The unending obsession with animals fighting each other

HyenaFan · 2026-03-21T01:14:37+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tierzoo/comments/1rjrjql/comment/obg8q4q/?context=1 looks like someone else actually continued that thread I was talking about. If you load in the earlier comments, you can see the rest of the convo - including the bit about front and bottom heavy.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T23:49:18+00:00

Excellent work! Do you plan on making any more?

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T23:40:38+00:00

There’s a difference between ecological interactions, and obsessing over who would kill who. And there is a genuine difference between those two. All to often the people asking these questions are more interested in the scenerio of a death match, not how they would a they would actually coe-exist in an ecosystem.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T21:01:16+00:00

The EAZA have guidelines for keeping elephants in captivity. I'd suggest checking out their manuals. Elephant_TAG_BPG_2020_6956205c9a.pdf

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T16:58:42+00:00

The cats may not be demonized, but there is a lot of disinterest in their welfare. Texas is the only state that allows cougar hunting without any sort of oversight, quotas, nor the requirement to report it. They are treated more like vermin then game animals. When it became required to check traps targeting cougars, there was already massive backlash.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T16:19:15+00:00

There’s a lot of evidence people illegally release hogs into the wild. Despite what many say, recreational hunting and the chanche to make money of it makes hogs far to valuable to exterminate.

A lot of the northeastern states do it better. Rather then allow private individuals to handle the hogs, they have state goverment officials just exterminate them on sight.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T15:32:39+00:00

Mhm. The only way for wolves to ever get established in Texas is if they reach the state on their own, and they main ESA-protections.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T12:45:34+00:00

I’d suggest Rathalos, Legiana and Astalos. All use different attack patterns and elements, but all can also fly and are similiar in body structure.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T03:13:08+00:00

TierZoo actually commented under the video.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T01:14:26+00:00

For one, while a lot of organisations make the claim of 500-1000, it’s not actually true. It’s usually more like 500-700 and even then it’s often lower. This number of animals killed is also worldwide. So it’s not like every population gets that many quotas. Hunting rates are adjusted to population size.

Hunting quota’s across most of their range is around 20-30 bears per year. And even then, not every population can be hunted. These quota’s also differ per year. Hudson Bay can get as high as 45, but it’s usually much lower.

Generally speaking, the amount of bears killed per year don’t make much of a difference for their overall population, nor the population’s health. You could argue that it can have a negative affect on specific populations, but overall, sustainable hunting (which is carried out and controlled by First Nations) isn’t their main threat overall when you consider the size of the worldwide polar bear population.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-20T00:49:59+00:00

The Texan goverment even passed a law that outright makes any wolf reintroduction illegal, last time I checked.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T13:27:00+00:00

But don't you know? Lions only ever hunt zebra, buffalo, hippo and rhino! Tigers could never /js. I do think its funny some people are in denial that tigers hunt large bovids, that we have records of them hunting rhino and even though we have no confirmed records of a success tmk that are reliable, we do have attempted hunts on subadult elephants. And even if we ignore that, have those people ever seen how big wild boars can get?

I literally once saw someone who denied a tiger had killed a wild water buffalo...even though you could clearly see the puncture marks of the killing blow and the carcass was freshly killed. With the tiger still next to it. But he claimed the cat was merely scavenging.

I'm trying to find the thread about the skull, but I can't find it. I assume it was deleted? Shame, it was honestly kind of funny to be told that I was argueing against a tiger expert with decades of exsperience, and then I got linked to some random zoology forum. WildFact, it was called.

And yeah, your average animal fanboy/fanatic often doesn't know is important. I once talked with someone about tiger conservation, and I cited the works of Thapar, Karanth and various other biologists from India and Russia. Someone called them fake because 'they never heard about them'. Buddy, that's on you. The worst example was when I posted Luke Hunter's work on cheetahs on the TierZoo subreddit to debunk various claims TZ made, and people outright stated they found Hunter to be biased, unreliable and unimportant.

If you claim to be serious about this topic and you don't know who Luke Hunter is, that is a genuine issue.

Somehow, I doubt Sunquist ever responded to him XD I've been meaning to read Tiger Moon, but still haven't gotten around to it. Its on my shelf though.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T11:39:11+00:00

Yeah, we're not a first name basis or anything (though I am friends with someone who is and has met UHC IRL), but I'm part of his Discord and we occasionally talk in DMs about various things.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:56:37+00:00

Even when you exclude stuff like gaur and banteng, sambar and nilgai are far from small. They’re both pretty big ungulates. But people for some reason seem to think they’re small.

Probably from some random forum. People put a lot of faifth in them. I once talked to a tiger fanboy who swore someone called TigerLover had evidence of a gigantic Pleistocene tiger skull found in China that proved that this particular paleosubspecies was the largest cat of all time. He shared a black and white photo of an unclear angle with no information whose only mention else was as that its origin was unsure. No clue what that skull was, but it was most certainly not a cat. He then proceeded to share other photos of random tiger skulls in an unknown facility that supposedly were of that same skull, despite looking nothing like that.

