Chimpanzee strength?

[mike3]

Hi.

I heard that a chimpanzee is a lot stronger than a human. Why is this, from an evolutionary point of view?

[Puppycow]

If it's really true I would speculate that its because humans spend more energy on the brain than chimpanzees and have less need for sheer physical strength. Because we are smarter than a chimpanzee, we don't need to be as strong.

Any evolutionary trait that is less necessary for a particular species in a particular environment will tend to weaken with each generation that lives its life cycle in that environment. This is why species that permanently inhabit caves will lose their eyesight and pigmentation eventually.

[Howie Felterbush]

Not sure how accurate this is, but it does mention some tests done on simian strength.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2/can-a-90-lb-chimp-clobber-a-full-grown-man

[Skeptic Ginger]

It only takes about 3 seconds on Google to verify it is true if you were not already aware of it. Adults chimps can easily kill a human in a physical fight and there is no question they are stronger by far.

They have evolved larger stronger muscles. There is no mystery here.

[LoudHoward]

I imagine climbing trees all day makes you rather strong.

[Jeff Corey]

OOK! Don't mess with the Librarian.

[mike3]

If it's really true I would speculate that its because humans spend more energy on the brain than chimpanzees and have less need for sheer physical strength. Because we are smarter than a chimpanzee, we don't need to be as strong.

Any evolutionary trait that is less necessary for a particular species in a particular environment will tend to weaken with each generation that lives its life cycle in that environment. This is why species that permanently inhabit caves will lose their eyesight and pigmentation eventually.

So does this mean that some ancestor of humans may have had it, but then it was lost in our evolutionary line, as opposed to chimps gaining it in theirs? Or was it both, in comparable amounts?

[ImaginalDisc]

So does this mean that some ancestor of humans may have had it, but then it was lost in our evolutionary line, as opposed to chimps gaining it in theirs? Or was it both, in comparable amounts?

If you compare human musculature to chimpanzee musculature, or ape musculature in general, we're more gracile. That's a fancy way of saying, "pansy." They have more muscle attachments, more fast twich muscle than we have, which is much stronger, but less slow twich.

You can easily outwalk any other ape, they can easily rip your $%& off.

[Puppycow]

So does this mean that some ancestor of humans may have had it, but then it was lost in our evolutionary line, as opposed to chimps gaining it in theirs? Or was it both, in comparable amounts?

I'm not certain, but I would expect that we had ancestors that were stronger than us. I cannot say whether modern chimps are more or less strong than their ancestors however. Probably about the same. So my guess would be that we lost strength more than chimps gained it. At some point several million years ago we had a common ancestor of course.

[ImaginalDisc]

I'm not certain, but I would expect that we had ancestors that were stronger than us. I cannot say whether modern chimps are more or less strong than their ancestors however. Probably about the same. So my guess would be that we lost strength more than chimps gained it. At some point several million years ago we had a common ancestor of course.

Weirdly, there's a much better fossil record of human evolution than of chimpanzee evolution. It may be that chimp ancestors also prefered to live in forests and that's a terrible environment for fossil preservation.

[mike3]

I'm not certain, but I would expect that we had ancestors that were stronger than us. I cannot say whether modern chimps are more or less strong than their ancestors however. Probably about the same. So my guess would be that we lost strength more than chimps gained it. At some point several million years ago we had a common ancestor of course.

Does this mean it could/would continue along this trend into the future, and some day we may resemble the famous image of "Grey aliens"?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.

ISTR this is due to the preponderate type of twitch muscles we have (either fast or slow -- sorry it's past my time to Google).

[Puppycow]

Does this mean it could/would continue along this trend into the future, and some day we may resemble the famous image of "Grey aliens"?

Could be, but there are no facts about the future as they say.

Muscles might retain some utility in sexual selection, as a peacocks' feathers do.

But, perhaps not.

ETA: Also, we may be approaching an evolutionary inflection point where artificial selection and genetic engineering take over from natural selection as the main driver of human evolution.

[ImaginalDisc]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.

ISTR this is due to the preponderate type of twitch muscles we have (either fast or slow -- sorry it's past my time to Google).

Slow twich. Also, our skeleton's pretty good for walking. Back complaints not withstanding.

Also, we throw things really well with our much less muscle bound arms. Chimps throw things, but very inaccurately. They sort of fling things around.

