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I am, I dare say, the only reader who has fought a gorilla hand to hand. It happened in Nigeria, where I lived at the time.
He was little, an orphan, whose parents had been shot by poachers. He was being raised in a wild animal orphanage/sanctuary. The man who ran the facility was a friend of my father’s. If a young elephant got out of line, he would hit it with a straight right, mimicking a mamma elephant’s instructive swat with a trunk. And there was the gorilla.
The little guy saw me, and was apparently excited at the prospect of a buddy about the same age. He tackled me flat, got mount, yelled, and pooped. There was much shouting. Then he ran up a tree, ripped a not-tiny branch off, and shook it vigorously.
My shirt tore. I cried. In my defense, I was only eight. A couple of years later, I started martial arts.
Gorillas Fight
The video below, which involves rather larger gorillas than my nemesis, was taken at Omaha, Nebraska’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium. It captures two silver-backed gorillas engaged in an intense sparring match.
The action starts when one gorilla crosses in front of the other, inciting a charge, and there there’s an exchange of blows that would level Mike Tyson, Fedor, and that G.O.T. Mountain guy at the same time.
In an odd twist, the same zoo was the scene of a frightening moment when a gorilla broke some of the protective glass!
Could an Elite MMA Fighter Beat a Full-Grown Gorilla?
Evidence indicates that an average 500 lb. silverback gorilla may be six to fifteen times stronger than the average male, which would make the average gorilla perhaps twice as strong as the strongest man on Earth.
Humans can obviously destroy a gorilla’s habitat, or kill one with a firearm, or even in numbers with spears, but how would a fighter vs. a Gorilla go in mixed martial arts? The Unified Rules of mixed martial arts prohibit biting, and it would be challenging to communicate that rule to a gorilla. But even if you could, the outcome is certain.
The word kill is used in combat sports as a metaphor for winning. But a gorilla would kill any fighter on Earth, under MMA rules.
Consider these facts from Arcadia Moon:
•A male gorilla significantly outweighs most professional fighters.
•His center of gravity is closer to the ground. Wrestlers will appreciate the huge advantage involved; erect bipedality is a serious liability here.
•One word: fangs.
•Being a wild animal, the gorilla will throw 100 percent of his available resources into the fight from the word go. Humans—even professional fighters or soldiers—never do this, unless they are in such a state of psychosis that they might as well be wild animals. (I have seen a 5-foot-tall woman in such a state, and weighing 100 pounds, require five humans at double her weight each to take her down and hold her down).
•Because the gorilla’s fighting responses are instinctual, not trained, they will be faster than the human’s.
•The gorilla’s musculature and skeleton are considerably more robust than the human’s, which means that the gorilla will soak up much more punishment before being seriously injured. This makes the human’s fighter’s main hope of winning—almost immediately incapacitating the gorilla—very problematic.
So could the fighter at least outrun a gorilla?
While the silverback might ignore a man that ran away, if it was determined to catch him, he’d be caught. Usain Bolt averages a speed of 23 MPH over 100 meters, on a track. By comparison, gorillas have been measured at speeds of 20-25 mph, in the bush.
So a gorilla could catch an elite runner. And fighters aren’t elite runners.
So the answer is no, no human, can beat a full-grown gorilla.
I am no longer a young man, and gorillas generally live to be 35-40, so that gorilla that roughed me up is doubtless dead and gone. I hope he had a happy life. And for the record, I never wanted a rematch.
