Ostrich vs. Kangaroo

In this installment of Beast Duels, we shall be discussing a duel of biblical-- nay, Qaranical!-- proportions. It is a duel which has sparked a great deal of controversy amongst the duelers in Akron, mostly due to the fact that they are pathetically unaware that when it comes to Beast Dueling, my hubris is law. I won't leave you on the edge of your seat writhing in the cold sweat of anticipation; let's dive right in.

The Duel: An Ostrich vs. A Kangaroo

The Setting: An Open Field

Type of Duel: Battle Royal: The Duelers fight to the death.

Kangaroo Statistics:

• A red kangaroo can jump over 30 feet at once. This is longer than the world record for humans, a species known for its horizontal leap.
• Males can grow up to 6 feet and weigh up to 180 pounds.
• Males fight by standing on their hindlimbs and locking arms in a boxing stance. They are also known to kick with their powerful legs and use their sharp claws to eviscerate their opponents. Eew.

Ostrich Statistics:

• Largest living species of bird.
• Can't fly
• The red-necked ostrich, the largest species, can grow up to 9 feet tall and weigh up to 340 pounds.
  
• Can eviscerate opponents with kicks from its powerful hindlegs (sound familiar?)

Hm. I see a lot of similarities here. Neither can fly, and both fight by kicking. Besides the not-being-able-to-fly part, it sounds a little like two ninjas going at it. So who has the advantage here?

To analyze this, we're best served by comparing the characteristics each has.

Kangaroos can jump far and can cool their body temperature with their spit. Ostriches are fucking heavy. Which would you rather have in a fight?

I don't really need to continue on here, but I will because some people are a little slow.

A kangaroo can jump. Great. Good for it. So can fleas. Ostriches can run over 40 mph; I can barely drive that fast (Asian).

Advantage: Ostrich.

Let's look at their kicking abilities: One is kicking with 180 pounds of force. The other is kicking with nearly double that.

Advantage: Ostrich.

(If you're having trouble following why the ostrich gets the advantages here, please don't contact me to ask)

Plus, look at this technique:


This is an easy victory for the ostrich. I know, I know, the Looney Tunes of your youth made you think that ostriches were big fucking pansies who always stuck their neck in the sand, whereas kangaroos were badass boxers. Life lesson time: cartoons aren't always telling the truth. Just the Simpsons.

Til next time, happy dueling
--Nick

Beast Duels F.A.Q.

I've gotten thousands of emails recently regarding the logistics of this here blog, so in lieu of beast-dueling, in this edition I'm going to be answering some of the many questions the fans have been asking.

So what are the beast-duelers, anyway?

Beast-duelers are common, humble folk. They go to work, bring home the bacon, kiss their wives, and then match up beast vs. beast in fights to the death.


Who are the beast duelers?

The beast-duelers are an army of Ph. D's, MDs, veterinarians, underground dog-fighters and the occasional jockeys, who have devoted their life's work to an ongoing curiosity of determining which of two beasts will persevere in mortal combat. An honorable pursuit, and a service to their nation.

That sounds expensive. How do you afford that?

Unfortunately, Beast Duels has yet to receive any form of government funding (officially), although rumors have been circulating that certain blogs have certain lobbyists in a certain Washington D.C. working with certain Senators to get bills passed to aid Beast Duels with government funding.

Okay, okay, it's Robert Byrd.

Until that bill passes, Beast Duels has managed to receive numerous-- and oftentimes quite generous-- contributions from various organizations. In particular, The Heritage Foundation has contributed funds exceeding seven figures to keep Beast Duels continuing, claiming it is "man's right to take the creatures God created for their amusement, and make them kill each other." The 700 Club sent a similar statement to Beast Duels, but unfortunately with a much smaller donation. Odd.

Do you actually carry out all of the beast duels you mention?

The long answer is no, we do not. We are not inhumane people. We're not monsters like Michael Vick, pitting living soul against living soul in a completely disgraceful regard for the sanctity of all life. This blog, and the beast-dueling community, simply exists as a hypothetical analysis for the various methods of animal warfare and attempts to analyze them on a strictly theoretical scale, solely for the purposes of entertainment and research.

