while their horns are great for defending from attacks from behind, they are a lot less effective against frontal attacks.

I'd put them in B- to C+ tier.

[Infinity Blade]

We need to talk about elephants...

Despite their tusks, these are not the most important assets in elephant fights. In fights between bull elephants, musth trumps body size and tusk possession in agonistic encounters. When neither bull has a musth advantage, then size trumps tusk possession, even if the size advantage is modest. So if you had a tusker going up against a tuskless bull anywhere over 10 cm taller at the shoulder, the tuskless bull wins (Chelliah & Sukumar, 2013). It's for this reason that in Asian elephants, tuskless bulls aren't necessarily inferior in combat to tuskers, as they often are larger (to some extent), have more robust builds, more muscular trunks, and more developed skulls (link).

You would think tusks would reliably overcome a (surely not extreme) size and build advantage, but more often than not they don't. It's only when musth and body size are equal that tusks actually become a decisive factor (because well, what reason is there for it to not win at that point?). The study I linked to above says that tusks are likely only to be used for goring after the opponent has been rendered vulnerable. The fact that fatal goring tends to occur after a wrestling match breaks apart and one elephant exposes itself (link) seems to corroborate this.

Normally I try to avoid posting old accounts to prove a point, but in this case old word on tuskless bulls overpowering tuskers through sheer strength seems consistent with modern observations.

“Strange as it may appear, there are occasional instances where a haing is feared even by powerful tuskers. Mr. C. B. Lacey informed me of one or two cases within his knowledge. Mr. Danson also informed me of a case, and I myself have met with one instance. It is also a generally recognized fact amongst the Burmans. In such cases it will usually be found that the haing is an enormously powerful elephant with an unusually fine development of the trunk; the strength and dexterity in its use when fighting against a tusker is said to compensate fully for the absence of tusks. In Pegu, some years ago, a reliable Burman tracker casually informed me about a fight he witnessed in the jungle between a very large haing and an ordinary sized tusker; though the haing received some nasty wounds, he put the tusker to flight.

Tusks are occasionally snapped during fights. Mr. Danson, of Messrs. Darwood & Co., showed me a piece of a very fine tusk fractured about a foot or so from the point. This piece when found in one of the Shweli forests was covered with congealed blood. Mr. Petley, who knew the facts, informed me that the fight occurred between a good-sized wild tusker and an enormous solitary haing which was well known in the district (Shweli). Several Burmans witnessed the combat, during the course of which the haing snapped off the large portion of tusk referred to.

Emerson Tennent states that Mr. Mercer, Civil Political Officer of Government at Badulla, sent him a jagged fragment of elephant tusk 2 ft. long, weighing between 20 and 30 lbs., which had been brought to him by natives who, being attracted by noise in the jungle, witnessed a fight between a tusker and one without, and saw the latter seize one of the tusks of his antagonist and wrengh from it the portion in question. — [Emerson Tennent, 1859, Vol. II, page 280.) Ceylon elephants are generally tuskless — not one in a hundred is found with tusks. They have tushes 10 ins. to i 2 ins. long and i in. to 2 ins. in diameter. — [Emerson Tennent, page 274.)”

archive.org/stream/elephantstheirdi00evan/elephantstheirdi00evan_djvu.txt

This basically means that, discounting musth, the biggest asset to elephants isn't their tusks. It's their size/strength. No problem if they're going up against something smaller than themselves (and elephants are the biggest animals in their ecosystems). But what happens when they're deprived of that size advantage, and they're pitted against certain extinct giants as big as or bigger than them?

Hell, there have even been instances where tuskless elephants actually mortally wounded/killed tuskers. Here->, for instance, two bulls (one tusked, the other tuskless) fought to the death. While the tuskless bull died, the tusker was also grievously injured and died of its wounds later. If you replaced that tuskless bull with say, an equal sized theropod, that tusker would have been dinner.

So lb for lb, I don't rate elephants as highly as many people would. They're not the worst fighters lb for lb to be sure, but they're really not anything special either. P. namadicus over T. rex? Sure, definitely. A bush elephant over a T. rex? ...Nnnnnnaaaaahhhh...I definitely don't think it deserves to be rated as highly as many have done. Not entirely sure on rating, though.

[Supercommunist]

^I guess they are kind of warthogs, their tusks look like they are super dangerous weapons, but they are less useful than a boar's smaller but more practical ones.

Warthogs though are still fairly tough prey and I'd probably say that they are more impressive for their size.

"Pound for pound" I'd say elephants might rank in C tier.

[Infinity Blade]

^Funny thing about warthogs is that people are often awed by their big curved upper tusks, but those are just for delivering blunt blows, pushing, and parrying during intraspecific combat. What really makes warthogs deadly are the lower tusks, which are shorter, but much sharper. These are what they use to slash and gore predators, while the upper tusks are for nonlethal combat with each other.

