The week everyone asked if 100 men could fight a gorilla

Sup, Slop Army.

I don’t mean to be a downer here, but you probably wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight against a gorilla. But what if you brought 99 of your friends with you?

That was question that for some reason had the Internet’s attention this week. Could 100 adult men beat one gorilla in a fight? (Did we ever get an answer to whether we would rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?) Forget trying to figure out the scenario that would lead to this epic matchup and just enjoy the ride.

Miles Klee over at Rolling Stone took this quandary very seriously and asked a group of experts for their thoughts. “That’s why Rolling Stone has seen fit to waste the time of three professionals qualified to tell us, once and for all, how a 100-guys-vs.-one-gorilla matchup would go,” Klee wrote on Tuesday.

And after couching their answers with how they “would never want to see this come to fruition,” the experts’ didn’t have much hope for humans, even if there were a hundred of them.

“Honestly, 100 guys wouldn’t stand a chance,” Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist and professor at Scotland’s University of St Andrews, told Rolling Stone. “They’re going to be swatting at him like out-of-breath children, and a single one of his punches would floor them. And if the next 92 guys don’t realize they don’t stand a chance after he has knocked the first eight out without breaking a sweat, I’ve got to assume we’re not talking about folks who are going to outsmart him.”

OK, so if we can find 92 guys who are dumb enough to keep fighting a silverback gorilla, it’s possible for them to win. Humans definitely have a chance then!

This probably isn’t the conversation we should be having when it comes to gorillas.

“People are fascinated by gorillas. This topic may be very silly, but it opens up the opportunity to talk about, well, what fights should we be discussing? And that’s really the fight for survival that gorillas have,” the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’s Tara Stoinski told NPR. “They are critically endangered and we are at risk of losing them. And so, it gives the opportunity to kind of pivot the conversation and talk about their fight for survival totally.”

Don’t worry, though, John Mulaney is ready to shift the narrative.

“[The gorilla question] has prompted a debate in our writers’ room about whether three 14-year-old boys could beat up me, John Mulaney,” the comedian said during the Wednesday night episode of Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney.

“Is this legal? So far, we think so,” Mulaney continued. “It’s not assault, we know that. And we’re vetting every step of it. I’ve been led to believe that if it’s for TV, it’s a lawful practice.”

Sounds like a solid legal theory. Let’s see if Mulaney puts it to the test in the May 28 episode of his Netflix show.

• 📖 Could 100 Men Beat a Gorilla in a Fight? Here’s What Primatologists Say (Miles Klee, Rolling Stone)

the links

nature

• A Diver Visited a Fallen Whale. When He Returned, It Was Gone. (Sruthi Gurudev, The New York Times): “After a surge of spring storms, Mr. Jacobs descended into freezing blackness for the third time in late February. Gripping his camera gear so tightly his knuckles turned white, he waited for the decaying animal to appear. What he found was only the barren seabed. The calf was gone.”
• Endangered axolotls bred in captivity can survive in wild, study finds (Justine McDonald, The Washington Post): “And in nature, axolotls — a type of salamander — play an important role in their ecosystems. Unlike other amphibians, axolotls never go through a full metamorphosis to leave the aquatic phase and become land dwellers. Instead, they retain their juvenile physical characteristics and aquatic lifestyle. That gives the axolotl the young look that many humans find cute — or at least delightfully weird.”
• Microplastics may confuse bees and other insects, hurting pollination (Marta Zaraska, The Washington Post): “Once such microplastics are ingested or inhaled by bees, they can damage their guts and get into their brains, impacting memory and learning, research has shown. They can outright kill them, too. In addition, flowers may get literally clogged up with microplastics.”
  • How to eat and drink fewer microplastics (Amudalat Ajasa, The Washington Post): “‘Anything that’s packaged in plastic — there are microplastics that are shedding off of those materials,’ Mason said.”
• Fossils show unexpected last refuge of ferocious land-living crocs (Will Dunham, Reuters): “Instead, Viñola Lopez said, sebecids were at the top of the food chain in South America during the age of mammals alongside terror birds, giant flightless birds up to about 10 feet (3 meters) tall with massive hooked beaks, and saber-toothed marsupials, counterparts to the saber-toothed cats of North America and elsewhere.”

space

• I Implore You To Look At Saturn Through A Telescope (Barry Petchesky, Defector): “I looked and saw the planet Saturn, its surface a hazy blend of yellows, browns, and slate grays, hanging like a Christmas tree ornament in the blackness. I saw its rings, looking so solid, and the bands of its rings, and the blank space between them and the planet itself. I saw tiny dots that I was told were moons — that part, I would have to trust. The rest of it required no faith whatsoever. There it was: nothing had ever been more real.”

tech

• Welcome to Sam Altman’s Orb Store (Kylie Robinson, The Verge): “‘It’s this cool concept, but I’m not sure how secure it is,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to share … my biometric information just to get a QR code,’ he added. ‘I mean, my QR code is right here, right,’ gesturing to his face. ‘And I can use it anytime.’”

life

• Poop Drones Are Keeping Sewers Running So Humans Don’t Have to (Sam Kieldsen, Wired): “This is where drones come in. Designed and engineered to operate in confined spaces, a new generation of flying robots is being sent into sewers to perform inspections in a safer, more efficient way.”
  

beer

• The inside story of Rohrbach’s Space Kitty DIPA as it approaches its 10th bday (Will Cleveland, The Cleveland Prost): “‘Nothing was off the table,’ he said. Porrey pitched the idea for a Citra-forward DIPA and proposed calling ‘Space Kitty.’ Urlaub scoffed, thinking, ‘No way, that’s just so off-brand for us. I didn’t like it all. After the meeting, Jim McDermott (former Rohrbach director of brewing operations) pulled me aside and said, “John, you know, you told these guys to be creative.” I was mad. I said, “Go ahead and call it Space Kitty, but it’s a stupid name.”’”

sports

• The Tiger Woods-Backed Virtual Golf League Reinventing the Game (Andrew Zaleski, Vanity Fair): “‘He said to me, “I want this to exist in the world because I know what it’s going to do for the sport,”’ Ohanian recalls. ‘Tiger Woods tells you that, and you’re like, let’s fucking go to war.’”
• Bill Belichick and his new girlfriend/publicist are delivering maximum ewwww (Drew Magary, SFGate): “(Oh, and Hudson says the two of them met while sitting next to each other on an airplane. Imagine trying to make small talk with Bill Belichick. Now try to imagine doing it while wedged in next to him on an airplane. If you risk your life so recklessly, you better damn well look like Jordon Hudson when you do.)”

oops

• Millions of Dimes Spill and Shut Down Texas Highway for 14 Hours (Adeel Hassan, The New York Times): “He said on Wednesday afternoon that he had assumed that most of the coins had been collected, and that the remaining change had been washed away by the four inches of rain earlier in the day, which caused minor flooding in the town of about 1,400 residents.”

a cartoon