[LTC8K6]

So then a sasquatch could lift maybe a couple of tons then?

[Puppycow]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.

On the National Geographic channel I saw a documentary about kangaroos. It said that their method of hopping is more efficient for going long distances than say a horse, but I don't think they compared it to a human. The Kangaroo can hop like that for hundreds of kilometers apparently. I suspect that a human would be hard-pressed to run down a kangaroo.

[ImaginalDisc]

On the National Geographic channel I saw a documentary about kangaroos. It said that their method of hopping is more efficient for going long distances than say a horse, but I don't think they compared it to a human. The Kangaroo can hop like that for hundreds of kilometers apparently. I suspect that a human would be hard-pressed to run down a kangaroo.

We can cheat and carry a sack of food and water while we walk. A kangaroo has to stop to eat and drink.

[William Parcher]

I heard that a chimpanzee is a lot stronger than a human. Why is this, from an evolutionary point of view?


The habitat is dictating the physical strength. Chimps are partially arboreal and much strength is needed in the upper body and arms to move through trees. Up there, they are amazingly fast for their size and almost all of this is accomplished with the arms. The hands are oversized and must be able to grip branches. Even the feet can grip like a hand.

We would have similar strength if we lived their lifestyle.

[dropzone]

On the Fox (obviously) show Man Vs Beast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMpWm6ECgQ) a sumo wrestler challenged a female orangutan who weighed half as much to a tug of war. She was hardly paying attention when she tossed him in the mud.

My favorite was a match between Carl-******-Lewis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5QwYJoLUfE), the Olympic sprinter, against a zebra. He wins the first but, after a foul HE called, is trashed so bad that the zebra kicks up its heels in derision. And animals may not know much, but "IN YOUR FACE!" is one they know.

Word to the wise: Forget what is said on "The Racing Form." Horses, and apparently their relatives, are naturally competitive and will do you, as a bettor, WRONG. Before you next bet just watch the horses as they train, but don't take too much stock in that because there is a chance they are betting against you.

Or was it the human trainers? Wife worked at the hospital closest to the track, speaks Spanish, and got off work before the 7th race. Her patient histories ran along the lines of, "Where does it hurt? Who looks good in the 7th?" She did well by it.

[William Parcher]

Adults chimps can easily kill a human in a physical fight and there is no question they are stronger by far.


Their method of killing a human (or other chimp) might be unexpected. They would kill by biting. Though they are much stronger they do not punch, kick or strangle. If we had to kill "bare-handed" it would probably be by strangulation or fist/foot pummeling. Chimps have tremendously powerful jaws and bite strength combined with large teeth. They also have a large gape and can take a very big bite. This is their main weapon in a fight or when they intend to kill another chimp or a human.

[Uncayimmy]

I heard that a chimpanzee is a lot stronger than a human. Why is this, from an evolutionary point of view?

They have evolved larger stronger muscles. There is no mystery here.

Case closed. Moderators, please close the thread.

[mike3]

The habitat is dictating the physical strength. Chimps are partially arboreal and much strength is needed in the upper body and arms to move through trees. Up there, they are amazingly fast for their size and almost all of this is accomplished with the arms. The hands are oversized and must be able to grip branches. Even the feet can grip like a hand.

We would have similar strength if we lived their lifestyle.

This would make sense.

[mike3]

Case closed. Moderators, please close the thread.

No it doesn't, as it doesn't say why they evolved them.

[mike3]

Their method of killing a human (or other chimp) might be unexpected. They would kill by biting. Though they are much stronger they do not punch, kick or strangle. If we had to kill "bare-handed" it would probably be by strangulation or fist/foot pummeling. Chimps have tremendously powerful jaws and bite strength combined with large teeth. They also have a large gape and can take a very big bite. This is their main weapon in a fight or when they intend to kill another chimp or a human.

What's the (evolutionary) reason for having the stronger bite, or on the flipside, why we'd have a weaker bite?

[William Parcher]

What's the (evolutionary) reason for having the stronger bite, or on the flipside, why we'd have a weaker bite?


It's the food. They eat a lot of foods that require strong teeth/jaws to get at the edible part (think nuts, husks, bark, etc) and additionally they need the strength for chewing the edible parts.

There may also be a drive towards sexual selection for larger size which would increase the strength as well.

