Which is the smarter of the two – a bear or a lion? And who’d win in a fight?

Can’t answer that one specifically, but I saw a documentary about someone trying to capture on film the moment when a tiger captures its prey/makes the kill in the wild for the first time. In it, an indian tiger discovers a bear in a cave – bear runs out, rushes the tiger which backs off, quite a lot of growling and standing off each other, but it was the bear that was the most aggressive, and eventually chased off the tiger (straight towards the cameraman who was sat on the top of a very high chair filming, which made for some v scary footage as the tiger runs straight towards you!). The bear didn’t appear to be defending cubs or territory as it ambled off in a different direction after, so on that note I’d go for the lion!

Ps – some knowledge from my professional that may be relevant – tigers and lions are so similar, it’s pretty much impossible to tell them apart just from skulls or fossils…

Bear.

apparent;y grizilly bears make short work of lions

They used to pit bears against lions in fights for entertainment.

Bear one every time. Crushed lions skull I believe.

I think they said on QI that they used to do this in Roman times, and the bear hammered the lion in one round every time.

Popbitch moment!

Smarter?

Lion – it makes the female catch all the snap.

Oh, and it’s a cat.

As for tougher, not sure.

There we go, we probably all watched the same episode 😀

Cor blimey my double post appears all the way down here.

Yeah it was on QI. Lions skulls are lightweight so they can run fast, and they don’t fight each other with impact so they don’t need to be strong for territorial disputes etc. Bears however can hug and hit things so they end up crushing the lions skulls or bones.

Those Romans were some sick buggers.

I live by the ampitheatre here, on the way back from the pub one night (as students) we told some tourists that only last week they discovered the remains of bears, lions, crocodiles and stuff. We added that the croc seemed to have won, but we were lying.

Even though a Lion is a cat, and cats are supposed to be smart, I think that a bear is smarter. And harder.

Bears are definitely better dancers.

Programme about bears on BB2 right now btw.

Bears are probably smarter. Look at the habitats they can take advantage of, compared to lions.

Oh and the best roman colosseum related trivia I’ve heard – they once caught a whale, put it in the arena (dead as far as i know), and filled it with bears, then released some prisoners/gladiators into the arena. The prisoners/gladiators came out, saw a dead rotting whale, thought they’s got off luckily, then the bears appear… Supposedly because some emperor or other either saw a beached whale with bears coming out of its mouth, or had a dream about it. This was from the official dictaphone-type thing at the colosseum in Rome, so as far as I know has some basis in truth!

…and filled it with bears…

How the..?

You ease them in gently with a warm spoon

naval battles

never doubt the ability of the romans to come up with an ingenious way of killing people.

Deffo bears – lions are pack animals and usually pick on smaller prey and have 2 or 3 lionesses making the kill. They do (very occasionally) make larger kills such as weak elephants if desperate and in a large pride.

BTW – were we ever clear on the specific kind of bear?

What about liger vs bear?

OK I just googled and got this

“If you encounter a Liger the best way to survive the encounter is to bark like a dog, Ligers seem to detest the noise and more often than not they retreat.”

Nevermind the bear a man with tourrettes could beat it 😀

Lions don’t always take smaller prey. Bears on the other hand rarely hunt anything large afaik.

molgrips – exactly! Although according to the only source of info on this on the whole of the ineternet as far as I can see, it may have been a paper mache whale in the reconstruction (but still, 50 live bears!)… there is a a very droll cartoon about it:

There have been documentaries on lions taking healthy, fairly large elephants when not desperate too – the whole pack pretty much hanging on to whatever they can bite hold of on the elephant. Seems to be a learned behaviour of a single pack in one location, but apparently 1 in 3 or 4 attacks is successful, and the elephants that escape can’t be in that great shape I’d have thought…

Molgrips – I did say *usually* and also mentioned elephants.

Good point regarding beats but I guess as a lone predator they need to have natural strength to protect themselves whereas lions rely on the rest of the pride (apart from the mad loners like Scar in The Lion King)

Ssbonty – yeah seen programmes about it but they tend to corner one lone elephant and it isn’t ‘normal’ lion behaviour.

I think bears are strong to fight each other for territory. Some animals don’t fight each other for supremacy, some just posture and some actually do fight full on. I think bears fall into that last category. Which would explain why males are much bigger than females in bears, but not as much in lions. Maybe 🙂