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Let me ask you a question of battle in the wild, what happens in a fight between baboon and a leopard? Check out this YouTube video, thankfully there was an alpha baboon to save the rest from the leopard. If that's not badass I don't know what is.
In a normal fight what happens one on one?
The leopard definitely wins this fight most of the time. But I'll just have to say, that’s not due to some sort of mystical predator supremacy, it’s just that when push comes to shove, claws and teeth are just really effective when they’re shoved into you.
A baboon has a strong jaw. The canines are fairly long, roughly about 2 inches long on a large male. They’re capable of biting through fur, tearing skin and can, in the right circumstances, kill smaller leopards. But, baboons aren’t generally predators. They’re built for grinding plants, cracking nuts and the occasional meat when it comes easy. They don’t generally need to bite hard enough to kill things. When they fight, it’s primarily defense.
Leopards are obligate predators. That’s a different thing entirely. They have claws that can rake backwards while their other claws grasp and a jaw that can reach to the neck and just close until the prey stops breathing. This is a specialized action, not something desperate. A 70 pound leopard has on record, killed an adult human being.
This BBC news covered an attack of Indian leopard on a grown man.
So, yes, size plays a factor here. But, contrary to popular belief, not in the way you think. A large male baboon can get up to about 45 kg. That’s a lot of weight, but it’s dense. Some leopards are actually smaller, the females for example. But even then, the superior ones of the leopard outweighs the mass of the baboon. Baboons have managed to seriously hurt leopards before, and even chase them off when the entire troop rallies just like the one you see in the video. But one on one, the dynamics of the fight favor the leopard almost away.
We can have a situation where the baboon might get lucky and land a good bite. Maybe the baboon bites the leopard’s face, and manages to gouge out an eye or breaks teeth. That could definitely give it an advantage. But could is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because the leopard is faster off the line and better at predicting where the combat is going to go.
Besides this video I’ve seen two videos of a baboon leopard fight. In both cases, the baboon tried to run away as fast as possible instead of engaging. That should tell you what animals that have to live through this stuff think about the situation.