ETA: I think our jaw size/strength has decreased as our development of tools (food processing) became more prominant.

[mike3]

It's the food. They eat a lot of foods that require strong teeth/jaws to get at the edible part (think nuts, husks, bark, etc) and additionally they need the strength for chewing the edible parts.

There may also be a drive towards sexual selection for larger size which would increase the strength as well.

Thanks for the response. That makes a lot of sense

How did you find out all this stuff? I'm curious. :)

[William Parcher]

I've studied animals all my life and done my share of reading primatology.

[mike3]

I've studied animals all my life and done my share of reading primatology.

Ah.

[Amapola]

There is also the matter of leverage. If the muscle is attached at a better place for leverage, well, you have more strength.

I once had the chance to spend some time with some lion cubs. They were smaller than I am (I am not particularly large, more on the "very small" side) and I was amazed by their strength. But if you look at the length of their (I would call them "canon bones", analogous to our tibia/fibia) you can see how long they are compared to our arms. Same with chimps.

[Puppycow]

It's the food. They eat a lot of foods that require strong teeth/jaws to get at the edible part (think nuts, husks, bark, etc) and additionally they need the strength for chewing the edible parts.

It's also known that champanzees make war on other groups.

Both their overall strength and their nasty bite probably evolved as weapons as well as tools for other purposes.

[Prometheus]

Chimps' neuro-musculature is also wired up differently. They can easily engage nearly all the muscle fiber in a given muscle simultaneously. We can only contract a fraction of our muscle fiber at once, but we have a great deal more fine motor control. I read somewhere that under certain conditions, people can overcome the neurological inhibition on contracting an entire muscle at once and exhibit chimp-like strength for an instant, but that doing so will usually result in injury since we don't have a strong enough skeleton to support that type of exertion. I can't remember where I read this at the moment.

[quarky]

Our success has also enabled a new found weakness. 2000000 years ago, a human that had managed to survive to adulthood was likely an awesome specimen in regards to strength and toughness.

[Uncayimmy]

No it doesn't, as it doesn't say why they evolved them.

That was intended as sarcasm.

[JoeyDonuts]

How did you find out all this stuff? I'm curious. :)

I would guess that at some point he read something other than the Internet.

[Prometheus]

What's the (evolutionary) reason for having the stronger bite, or on the flipside, why we'd have a weaker bite?

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.

[Andrew Wiggin]

So then a sasquatch could lift maybe a couple of tons then?

Actually, a sasquach would have trouble lifting a feather, for reasons that are off topic to this thread.

A

[Cuddles]

as it doesn't say why they evolved them.

The simple answer is that all evolution is a balancing of cost versus benefit. Stronger muscles may seem useful, but they come at the cost of having to grow and maintain them. It seems to have turned out that where really strong muscles are enough of a benefit to chimps to justify them, the costs were too great relative to the benefit for humans, so people with more chimp-like muscles were less successful at reproducing.

The more complicated answer is that we just don't know. We know it must have involved the concepts above, but we just don't know enough about the details of the evolution of chimps or humans to be sure exactly what environmental factors may have driven the evolution of our muscles. The "big muscles needed for swinging from trees" is plausible, but doesn't explain why one went up trees while the other didn't.

I read somewhere that under certain conditions, people can overcome the neurological inhibition on contracting an entire muscle at once and exhibit chimp-like strength for an instant, but that doing so will usually result in injury since we don't have a strong enough skeleton to support that type of exertion.

This is what can happen during electrocution. It's not electricity that throws people across rooms, it's their muscles all firing on full. Of course, it's not particularly good for the muscles or the skeleton, even if the electricity and the landing don't do too much damage.

[Rolfe]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.


What he said. Some texts claim that man has not specialised. I don't really agree with this, man is an absolutely ace persistence hunter. The build is for stamina, not strength. Heavy bones and muscles may be good for strength, but they don't help when you're main strategy involves being able to keep running for many hours.

You might as well ask, why do we have such amazing stamina, and the chimp doesn't? Different strategy and specialisation.

We can cheat and carry a sack of food and water while we walk. A kangaroo has to stop to eat and drink.


That, sunshine, just about sums up the conclusions of my PhD thesis (only it was horses, not kangaroos).

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.


I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright. One side-effect of this was the very marked reduction in the size of the nose and the surface area of the nasal passages. This made respiratory tract evaporative thermoregulation (panting) ineffective to provide sufficient heat loss for distance running. So we evolved sweating.

