Recently, I filled in a job questionnaire that included the infamous Reddit question, “Would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses or 1 horse sized duck?” I promptly chose the horses, but I didn’t get an interview. Perhaps they were duck people? My reasoning is below:

I’d fight the 100 duck-sized horses. In first year, I attended the University of Waterloo, where geese were well-known to follow and attack students– I learned a healthy amount of respect and fear for waterfowl. While the horses have the advantage of number and greater intelligence than the duck [they can gang up and will take longer than one hit to kill], they are also easily spooked and it should be fairly easy to break them up into smaller groups (and capture with nets or pillow cases if available). All of their muscle is in the upper legs, so shattering their miniaturized and spindly lower limbs should not take too much effort. The two primary weapons of horses, kicks and bites, are mitigated by the miniaturization– and furthermore, they are herbivores, so they do not have any intrinsic motivation to bite me.

On the contrary, ducks are omnivores and the direct descendants of dinosaurs, so the giant duck would likely try to eat me. They have ridges on their beaks that resemble teeth, and horse-proportioned, they would easily be able to break bones, shatter skulls, and destroy any weapon I could use on it. Although it would not likely be able to fly at that size, their wings will still be powerful and likely to kill me with one hit.

Finally, the tiny hooves of 100 duck-sized horses would make for a great back massage and tiny horses would make for excellent christmas and birthday presents for friends and family.