The short answer is of course we do.


Do you have any animals yourself?

My parents have two dogs. And as a matter of fact, I've recently adopted a kitty. Unfortunately, my digital camera is on the fritz, so here's the closest I could come up with to a picture of him:



I'm an animal rights activist. Would you think that Beast Duels would be okay if it was done with humans?

Funny that you should mention that. And yes.

How long have the beast-duelers been around for?

In some form, beast-duelers have existed since the dawn of man, when Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis pitted a woolly mammoth against her pet saber-tooth tiger, Bronck. Unfortunately for Lucy, but fortunately for evolutionary biologists everywhere, Bronck was slayed by the mammoth, and in a fit of depression, Lucille the cavewoman thrust herself into the depths of a glacier to be unearthed by scientists millions of years later.

The modern Renaissance of Beast Duels originated four or five years ago, in the minds of a group of precocious yet painstakingly unmotivated teens, over cups of coffee (or, as it is known in some circles, "liquid comedy".)

Why are there so few updates?

Because I'm busy. Fuck off.

Can you make me an administrator on the Beast Duels Blog?

No. This means you, Jake.

Is Justin really as awful at beast dueling as he seems?

No. He's worse.

In your opinion, what was the most significant beast duel in history?

This can be looked at many ways. Was it the aforementioned duel that led to Lucy's Plathian demise that changed the world of evolutionary biology forever? Was it something more classic, like a T. rex losing to the polar bears on Noah's arc? Or has it yet to happen, like the Avian Flu Virus killing humanity? It's hard to choose; it's like choosing one's favorite child. You clearly can't just pick the best-looking one, because the ugly ones will be the lonely single children who won't force you into a nursing home when you're sixty-three.

You're pretty awesome, Nick.

Appreciated, but that's not a question.

What does the future hold for Beast Duels?

Government contracts? Book deals? A Discovery Channel show, narrated by David Attenborough? Maybe primetime NBC? HBO? Film? AM radio?

Only time will tell.

Until next time, this has been your favorite beast-dueler and a man renowned for being able to win a duel against a flock of seagulls while only armed with a shattered beer bottle and a mad buzz, Nick Fulton. Adios everyone.

"The Velociraptor Rule"

After a long and totally unnecessary hiatus, your favorite blog about animals fighting to the death is back!

In this installment, we’ll look at a three-fold duel involving one of the most ferocious beasts to ever have lived: the velociraptor*. Thanks to the research conducted by Dr. John Hammond, we have a very accurate portrayal of both the lifestyle and attack methods of the great velociraptor.

Duel 1: Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. It's Weight In Velociraptors
The Setting: Open field
Battle Type: Battle Royale-- The competitors will fight to the death.
Stats:

Tyrannosaurus Rex

• The Tyrannosaurus Rex (I have coined an abbreviated version of it's name; from here on out, it shall be referred to as the "T. Rex") was roughly 43 feet in length and 7.5 tons in weight.
  
• It could run up to approximately 25 MPH.
• It had awkwardly small arms.
• It was once believed to not be able to visually recognize movement; this notion was later discarded because that's a stupid thing to think.

Velociraptor

• Approximately 6 or 7 feet and 33 pounds.
  
• Three curved claws on the hand.
• Can run fast as fuck.
• Hunts in packs.
• Knows how to open doors.
  

Alright, math-time motherfuckers.

7.5 tons * 2000 lbs / 33 lbs per velociraptor = 454 velociraptors per T. Rex.

I'm sure T. Rex is Latin or some shit for king of the somethings, but there's no way that this Goliath could take down that many velociraptors. Has anyone seen the end of Jurassic Park? And that was just two or three big as hell raptors.

This honestly isn't close.

The Winner: The Velociraptors

Okay, so a few hundred raptors can kill something. Great information Nick, where can I donate this week's paycheck to keep fueling your research? Wait, dear readers, before you ship me all of your monies, let's look at something a little different. Do you remember in The Lost World, the little tiny dinosaurs that tried to eat that girl? I know you do.



That little bastard is known as the compsognathus. I shit you not, that's what it's called. This brings us right into the heart of the second battle...