Just about the only other species that evolved thermoregulation by the production of profuse volumes of watery sweat over most of the body surface is the horse. This is actually parallel evolution, because the horse uses different glands and manages the fluid-electrolyte consequences in an entirely different way.

The horse has it both ways. It sweats while running, but pants at rest. It pretty much has to, because sweating into a hair coat when there is no air movement past it doesn't work very well - there's not much evaporation. My main idea was that man lost his hair coat in order to allow sweating to be an effective thermoregulation mechanism at rest, because of the lack of sufficient nasal/buccal mucous membrane surface area to make panting a viable proposition.

Rolfe.

[William Parcher]

The "big muscles needed for swinging from trees" is plausible, but doesn't explain why one went up trees while the other didn't.


Hold on a second. You are proposing that the last common ancestor (most recent) of chimps and humans was a ground-dweller... and that chimp ancestors (lineage) went up into the trees while our ancestors (lineage) stayed on the ground?

Why not instead propose that the most recent common ancestor was at least partially arboreal and that the human lineage "descended from the trees" and eventually lost the ability to use trees in the same way that chimps do?

[Rolfe]

How can we ever explain why one species ended up specialising in one area, while another specialised in a different one? There are many ecological niches, and something is going to succeed in every single one of them. Asking why one species fills one niche rather than another is a circular question, as far as I can see.

Rolfe.

[Robert Oz]

Does this mean it could/would continue along this trend into the future, and some day we may resemble the famous image of "Grey aliens"?


I vaguely remember someone asking Richard Dawkins this question. He responded that it was, of course, impossible to tell which direction evolution will take, but he found it to be unlikely. This is because there would have to be a reason why thin people with big heads are more successful producing children then the average person.

Our brains evolved because higher intelligence increased our chances of survival.

Our bodies slimmed down and lost fur because higher stamina increased our chances of survival and large, bulky bodies were no longer required.

Although it's possible this could continue to the alien-phase, it would have to mean that one has a better chance at getting the girl looking like Bill Gates than Brad Pitt.

[Robert Oz]

What he said. Some texts claim that man has not specialised. I don't really agree with this, man is an absolutely ace persistence hunter. The build is for stamina, not strength. Heavy bones and muscles may be good for strength, but they don't help when you're main strategy involves being able to keep running for many hours.


Indeed. Even looking at differences amongst humans. Compare the body of a sprinter against a marathon runner and the body-type for endurance and stamina is clear.

[LarianLeQuella]

There also seems to be a "defect" in the human genome that affects musculature. I think it only affected jaw muscles (theory talking about it allowing our skulls to grow more as well), but I wonder if it plays any role in the rest of human musculature?

Sorry, i am drawing a blank on the specifics of this, so if anyone can cite that for me, I'd appreciate it.

[Robert Oz]

I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright.


I've read a few different theories on the flat human face including that it's more of a retention of juvenile features into adulthood, rather than a simple decrease in jaw-size. I vaguely remember reading one argument that it may be a by-product of mutations that made us less aggressive (similar to the foxes Richard Dawkins discusses in The Ancestor's Tale that developed a colour pattern similar to Border Collies when being artificially selected for tameness). Someone (it may have been Michael Shermer in The Science of Good and Evil, but I'm not sure) made the connection that bonobos have considerably flatter faces to common chimpanzees and are much less aggressive.

Evolutionary by-products can often make answering 'why did this evolve' questions very difficult to answer.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Why is this, from an evolutionary point of view?

I'm not sure I understand the question. How is it different from asking why giraffes are taller than okapis? You don't expect closely related species to be identical on any measure of a character that exists on a continuum do you?

__________
It only takes about 3 seconds on Google to verify it is true if you were not already aware of it. Adults chimps can easily kill a human in a physical fight and there is no question they are stronger by far.

They have evolved larger stronger muscles. There is no mystery here.

Yup.

OTOH, we've got a much better shoulder and hand for throwing stuff baseball-style.

If ten humans and ten chimps faced off with nothing but rocks and sticks, I'd still bet on the humans.

[El Greco]

I think that chimps have much greater upper-body strength but humans are much stronger in the lower body.

[Uncayimmy]

If ten humans and ten chimps faced off with nothing but rocks and sticks, I'd still bet on the humans.

