Dangerous Animal Encounters – Section 2.2 Body Position



In this section you'll learn how to assume non-threatening poses, which is key human behavior for deescalation during wildlife encounters.

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Just as is the case with the eyes, your body position also matters a lot. You can project many different levels of aggression/non-threat with your body language.

Aggressive: The most aggressive body language you can take is directly squared and facing an animal. Think back to that aggressive dog, it is not just staring directly at you but also directly facing you.

Non-threat: Non-threat body language is very similar to non-threat eye position. Rather than directly squaring off against an animal you want to turn your body around 45 degrees away shifting your shoulder into position between the animal and yourself.

Submission: There are instances when you may need to project complete submission to an animal that is more powerful than yourself. An example of this would be if a mother bear where to attack you in defense of cubs. To project complete submission to another animal you will need to ly down and not fight back if assaulted.

Showing your back: It is almost never advised to show your back (while standing) to a dangerous predator. Not only can you then no longer see them, but many predators have an instinct to kill fleeing prey. Showing your back to a predator goes way beyond submission and immediately puts you into the potential prey category. Think of a cat that can’t help but chase and kill a fleeing mouse even if it isn’t hungry. This means that during dangerous animal encounters it is almost NEVER advisable to turn and run, or even to turn fully around and walk away. Even when you are scared as hell and your body says run, don’t run! Prey runs and you never want to be seen as prey.

Size matters (somewhat): When encountering an animal, your size does matter. Remember, animals are always assessing risk and if they think that there is a likelihood that they are going to get injured in a fight with another species they generally would prefer to avoid it all together. Many animals try and make themselves look larger and more formidable in an attempt to stave off predation or aggression. For example, the hair on a dog’s neck and back stands up to increase size and the perception that their muscles are larger than they actually are.

In the right circumstances you too can make yourself look bigger as well by standing up tall and raising your arms above your heat at around a 45 degree angle. You can also curl your fingers slightly inward giving the illusion that you have large claws.

The bluff (attitude sometimes matters more than size): Even though size does usually equal power, attitude is actually often more important than size. Lets call this the Chihuahua posture. Have you ever seen a little dog dominating a much larger dog and thought, what the hell? That big dog could just bite that little dog in half if it wanted to. While that is true, the key is that, while you know that to be true, the big dog does not.

In nature, bluffing is very common and occurs in many species. When bluffing, an animal acts very confident and aggressive and projects the following message “If you want to fight, I’m ready. But before you come at me I want you to know that I am super mean and super tough and if we fight I am going to hurt you very badly.” Even if the animal is much smaller, if it projects enough confidence, it can insert a seed of doubt into the stronger animal who might think “Wait, am I missing something? Why isn’t this creature scared of me? What if it is tougher and stronger, and what if I do get hurt? Better to disengage and not risk it…”

 

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