Duel 2: A Velociraptor vs. It's Weight in Compsognathuses.
The Setting: Open Field
Battle Type: Battle Royale-- The competitors will fight to the death.
Stats:

Velociraptor

• See above

Compsognathuses

• 3 feet long and 6.5 pounds.
• Bipedal with a long tail
• Serrated back teeth

Alright, so we have 5 of these little guys fighting one velociraptor. This is actually a combat that has brought up a lot of controversy in the Beast Dueling world, which is strange because it's actually quite a simple victory.

The velociraptor has three clear advantages here. Any two of these would almost surely be enough for a victory, but all three makes it not even close.

1. It has the claw. It's basically like having a cutlass attached to your body. If the pirates had figured out a way to make this happen, they'd still be around today instead of being depicted in shitty films by Australian douchebags. Yeah Bloom, I'm talking to you.
2. It can run faster than I drive on the highway. Because I'm Chinese. There, I said it. Anyways, it's ability to run fast, coupled with the open field landscape, gives the velociraptor the huge advantage of being able to flee and recoup if things start to go awry for it.
   
3. There are only five. Usually I am a big proponent of the "strength in numbers" theory (because I'm a weak pussy) but five tiny dinosaurs hardly provides a significant threat to the livelihood of the raptor.

The Winner: The Velociraptor

This leads us to something very interesting to be noted: the velociraptor won with it's body weight versus a much larger animal, and also thrived in a duel versus a number of smaller animals. What we can extrapolate from this is what I've dubbed The Velociraptor Rule

The Velociraptor Rule: A group of velociraptors can defeat any larger animal if their body weights are equal, and can defeat any smaller animal even if there are enough of them for their body weights to be equal.

The physical attributes of the raptor make this rule pretty undeniable. It's a quick, agile, and incredibly violent creature. In fact, I would go as far as to posit that even the Texas-sized meteor that killed the dinosaurs (or was that the size of the asteroid in Armageddon?) couldn't even stand up to an equal weight of raptors.




Which brings us to the third duel.

Duel 3: A Texas-Sized Meteor vs. It's Weight in Velociraptors
The Setting: Open Field
Battle Type: Battle Royale-- The competitors will fight to the death. Of course, since meteors don't qualify as a "living creature," we have to assume that it's destruction is roughly equivalent to its death.
Stats:

Velociraptors

• See above

The Meteor

• Since it's unknown the exact size and mass of the meteor in question, we'll have to make a few assumptions. To do this, we'll instead look at the state of Texas.
• Texas has a population of 21 million.
• Since Texas is nationally renowned for being full of fatties, we'll assume that the average weight of a Texan is 250 pounds (yeah, I'm being generous, I know).
• It's a rock.
• It has no neurological, musculoskeletal or respiratory system. Because it's a fucking rock.

So how many raptors is this? Well if a Texas-sized meteor weighs roughly the same as it's fatty population (which, let's be honest, is probably a good estimate), there would be 160 million velociraptors fighting it.

This brings us back to the strength in numbers theory. Although a meteor is a very sturdy, strong, and powerful being, it's hard for it to withstand the scraping claws of 160 million raptors. This is 320 million claws for Christ's sake. And what's the meteor gonna do to fight back? Fall on them? That shit might disrupt the atmosphere for a few million years, but there's no way it's landing on all 160 million raptors. It's just not that skilled. In the time after it lands, the meteor is essentially powerless.

Again, this is a clear victory.

The Winner: The Velociraptors

And so, what we have learned today about velociraptors clearly shows that it is a legendary beast dueler, with the smarts, skills, and chutzpah to take on even the fiercest, most numerous, and most inanimate of objects and still leave victorious.

Clever girl, indeed.

Alright guys, until next time, happy dueling!

*a note to the fundamentalist Beast Duelers: a velociraptor was a type of dinosaur, a creature that was sort of a cross between a lizard and a flightless bird that lived roughly around 500 B.C.

The Wager

Today's particular duel has invoked much controversy amongst the Akron sect of Beast Duelers, resulting in a wager between one Nicholas Fulton and one Justin Cantoni for the price of $100.