Not me, unless you somehow had a way to keep a a chimp from tearing my head off with his bare hands.

[quarky]

You got gymnasts and long distance runnners. The gymnasts can move around in trees with confidence and catch food. The runners needed to be light, and hungry.

And then, fishermen.

[Puppycow]

I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright. One side-effect of this was the very marked reduction in the size of the nose and the surface area of the nasal passages. This made respiratory tract evaporative thermoregulation (panting) ineffective to provide sufficient heat loss for distance running. So we evolved sweating.

Just about the only other species that evolved thermoregulation by the production of profuse volumes of watery sweat over most of the body surface is the horse. This is actually parallel evolution, because the horse uses different glands and manages the fluid-electrolyte consequences in an entirely different way.

The horse has it both ways. It sweats while running, but pants at rest. It pretty much has to, because sweating into a hair coat when there is no air movement past it doesn't work very well - there's not much evaporation. My main idea was that man lost his hair coat in order to allow sweating to be an effective thermoregulation mechanism at rest, because of the lack of sufficient nasal/buccal mucous membrane surface area to make panting a viable proposition.

Rolfe.

That is very interesting. I did not know that.

[varwoche]

A recent study (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200829.htm) out of Penn St (per Science Daily): humans may lack the strength of chimps because our nervous systems exert more control over our muscles. Our fine motor control prevents great feats of strength, but allows us to perform delicate and uniquely human tasks
...
chimps have much less grey matter in their spinal cords than humans have. Spinal grey matter contains large numbers of motor neurons—nerves cells that connect to muscle fibers and regulate muscle movement.


If ten humans and ten chimps faced off with nothing but rocks and sticks, I'd still bet on the humans. I'll take determined chimps any day of the week. Here (http://www.esquire.com/features/chimpanzee-attack-0409-3)'s a situation where an attacking chimp was apparently undeterred by being shot. (Warning, the details are beyond gruesome.)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Weirdly, there's a much better fossil record of human evolution than of chimpanzee evolution. It may be that chimp ancestors also prefered to live in forests and that's a terrible environment for fossil preservation.It's also the case that chimps are a much older species. So they haven changed that much in the last million years while we have. We know this because their DNA has more variation than ours.

[Skeptic Ginger]

We can cheat and carry a sack of food and water while we walk. A kangaroo has to stop to eat and drink.But kangaroos can toss their fetus in times of stress. We need surgery or drugs to do so. ;)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Case closed. Moderators, please close the thread.You prefer to pretend it is a mystery?

[Skeptic Ginger]

....

How did you find out all this stuff? I'm curious. :)Besides incessant Net searching, the forum has a wide variety of expertise among its members. It's a collective consciousness.

[Skeptic Ginger]

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.Or we learned how to soften food by cooking it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

How can we ever explain why one species ended up specialising in one area, while another specialised in a different one? There are many ecological niches, and something is going to succeed in every single one of them. Asking why one species fills one niche rather than another is a circular question, as far as I can see.

Rolfe.I like to think of it more like spilling a bucket of water out over a surface. The water spreads out in all directions that flow is possible. So it isn't so much what made one species favor [X] as it is all possible natural selections are eventually selected. All niches get filled just because they can.

[Puppycow]

Although it's possible this could continue to the alien-phase, it would have to mean that one has a better chance at getting the girl looking like Bill Gates than Brad Pitt.

Oh, I think that Bill Gates could definitely attract a mate if he didn't already have one. I think it's pretty well established that a huge pile of money can play a very strong role in sexual selection. Particularly for men. Brad Pitt of course is also rich, but a poor, non-famous doppleganger of Pitt would probably be a less attractive mate than Bill Gates with his money.

So if the "grey aliens" had superior intelligence and this allowed them to become richer than their brawnier competitors, I could see evolution moving in that direction.

[Cuddles]

Hold on a second. You are proposing that the last common ancestor (most recent) of chimps and humans was a ground-dweller... and that chimp ancestors (lineage) went up into the trees while our ancestors (lineage) stayed on the ground?

No I'm not. I'm simply pointing out that merely knowing that one is adapted to live in trees while the other isn't doesn't help answer why that might be.

How can we ever explain why one species ended up specialising in one area, while another specialised in a different one? There are many ecological niches, and something is going to succeed in every single one of them. Asking why one species fills one niche rather than another is a circular question, as far as I can see.