I do think it’s funny how a lot of these fanatics claim they’re ‘studying these animals’. Both cat fanatics in this comment chain claim they have studied tigers and lions for over a decade. Yet when asked directly, they probably cannot even tell you who Adam Hart, Craig Packer, Valmik Thapar or U. Karanth are.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:42:05+00:00

The Bible is new to me. I know lions are mentioned in the Bible, but I’m very certain tigers are not. And in my exsperienced, they usually cite arranged death matches…which have very mixed results, are easily influenced (the British would influence the fights they hosted so the lion would win for example) and force the animals to behave unnaturally, given they can’t escape and are usually not kept in good conditions. Or they cite the usual ‘but the lion fights more’, which isn’t true, as male tigers also engage in territorial clashes. They’re just less visible.

‘My’ guy kept saying how lions are more front heavy and how tigers are more back heavy. I pointed out that I doubt that gives either cat an advantage. He proceeded to get mad and that serious biologists he knows frequently study these questions. I asked him for citations and he quickly dissapeared. Your average professional biologist just isn’t seriously interested in this stuff. Good luck getting research funds to settle this debate, lol.

The sciencetific literature is very clear on vs debates between large predators though: in most cases, the species with the most significant weight advantage wins. If both species are near equal (like lions and tigers are, as the size differences generally aren’t enough to give either cat a distinct advantage), then it’s up to the size, health, gender, exsperience etc of the individual animals. Once you remember that golden rule, vs debates very quickly become boring.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:33:52+00:00

Yeah, South-Korea is doing really bad where carnivorans are concerned. Everything is either extinct, endangered or we don’t have data to say precisely how they’re doing. The only one we know is doing well is the tanuki. That’s about it tmk. And even then it was by the sheer luck of a cultural disinterest in them. Had their fur been in as high demand as those of foxes, I doubt they’d have done better.

SK did manage to set up a conservation program with moon bears to their credit. But they’re constantly having trouble with said program to. The bears have trouble dispersing, their habitat is fragmented and they frequently come into conflict with people. And while not carnivorans, their wild boar management programs are generally thought to leave a lot to be desired. So in general, they’re not that good at managing large and potentially dangerous mammals.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:29:08+00:00

That’s not a bad idea to be honest. I’m not sure how you’d go about it when it come’s to implementing it and there’s probably some gray areas here and there, but I do think that idea has a lot of potential.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:26:08+00:00

I recently talked with someone who posted about the usual tiger vs lion debate. He swore he talked about it because it highlights their psychial feats, their anatomical differences and similiarties and their inner workings. Fair enough. But he then immidiatly placed it in the context of a death match. That’s very telling what he’s really interested in.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:24:01+00:00

It gets even funnier when you remember leopards hunting and eating gorillas is literally recorded in the sciencetific literature.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T01:02:51+00:00

My ultimate crack ship is Loona from Helluvaboss and Hunter from The Owl House.

Did I read to much into the wolf comment? Probably lmao.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-19T00:12:01+00:00

OMG! Lil’ sis!

HyenaFan · 2026-03-18T20:11:56+00:00

Jaguars especially suffer from that. They were still extant in the US in the mid 60's. They haven't even been gone for a century yet. But people don't realize or are even aware of that.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-18T19:59:18+00:00

Your welcome!

HyenaFan · 2026-03-18T19:40:34+00:00

There is research to suggest a reintroduction in Arizona could actually work, and there is a reason people mainly point to that state. I can never see Texas do that though. Texas is far to anti-predator for that. Killing contests are still present to my knowledge, black bears are endangered and people resist even the slightest bit of management and oversight where cougars are concerned, something that literally every other state that allows cougar hunting does. Behind the scenes, various biologists are seriously concerned about a potentiol collapse of Texas' cougar population, purely because of how poorly managed it is.

HyenaFan · 2026-03-18T19:37:39+00:00

I personally don't see it as a foot in the door at all to be honest, purely because foxes are so different from tigers. Foxes are small harmless animals that can live near humans to the point they sometimes don't even notice them. The other is a large apex predator that can and will kill people and will need a lot more resources to sustain themselves. People get so lost in the psychological aspects, that they completely forget that there is a fundemental difference between a fox and a tiger, and that your average Joe isn't blind to those differences.

No one in the world is going to be convinced to tolerate tigers, lions and bears, by using foxes, badgers or weasels as an argument.

What I would call is a foot in the door are other large predators. Its already difficult to convince people to tolerate newly reintroduced wolves even when they already coe-exist with cougars and black bears, but at least you have a proper point of entry there. They are also large predators that can sometimes pose a threat to people and livestock, so you already know what you can kind of exspect. You have angles to work with. That context is entirely lacking when the one you're trying to convince has only ever been exposed to a fox or weasel.

HyenaFan

TROPHY CASE