If you watch my live chats on MMA Fighting on Wednesdays, you know we once tried to think through who would win in a fight between a gorilla and a bear. This is, of course, a moronic thing to even consider and requires noodling through a ton of unknowable variables. Still, it’s a fun thought experiment.



As it turns out, an actual biologist (Tony) from the Urban Wildlife Podcast has an answer for us. According to him, the bear wins:

I would like to weigh in on gorilla vs bear with some solid science. While I am no George Schaller, I am a biologist, environmental educator, adjunct professor, and have been in the field with bears and primates. Bear wins every time. Pound for pound animals that kill and eat other animals win over herbivores. Hippos and Cape buffalo are badass but scale a croc or lion up to their size and they are toast.

A gorilla has no way to win. The heaviest gorilla ever weighed was 586 lbs, the biggest bears can weigh over a thousand pounds more than that. So let’s do pound for pound. 400lbs gorilla vs 400lbs bear, both males. I say males because only the males in these taxa regularly engage in interspecies combat. Even if you gave the gorilla BJJ training and the bear no human training, the ape has no chance. To put it in MMA terms it’s like Demian Maia (gorilla) vs Khabib Nurmagomedov (bear). Bears are all trained wrestlers, they wrestle each other as siblings and for dominance of breeding territories. Talk about iron sharpens iron. You may say this is evenly matched; however you have to account for the morphology of the bear. You would need to give Khabib some Rumble Johnson power in each arm with 5 steak knives affixed to his hands, a steel jawed trap strapped to his head and a suit of armor. He would also still be just as fast. Bears much like their close relatives dogs, have powerful jaw muscles that wrap around their necks, this plus a large fat layer protracts vital areas. There is no submitting a bear. The canines of a gorilla are outmatched 5/1 by the jaws and claws of the bear. The gorilla has no armor. The gorilla has no strength advantage, bears are immensely strong. The bear has more energy reserves. While gorillas do occasionally fight each other, bears do so much more frequently and have the experience of hunting other large animals. The only advantage I can think of for the gorilla is grip strength. Even if it pulls a Maia backpack, it can’t choke the bear out, and it has to get through all of the bear’s weapons to get there.