Beast 1: 1,000 Emperor Penguins. Adults are 4' tall and weigh anywhere from 44-99lb. It has a thick coat of feathers insulating its body. Their beaks are sharp enough to poke out eyes of predatory seals.



Beast 2: An adult male Walrus. The Pacific Walrus weighs up to 4,500lb. Thick skin around the neck ranging from 2"-10" and a 6" layer of blubber. Their skin is thick enough such that a grown polar bear has difficulty attacking them, and are in danger of being stabbed by their tusks.



Conditions: Actual-- Justin Cantoni's back yard.

Battle: Battle Royale: last beast standing is victorious over its enemy(ies).

So which group does the edge belong to?

Although some Cantonis are foolish enough to believe it is the walrus, they fail to realize the power of the strength of numbers. Fortunately, I (NF) am 1/2 Asian, and fully aware of the power of numbers, will win Justin's $100.

I know that the movie 300 sucked, but there's a lesson that still should've been learned here.

Assuming that the penguins are even at their lightest, their combined body weight still eclipses the walruses by almost ten-fold. The heaviest penguins will weigh 22x more than the walrus.

The argument made for the walrus is in two parts

1. He has tusks
2. He has thick skin.

Congratulations. It has tusks that can kill some of those penguins in front of it. That's obvious, and the penguins are entering this battle realizing that some of them will have to perish. But the penguins' beaks are sharp enough to stab out eyes. Once the first eye is stabbed, for obvious reasons, the stabbing of the remaining eye will be a much easier task. Once this occurs, the walrus can only flail blindly, tiring itself and slowly await it's fate. At that point, the penguins can afford to wear it down, either by continuing to poke in the eye-regions in an effort to further disorient the walrus (and an attempt-- feeble or not is unknown-- to destroy the brain) or they can attack other areas such as the gut of the walrus with the intention of eviscerating it.

So how likely is a penguin to stab out the eye of a walrus?

Let's be conservative and say that any one penguin has a 1% chance of doing this. That means by the time 100 penguins have been killed, it is statistically likely that one of these penguins will have succeeded in stabbing out an eye. The next eye will therefore be even easier to stab. So let's approximate that by the time 175 penguins have died, the walrus will be eyeless. How is a walrus supposed to-- both blind and in severe pain-- thrash merely its tusks and kill another 825 penguins?

The answer, of course, is that it cannot. It may take 500, 600, or even 922 penguins. But the penguins know that going in, and are prepared to win this duel. They have the heart, the swagger, and the courage to win; even the babies.




They will win this duel, and I will win the wager.

I've decided that with my $100, I'm going to buy March of the Penguins on DVD, autographed by Morgan Freeman.

Til next time, happy hunting.

The Classic Duel

To kick off this blog, we're gonna take a trip back in time to about two years ago, when either Cir L'Bert or myself (Nick Fulton) started the beast duels.

Beast 1: A pack of wolves: The gray wolf lives in packs anywhere from 2-20, with the average being 8. Height is 24-36". Weight varies from 70-130 lb. 4.5-6.5' from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. High stamina. Can eclipse speeds of up to 40 mph.



Beast 2: A great white shark: 20' long. 5,000 lb. Multiple rows of teeth. Can eat up to 30lb. of flesh per bite.



Conditions: Hypothetical-- an environment in which both the shark and the pack of wolves can navigate equally (in comparison to their normal environment).

Battle: Battle Royale. Last beast standing is the victor.

So who wins in a fight to the death-- a pack of wolves or a great white shark?

The traditional answer, of course, was a pack of wolves were clearly to be victorious. However, this was under the assumption that the pack of wolves was a large one-- 15 or more. So what about the pack of 8?

My initial reaction, I'm ashamed to say, was that a great white would win. Upon further analysis though, that answer is incorrect. To see why, one must look at the scenario more deeply. Wolves are adept at hunting in packs; so how do they hunt a shark? Surround it, perhaps even using one of the pack members as "bait." While the shark is advancing towards one or two, the rest of the wolves can jump onto the shark's back, where they'll be in much less physical danger and will be able to attack more safely.

In this edition of Beast Duels, the spoils go to the pack of wolves! Congratulations wolf pack!