— Apparently, just under 3% of Americans think they could beat a grizzly bear in an unarmed fight.
So is it good news or bad news that four years ago, 6% thought they could?
says, “For a bit of festive fun,
surveyed 2,000 US sports fans (aged 16+) to find out exactly how they think they’d fare in bare-knuckle showdowns against a roster of animals.” To be more specific, they surveyed UFC/MMA sports fans – Ultimate Fighting Championship/mixed martial arts.
“Despite a humble 29.50% of respondents admitting they couldn’t beat any animal in an unarmed fight, around seven in 10 Americans (70.50%) believe they could take down at least one,” says the news release.
“Confidence is highest against the smaller foes with almost one in five (17.80%) convinced they could defeat a mouse, while roughly one in 10 think they could outmatch a house cat (11.70%) or a medium-sized dog (11.35%).
“From there, bravery takes a nosedive. Only 5.90% think they could beat a rat and a similar 5.70% think they could overpower a goose.”
But “key findings,” continues the news release, including:
“A surprisingly bold 2.75% of Americans (6.84 million) believe they could beat a grizzly bear unarmed – that’s more than the entire populations of Serbia (6.67M) and Bulgaria (6.70M).”
“A shocking 4% of men are confident they could take down a kangaroo with their bare hands, compared to just 0.90% of women.”
“This optimism is especially bold,” the news release reports, “given that a kangaroo packs a 975 pounds per square inch (psi) bite force and delivers a devastating paw swipe at 8,800 (pound-foot per second), roughly eight times what a human can muster.”
Grizzly bears, meanwhile, have a bite force of 1,600 psi and their paw swipes can reportedly reach up to 25,200 pound-foot per second (lb-ft/s). This is roughly equivalent to 783 pounds of force on impact.
And while lb-ft/s (pound-foot per second) measures torque or energy, and psi (pounds per square inch) measures pressure or force per unit area, it’s still probably significant to note that the average punching power of a human is 140 psi.
The news release added that “younger Americans display the highest fighting confidence overall, with 16-24-year-olds most likely to believe they could win various imaginary fights.”
Which might lend some insight to the viral TikTok interviews that set the socials abuzz back in the spring of 2024.
asked eight women on the street if they’d rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear. Seven out of the eight answered, without hesitating, “a bear.”
Meanwhile, Andy Tri, the Bear Project Leader for the Minnesota DNR’s Forest Wildlife Populations and Research Group, says, succinctly, “Don’t do this. Leave wild animals alone.”
Lisa Johnson has been a broadcast journalist, anchor and producer over half her life. She started her broadcast career spinning country music at KWWK/KOLM Radio in Rochester, Minnesota. She’s worked in Moorhead, Bismarck, Wahpeton and Fergus Falls, and spent the last 30 years hosting a morning news show in Duluth. She is glad to be back closer to family in western Minnesota, and is an unabashed morning person.
Story ideas? Email ljohnson@echopress.com