[Supercommunist]

Another weakness of big elephants is a that long trunk. If a elephant were up against a similar sized theropod, they could bite that off like a slim jim and instantly impede its ability to breathe.

So which kind of proboscid would you reckon is the best and worst fighter pound for pound?

Stegotetrabelodon tusks look deadly, but of course its possibly they might be fragile and more ornamental than weapons.

I always also figured that the curled tusks of mammoths would be very ineffective weapons against similar sized animals.

Edit: Also what are your thoughts on ceratosaurus?

Ceratosaurus always has been my favorite dinosaur so I've been curious how good of a fighter it was and it doesn't help there is contradictory research on the subject.

Some research suggests that ceratosaurus had very lethal jaws compared to other theropods:

. Ceratosaurus is a distinctly different form, exhibiting a generally greater level of mechanical efficiency of the jaw adductors than the tyrannosaurids. This, combined with an adductor chamber apparently relatively larger than in Allosaurus (and Daspletosaurus), suggests that Ceratosaurus had a more lethal bite than Allosaurus and, possibly, than some tyrannosaurids.

But according to some recent research is less resistant to stress than theropods like allosaurus and tyrannosaurids which leads some to think that ceratosaurus primarily targetted smaller prey.

Scaled mandibular rami of Ceratosaurus nasicornis and Suchomimus tenerensis experience notably high magnitudes of von Mises stresses, which is consistent with shallow post-dentary regions.

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.24602

Not sure I buy that second explanation though. Ceratosaurus really doesn't look like it was built to attack smaller animals given how compact and bulky it was. I wonder if hunted with rapid bites with its huge teeth and inflicted blood loss through a death of a thousand cuts approach rather than biting and holding.

[Infinity Blade]

Stegotetrabelodon tusks look deadly, but of course its possibly they might be fragile and more ornamental than weapons.

Its tusks have been noted to be relatively slender and very thin. The lower tusks were also ovoid in cross section, not circular, which could make them more susceptible to snapping if too much lateral forces were subjected onto them.

I made a Stegotetrabelodon profile, and there's an illustration that shows how gracile the tusks were. I also looked at data on its tusks and compared them to data for African bush elephants.

theworldofanimals.proboards.com/thread/3560/stegotetrabelodon-spp

I always also figured that the curled tusks of mammoths would be very ineffective weapons against similar sized animals.

I agree. But mammoths seem to have somewhat more robust leg bones than modern elephants do (and on average, slightly broader pelves). So I think lb for lb they're a bit above modern elephants, but outmatched by more robust extinct proboscideans, like mastodons, gomphotheres, or Palaeoloxodon antiquus (which had significantly more robust leg bones than other elephantids, even other species of Palaeoloxodon).

Fwiw, Gomphotherium osborni has been said (by Asier Larramendi) to probably be the most robust proboscidean that ever lived, with a pelvis twice as broad as its femur is long. It also appears to have relatively short, stocky leg bones for its size. So maybe Gomphotherium takes the cake as the best lb for lb? I have a feeling elephantids in general (except the relatively stocky P. antiquus) might just be the worst.

Scaled mandibular rami of Ceratosaurus nasicornis and Suchomimus tenerensis experience notably high magnitudes of von Mises stresses, which is consistent with shallow post-dentary regions.

This study looked at specimen USNM 4735, the middle specimen in this image.



It's been suggested before that this specimen could just be a juvenile Ceratosaurus, which I believe could easily explain why its jaw didn't fare so well in this study.

[Supercommunist]

Although a lot of people would think horned ungulates would be more dangerous than equines, it seems that zebras and the like are pretty dangerous prey items:

Hunting group size, hunting rates and hunting success were monitored over a seven-year period
among members of one large clan of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) inhabiting the Masai Mara
National Reserve, in south-west Kenya. Prey availability varied seasonally in this study area, and
hyenas tended to hunt whichever prey species were most abundant during each month of the year.
Over 75% of 272 hunting attempts were made by lone hyenas, even when they hunted antelope three
times their own body mass, such as wildebeest and topi. Of all prey that were commonly hunted, only
zebra were usually hunted in groups.

