Animal Brackets

[tongodeon]

When I was a little kid I was fascinated by the general problem of which animal could beat up which other animal. Usually this consisted of me asking my dad "if a tiger fought an alligator which one would win?"

Thanks to the internet I know: tiger beats alligator. Likewise alligator beats snake, etc

Comments

[matrygg]

Wouldn't it need to have multiple instances of different tigers beating alligators and so forth for the sake of empirical accuracy? I mean, maybe the tiger in the video you posted is just the Mohammad Ali of tigers.

[tongodeon]

True, but that's basically a known problem. Current brackets (for sports teams) only record that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders in 2003, not generally. You have to do a little more work to determine what the general rules are.

[hwrnmnbsol]

You mean, like,

Giant octopus beats shark? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOEZh1Lbbg

Spider beats swallow? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMFKTIK3S-M

(har har. I almost said 'spit or swallow'. har har. I'm twelve.)

Spider beats snake? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz6YLH55CX8

I guess a lot depends on how specific you need to get in identifying your bracket participants. Species? genus? family?

[eejitalmuppet]

From memory (no access to youtube here), you can add orca beats great white, orca(s) beats minke and most other whales, and shark(s) beat(s) black marlin (if the marlin has been hooked).

[crisper]

I bet you'd get some loops in the data, some scissor-rock-paper type artifacts, and of course some cases where it went one way some number of times, and the other way some other times.

Nonetheless, I heartily endorse the idea of an Ultimate YouTube Fighting Championship of Animals.

[hwrnmnbsol]

This does, however, lead to an ethical question. If this idea takes off and people start wanting to fill in the blanks in the data ("There's no video of a polar bear fighting a chimp!"), will Darwin Playoff players start creating data points in their backyard by putting exotic animals in proximity and making them fight?

What if people start skewing the data, such as by putting a heavily sedated dog in the presence of a raccoon?

[crisper]

Well, we'll have to institute drug testing regardless, to rule out things like badgers amped up even further on amphetamines.

[talldean]

Most of this was already done in the 1800's, when transportation started to become much cheaper, but the morals/ethics we have today weren't quite the norm.

Grizzly bear beats almost everything.

[mmcirvin]

If you actually do this, do be prepared for certain very, very sensitive animal lovers to take offense, and/or insist that you are endorsing cruelty to animals. Especially if any common pets appear in your brackets.

[curare]

that's a crocodile. tiger beats alligator wouldn't be surprising at all, but tiger beats crocodile is a shocker, to me.