> it would be interesting to study how/if cats defend other cats against roughly cat-sized threats

fiercely: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EEa6jZv-Khc

that is an interesting video, thanks for sharing. as much as I want to view it as the cat heroically defending the child, I have to wonder if that was the real motivation. the video seems to take place in the front yard a house that the cat presumably lives in. I wonder if the reaction was more defensive (of the child) or territorial. on the one hand, it seems the cat doesn't react (not in the frame, so hard to say) until the dog actually bites the child. on the other hand, the cat disengages at almost exactly the point where the dog clears the edge of the driveway. then again, who knows if the cat recognizes human customs well enough to align the border of its territory with the property line?

Prolonged engagement would probably not end well for the cat.

Actually up to a weight for weight match or even more in the case of lighter humans, a single dog is trivial to defeat in combat unless it is properly trained to never fully engage and only to tear and dash.

If a person reacts aggressively and not trying to escape, a dog is easily defeated. Just have to protect your throat and keep facing the dog. Allow it to grab you on a limb , preferably a hand or arm, and you have control. Humans have three mouths , dogs only one. Force your hand / arm into the dogs mouth and do not pull away. Use the other hand to control the snout and remove the eyes. Use your mouth to destroy the snout and associated bone structure. If you can get your hand into the mouth reach for the lungs and asphyxiate the animal. Two Dogs gets tricky. Three dogs is deadly.

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or not, but if you're being serious this is horrible advice. Some dogs bites are strong enough to crush bones, and they aren't even 100 pounds. You want to willingly give them a limb so they can actually snap it in half?

Sure, if you're fighting a 50 pound Australian Shepherd, have at it. If you're fighting a 150 pound German Shepherd, you're going to die.

yeah I've seen a chessie crush a deer's skull in his mouth, seemed pretty casual for him too. I'm certainly not gonna try this with any guard breeds.

A Neapolitan mastiff I lived with was swimming next to me, he wasn’t super comfortable in water and as we were swimming he bit into my forearm and hit bone.

He didn’t mean it at all. I don’t even think he knew it happened. He was pretty dumb, but that is beside the point.

OP’s advice isn’t actually awful. If I actually had to fight Ben Dog, I would have no option but to go into the mouth. Same for grizzlies. But.... I would not want to do this and am certain I would take a lot of damage.

This would be a case where the only way to win would be to avoid.

I'm not sure that plunging my arm down its throat and choking it with my fist would be my first instinct if I were attacked by a dog :)

Amen, brother! But that's why you have to practice, practice, practice! Hit the dojo! Hard to find dogs, bears or sharks willing to spar though! Maybe a rubber bear?

This is the weirdest comment I’ve ever read on HN!

Never before have I heard "reach into an animal and grab its lungs from the inside" as a defense strategy. That's a new one.

As poorly conceived as it sounds. It’s not wrong. It’s the same advice for grizzly bears. You need to straight up break the animals instincts from attack to protect, and a non-armed way to go that is to attack eyes or mouth and eyes are hard to go to. Bears specifically have strong gag reflexes, IDK about dogs.

> Humans have three mouths

What?

Guessing it's a metaphor indicating that a human hand can accomplish the offensive goals of a dog's mouth, and so can the human's mouth.

I'm picturing some sort of lovecraftian horror of human/dog/multi mouth dog hybrid

I showed this to my gal pal, an animal surgeon of 12 years.

She's still laughing.

Also: How does one shove their arm down a dog's mouth if the dog's mouth is already busy biting the non-free arm?

Good advice but hard to accept and harder to practice. I always carry a pocket knife and sometimes a walking stick or umbrella - animals haven't yet figured out umbrellas.

The average cat is more of a threat than the average dog. It just won’t bite.

The video linked by CraneWorm shows a cat (when acting on instinct) doesn‘t care about size differences. The dog probably outweighs the cat 4:1 yet the cat is able to stand its ground.

It's also a surprise attack from a full speed charge. I bet that helps a lot.

a house-cat can easily kill a human.

maybe via infection, and over a few days at that. unless the cat gets spectacularly lucky, it can't scratch you badly enough that you bleed out on the spot. cats typically kill by severing the neck vertebrae with their jaws. a house cat isn't strong enough to do this to a human.

Maybe a paralysed human.. really?

While I'd never want to try it a swift punt would end a cat attack surely

If you don’t get prompt medical attention for the likely infection from the bite, sure.

But that’s a bit of a delayed effect.

Soul killing doesn't count.