can you kill an animal by hand?

Possible? Yes.

Practical? No.

In order to kill an animal without long-range weaponry, you basically have to become an animal yourself. Very few people can do that. I am not sure I could do that.

In the wild, despite what you see on APL, predators actually kill very rarely. Most of their attacks are thwarted. A typical predator is always hungry, always stalking, always looking for an opportunity, just to eat enough to survive. This despite the fact they have claws, teeth, and bodies designed specifically to hunt down and kill other animals.

We, on the other hand, do not have claws to rend flesh. We have nails to stabilize fingertips. We do not have jaws designed to rip out large hunks of flesh. We have jaws and teeth designed for eating small bites of about anything at leisure. We do not have rippling muscles that propel us at high speed towards hapless prey; we have bipedal legs that allow us to stand upright and see farther to plan for our next move.

Hope is not lost; in a survival situation, the one who uses that intelligence he has been given by nature will be the one who eats the best. Sure, we lack the tools to act like a lioness on the prowl or a wolf chasing down deer, but we do have something else: the intelligence I alluded to. We can set a trap to ensnare an animal. We can fashion tools to throw or shoot to allow us to strike from a greater distance. We can fish, using bait to entice fish into falling for the hook.

All of these things can be done using nothing more than a trusty pocketknife and some knowledge. But our greatest physical advantage, one which we share with bears and swine, is that we are not solely dependent on meat; we can also harvest for those times when the trap isn't sprung, the fish aren't biting, and we don't have the time for hunting.

So no, breaking a deer's neck with your bare hands looks great in the movies, but it doesn't work well in reality. Instead, we have something greater than brute strength and speed: our minds.

TheRedneck