Could a tiger kill a person in plate mail?
 

I was pondering this during a run this morning. Assume the following:

• An average-sized adult male tiger (440 pounds)
• The tiger is hungry but not starving. It's healthy.
• The human is an average-sized adult male of 5-9 height and 198 pounds of weight.
• The armor is full 16th-century plate mail that looks like the picture below.
• The guy in armor has no weaponry at all and is on foot. He's playing defense only.
• Assume that the encounter is happening in a natural setting with no other people, tigers, or prey around.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._32921.tif.jpg

What would happen? Would the tiger immediately rip off the armor or some limbs and kill the guy? Would the tiger work on the armor and get it off after 15 minutes of hard work? Would the tiger give up quickly after breaking a fang or two? Would the tiger gnaw on the armor for 20 minutes before eventually giving up?

Edit: sorry for the typo in the poll. I know how to spell 'armor'.

Poll coming.

The knight has spurs ..... so not completely defenseless.

Tiger

I would worry about my helmet to neck connection.
Tigers like to finish the kill right there. If it’s weak Tiger wins.

Tiger could just beat you to death inside of the suit. Whap you around and roll you until you're bleeding inside before they even get the suit off and breached.

One the cat finds the weak point between plates, its over.
The victim will bleed out before the cat gets to take a bite.

My initial hunch was that the human could survive as long as the armor was all joined well. I don't think a tiger could bite through armor.

But tigers are really strong. My initial concern was that the tiger might get a grip on the helmet and yank it off. But the more I think about, I think the tiger would win a different way, albeit in a way that's unsatisfying to either party.

I think the tiger would flounder about for a while, but eventually it would get a good grip on an arm or leg and rip the whole thing off at once, both armor and flesh. That would kill the person, but I also think the tiger would have a hard time getting the arm out of the sleeve to eat it. It would be like eating crab legs without pliers.

One good swat to the head will break your metal covered neck

My guess the tiger would have to be starving or defending cubs to do anything. The tiger would have no idea what to think of the knight, and tigers generally tend to avoid even normally-dressed humans, since we're not they're normal prey. If the tiger does try to bite something and gets that metal feedback, and also gets bonked on the head by the knight at the same time, it might give up.

But a female tiger defending cubs would just keep going until she ripped out every limb.

Hmm, that's a good point. Overt violence.

In reality, I think the tiger would just lose interest after a few minutes.


However, this is CP, and it's a Rainman thread, so we're not anywhere near reality, so . . .



tigers regularly hunt people in India. I think something like 35 or 40/yr.


If a tiger swatted the knight in the head, say good-night. They can generate more than 2.5 times the energy of prime Mike Tyson. Moe than enough to break your neck/crush the side of the helmet and your skull.

Or, it could just lay down on a prone knight, just suffocate the poor bastard. Tigers weigh up to 650 lbs?


Tigers like to attack the neck; if it managed to knock the helmet off, obviously game over.




Lol, autocorrected my attempt at Holy Grail humor. Oh well.

I would hope the tiger would get bored after a while unless it drew blood somehow.. then you're screwed..

Tigers can bat so hard it would knock your head backwards

The Tiger would rip right through it. Plus its claws are long enough to pierce through the openings in the chain mail. To fit loosely, chain mail is mostly NOT metal but holes in metal. The real question is, could a tiger IN chain mail defeat a Grizzly Bear?

No. The Grizzly would win.

ETA: whoops, I read this as chain mail but the sheer strength of the tiger still wins. And this assumes that the tiger is sufficiently motivated.