Bear v Lion - Who would win?
Yes, bit of a strange one and slightly off-theme from the usual Dare to Share stuff but I was Quite Interested to hear that a bear would, and has, in fact beat a lion in a one-on-one fist fight!
As I was kindly informed by Stephen Fry, on QI this evening, during the California Gold Rush (1848-1855) they decided to bring over a load of lions and have them fight it out with bears - for fun! Unfortunately for the lion, the bear would give one big swipe of it’s enormous paw and kill the lion before the fight had even got into full swing.
Lions are incredibly strong creatures, when they’re fighting defenceless animals, but their bones aren’t all that strong and so are quite simply crushed by the brute force of the bear… So how many of you thought it’d be the lion that would win? Yep, me too.
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It’s to do with the fact that the Lion is a predator; paradoxically that means it is less well equipped to fight the bear. Reason is that the Lion relies a lot on speed, and so does not have particularly strong bone density, or heavy muscle density. The Grizzly, on the other hand, does not need to run to or from anything. It has evolved in order to gouge out berries etc, and as a result has massively strong bone density and muscle mass. If the two species co-existed over a sufficiently long period of time, a pride of Lions might develop techniques for distracting a Grizzly then springing it from behind in numbers. But a single lion pitted against the Grizzly wouldn’t have a clue about the power of the Grizzly’s paw and therefore would run straight to its death.
Great explanation, political umpire, it now all makes perfect sense.
Hows about a liger?
i agree with all of the other comments so far tbh. a bear would win no questions asked. it has a lot of weight & brute force behind it. but a lion only has its teeth & claws but would have its bones shattered before it had the chance to defend itself anyway.
Hi folks,
As with bears, they are usually stronger than any cat of same size. Its because they have more packed muscles, have very long claws and power in striking the paw than any Big cats. Bears have thick fur and skin than Lions. Grizzly could kill any rival with just one swipe of its paw against Lions body, But it also depends, if Grizzly had just come out of Hibernation then Lions have upper hand. But Bears in general are stronger than any Big Cat (Lions or Tigers) of same size..