So:

Who would win in a fight. Baboon or badger?

A tiger.

A tiger pwned a lion the other day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12669308

Tigers could eat sharks if they wanted to.

Zed

Baboon. Absolutely vicious buggers and well known for dirty fighting.

That said, I was almost killed by a badger a few years back, so one must not underestimate the threat they pose.

My late mother's house stands at the bottom of a very steep cliff/hillside (actually C19th stone workings but now all bosky and charming). The rear of the house is close to the foot of the hill. To get the picture, you need to understand that you can climb steps up the hill and look down onto the roof. It would be easy to throw a ball down and hit a chimney.

The dustbins are at the back, right below a final sheer drop of about 15ft, above which the hill slopes sharply. The ground up there is covered with loose stone but it's stabilised by a mesh of ivy and tufts of rough grass.

I went out to empty the kitchen bin around 10:00pm and badly frightened a badger that had been fossicking for food on the upper bank. As it dashed away in terror it dislodged a chunk of stone about the size of a two-slice toaster. This came whizzing down, missed my head by inches (it felt like someone blowing hard in my face) and smashed into the side of the house like ordnance.

Judging from the damage to the exterior stonework, I would not have come off well at all.

No-one wins a fight.

Cumbiran Lad

Zen bollocks. And you call yoursel' a Northerner ;-)

E Smith

"The zoo says it is safe for visitors"

Not sure I'd risk it, though! We have a local zoo famous for tigers - the late owner (not for that reason) used to take some of them for early walks along the nearby beach until the Council got too twitchy about it. Their power/weight ratio is about 5 times that of a human, apparently, and one of the tamer ones is sometimes persuaded to take part in tugs of war with volunteers. He can hold a dozen or so.

The one with the biggest 'consensus', obviously :-)

A loosely stated question. Shall we try again? How about a Honey Badger?

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1677084/must_watch_honey_badger_the_most_fearless_animal_on_earth/

As adversary, I'm going to go for the Mandrill, although it has been declassified from the family of baboons. However, being social animals, Mandrills would be unlikely to fight "mano a mano".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandrill

Anyone remember "Sands of the Kalahari"? Stuart Whitman versus a troop of baboons.

http://www.ovguide.com/movies_tv/sands_of_the_kalahari.htm#

Let battle commence.

Z
Does AGW theory suggest that the baboon and badger territories may overlap? Must have missed that one:)

I may have been over-hasty in giving the fight to the baboon.

Hunter S Thompson reminds us that badgers are canny and dangerous adversaries:

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive - and he was, all the way to the end - we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style--and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

We must ban genetic engineering before some evil scientist creates a hybrid Babadger. Personally I still think the most evil looking critter is the Cassowary. They're weird in the way only Australian critters can be.

Atomic

It's the Marabou Stork for me...

http://www.archiesinfo.co.uk/birds/marabou-stork/

http://www.safaris-uganda.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Marabou-Stork.jpg

Atomic

I wish I were a cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo
I would eat a missionary
With his hat and hymn-book too.

I'm going badger. Vicious claws, tenacious, it even comes ready dressed in black and white war paint. Farmers even like to shoot them because they're a threat to cows!

Another Reason to Avoid 10:10 Parties

I thought I saw a badger fight
   a brawny, fierce baboon;
Their teeth were bright in silver light
   reflected from the moon.

The cunning badger hassled well,
   the ape’s defeat was near;
the ground was ruddied by his blood,
   it whimpered now in fear.

The badger ceased its frenzied strikes,
   and struck a pose instead:
“The Climate-Gate Enquiry’s great,
   you’ll now concede,” it said.

I rubbed red eyes in wild surmise,
   the truth now clear to me:
two drunken warmist loons I saw,
   debating with a tree.

Deadman

I found some of the rhyming a little clumsy, and the timbre didn't always work for me, but overall, an excellent effort. 8/10

ZedsDeadBed

I know that some pronounce “enough”
to rhyme with “though” or “bough”, not “rough”,
and Smollet sometimes spelled a “though”
as “tho’” for high-born, “thoff” for low.
My rhyming to a foreign ear
may seem, at times, as not quite near.
and, even in my native land,
some say “commahnd”, and some “commänd.”
The PM here, you may have heard,
of late has mispronounced a word;
the press denounced her on the whole:
“Hyperbolê, not hyper-bowl!”
they shout, as if they elocute
with perfect choice of phrase to boot.
(My timbre may not be so great
for Tassy is a timber-State.)

I thank you, and appreciate,
your thoughtful words, and score of eight.

Deadman:

Your latest ode has made me laugh: the pace was good, too droll by half. The rhyme is fine, four beats per line, so I will up and score it nine.

I wish I had your skill with words -- mine fall like rocks and smell like turds. And though I work, my verse won't scan. I tip my cap to those who can.

Not mine, but this is my favourite short humorous poem concerning Haikus:

To write a poem
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic

ZDB -
Not only haiku are subject to poetus interruptus, to wit:

There once was a man from Peru,
Whose limericks stopped at line two.

and its follow-on:

There once was a man from Verdun...

Oddly enough, I originally intended (before I thought better of it) to end the second quatrain of my post above with the final line from yet another meta-limerick:

There once was a man from Japan,
Whose limericks never would scan,
When asked to say why,
He replied with a sigh,
"It's because I always try to fit as many words in the last line as I possibly can."

Haikus hard?

The rhyme-less verse-form
(as it is understood now)
is not hard at all.

Compared with, say, Greek
(in one hexameter line),
haikus are easy.

But could we return
to the original point:
baboons and badgers?

Anyway

Days warm now; spring comes,
and climate change again turns

to global warming.

More Flim-Flammery

Climate dangers loom!
such “science” impresses whom?
For fools there is room.

Who preaches such gloom?
Tim Flannery, we assume:

”Do fear the simoom!”

That prophet of doom

in motley jester’s costume
pretends to illume.

We need a new broom

for real science to resume;
let Tim have his tomb.

Still, fresh blossoms bloom;

Ignore the human legume.
Enjoy spring’s perfume.

Deadman

'Could we return to the original point' etc

Indeed. Here in the UK the police are reporting badger attacks on sheds and outbuildings. While cynics claim this is simply a way of massaging the crime clear-up figures, I believe it is the literal truth.

The badgers are rising.

It's worse than we thought.

And this thread - the only one of its kind - has been hijacked by people* pretending to be poets.

*Perhaps they are actually badgers? How would we know?

The badgers are rising. It's worse than we thought
   (for poets have hijacked this thread)
and nowhere is safe from the meline onslaught
   in any outbuilding or shed.
What can an alarmed, or scared British bloke do
   which won’t need police or platoons?
The answer is easy, when reasoned right through:
   import a few dozen baboons.

With apologies to Peter Steiner...

Deadman

Very good ;-)

And the logic is sound although I suspect that to save the UK from the badger menace we need more than a few dozen baboons.

Come to think of it, we have those already. They call themselves 'the government' and they are doing more harm than good.

But 'meline' for 'of or pertaining to mustelidae'... ? You've got me there.