. Kruuk (1972)
found that hunts of gazelles and wildebeest were most frequently initiated by lone hyenas, whereas
zebra were hunted by groups containing an average of 11 hyenas

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1997.tb02925.x

In contrast to the wildebeest, zebra predation was
selective in that foals were taken more often than
expected, whereas adults were killed less often.

www.jstor.org/stable/5624

Although Schaller (1972) did not tally success rates
separately for wildebeest and zebra, zebra are
slightly larger, and a zebra stallion's tactic of
lagging toward the rear of a fleeing group and
attacking an approaching predator makes the zebra
a more dangerous prey

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347205809078

On seven occasions
when an adult zebra was able to free itself from the
grip of a lioness, by kicking or falling onto her, no noticeable injuries to the lioness were observed.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00170175

Zebra provided the most mass per
kill, but were rarely killed, with a probability of
killing (7%) far lower than other species (minimum of 31%). Excluding zebra, wildebeest were
the heaviest prey killed (mean of 93 kg). African
hares were killed with the shortest chases (mean of
130 m), but yielded little food (2 kg).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0003347295800484

Thus I would put most equines in C tier.



On the suject of difficult prey, it seems squirrels are far better fighters than rabbits:

As a result, 65% of the attacks in?
volved a chase of at least 25 m. Only rarely, however,
did the hawk have a chance for more than one strike.
Captured rabbits, which weighed nearly as much as the
hawk, were moderately difficult to kill. Although they
occasionally struggled, none made an obvious attempt
to defend itself. The hawk captured and killed 18% of
the 161 rabbits it attacked.
Squirrels were the most difficult ofthe three species
of prey for the hawk to capture and kill; they were very
wary and responded to the hawk at distances of up to
100 m by seeking protection in tree cavities. Because
they attempted to escape by climbing in trees, their
rapid evasive movements were complicated and threedimensional. Attacks on squirrels that were not surprised by the hawk (73% of all attacks) resulted in long
chases with the hawk making up to 16 strikes as the
squirrel dodged each successive strike by shifting to
the side of a limb opposite the oncoming hawk. Once
captured, squirrels were always difficult to kill; they
struggled and defended themselves vigorously by twisting, scratching, and biting and were capable of injuring
the hawk. The hawk captured and killed only 12% of
the 200 squirrels it attacked.

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2307/1938472

Ounce for ounce, rats are probably more formdiable than squirrels given that they have nastier jaws.

[Supercommunist]

Cheetahs somewhere in D tier, given that coalitions are known to often struggle to bring down prey items that they probably outweigh if you combined their mass.

[Infinity Blade]

Anteaters can kill animals as large as humans with their claws. To be fair, we're not exactly thick skinned animals, but the way they kill us is by causing deep puncture wounds that can damage major blood vessels, particularly the femoral artery (in fact, there are at least three cases where exactly this happened). As long as an anteater could puncture an opponent with its claws, it has the potential to deeply puncture and cause exsanguination. Though, it's probably worth noting that where it punctures depends on what it's going up against, since obviously not all animals have the same posture as humans.

www.researchgate.net/publication/263971704_Human_Death_Caused_by_a_Giant_Anteater_Myrmecophaga_tridactyla_in_Brazil#:~:text=A%2054%2Dyear%2Dold%20man,area%20close%20to%20his%20home.

www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(16)30156-9/pdf

I would say B or B- tier. I'd also put ground sloths, which probably fought in a similar way with their claws, in that same tier (although, an animal with a damaging bite could very easily kill an anteater if it ever got a hold of its head).

[Supercommunist]

^There are also videos of tamanduas subduing much larger dogs. Anteaters are very impressive fighters. If ground sloths had the same battle competence, they would probably be higher due to the fact that they have a sturdier skull and some had those osteoderm defenses beneath their skin.

[Infinity Blade]

One question: how do we account for ABC logic? For example, what if there are some animals in the same tier, does that necessarily mean they'd be evenly matched at hypothetical size parity? What if there are some animals in lower tiers that you might not rate well against certain opponents, but better against others?

[Supercommunist]

One question: how do we account for ABC logic? For example, what if there are some animals in the same tier, does that necessarily mean they'd be evenly matched at hypothetical size parity?

This shouldn't pose too much of a problem given that most game tier lists usually consist of a roster that are filled with characters with clear checks and counters. For instance, pokemon is all about type advantages )fire beats water, grass beats rocks, ect) and while every pokemon has plenty of direct counters its very clear which ones are good for competitive and which ones aren't.

In the case of our tier list, a S tier fighter would probably be an animal that would generally be a better fighter than most animals.

While an F tier animal is animal that is worse than most other animals at fighting but may still have a good match up against a high tier.

Realistically, there should be a weight division as I imagine that mostanimal builds would be completely useless if they were scaled up, for instance I think a cat-like grappling build would be a terrible design for a t-rex sized predator as you really don't want to be violently wrestling things to the ground when a fall can hurt you, but I figured since this is just meant to be a fun thread we would just group them into one list and avoid making it too complex.

[Supercommunist]

Any opinions on how ecothermic sharks like tigers sharks compare to mesothermic/endothermic sharks at parity?