Rolfe.

Exactly.

[Blackadder]

There is a HUGE variation in strength in the average 25 year old male human these days. Take me for example. I am in more or less shape, but not very strong, working indoors all my life. A adult male chimpansee is X times stronger than me. However THIS bloke is also X times stronger than me. How does he compare to a chimp?

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID2854/images/pic1.jpg

5 times World Strongest Man winner Mariusz Pudzianowski.

[macdoc]

Chimp would eat him for lunch

The chimp can call up far more fibres at once than he ever can.
The chimp also has anchoring structure and leverage much different than ours....one reason girls can't throw a ball ;)

[William Parcher]

Hairless chimp shows musculature...

[William Parcher]

More...

Here (http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/data/500/Freaky_Hairless_Gorilla_Mysore_Zoo.jpg)

here (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3202/3024567966_4ffe563ebd.jpg)

here (http://zoopictures.zenfolio.com/img/v3/p140090038-3.jpg)

[Blackadder]

Can a chimp perform the feats of these strong human games? like walking around with a 150 kg weight in each hand, or a 900 lb squad? (or comparable feats adjusted to the chimp physique)

My point is, a chimp will be able to do some of that ok, but he will not be able to do that times X. So like this Mr Muscleski can lift 4 times as much as me, average joe. But Top Chimp won't be able to lift 4 times as much as average chimp, our human variance is higher (training)

[Modified]

Can a chimp perform the feats of these strong human games? like walking around with a 150 kg weight in each hand, or a 900 lb squad? (or comparable feats adjusted to the chimp physique)

When they state these huge numbers it's always for deadlift or grip strength. I'd say a chimp can deadlift infinite weight, since due to limb lengths they can probably grip the bar while standing upright with the weight sitting on the floor.

But you usually hear something like "a 100 pound chimp lifted 1000 lbs". Since they are starting from an almost-upright position, it doesn't compare to a 100 lb human deadlifting 1000 lbs. Some 100 lb humans can probably lift 1000 lbs from an upright position - or would only be limited only by grip strength and could do it with straps.

My point is, a chimp will be able to do some of that ok, but he will not be able to do that times X. So like this Mr Muscleski can lift 4 times as much as me, average joe. But Top Chimp won't be able to lift 4 times as much as average chimp, our human variance is higher (training)Well, pound-for-pound Pudzianowski isn't four times stronger than you, unless you're really in sad shape.

[GlennB]

On the National Geographic channel I saw a documentary about kangaroos. It said that their method of hopping is more efficient for going long distances than say a horse, but I don't think they compared it to a human. The Kangaroo can hop like that for hundreds of kilometers apparently. I suspect that a human would be hard-pressed to run down a kangaroo.

If the kangaroo (or gazelle, zebra or whatever) adopted an optimum escape strategy that might be true, but they certainly don't have the brains to work it out. In practice they'll bounce/run away at high speed until they feel safe while the human hunter is jogging along efficiently. Then they'll take off in another panic when approached, expending energy in large bursts like trying to run a marathon in a series of 400m sprints with regular rests.

[Modified]

The chimp can call up far more fibres at once than he ever can.

A brief survey of the literature suggests that this is not true. Maximum force for voluntary muscle contraction is 90-100% of force for voluntary + electrical stimulation, and for trained individuals it is generally closer to 100%. You can find numerous studies of different muscles that show this. I also found some studies indicating that this (voluntary + electrical stimulation) corresponds to over 70% of muscle activated, as measured by cross-section.

You will find many references to humans only being able to activate 1/3 of the motor units in a muscle, but nothing to back that up.

[Belz...]

It only takes about 3 seconds on Google to verify it is true if you were not already aware of it. Adults chimps can easily kill a human in a physical fight and there is no question they are stronger by far.

They have evolved larger stronger muscles. There is no mystery here.

Or, more to the point, we've probably simply lost ours.

[Belz...]

I would guess that at some point he read something other than the Internet.

Woah! You mean there're sources of information OUTSIDE the internets ???

[Blackadder]

Well, pound-for-pound Pudzianowski isn't four times stronger than you, unless you're really in sad shape.

according to wiki he is 145 kilograms (320 lb)
I am 89 kg (196 lb) (61% of his weight)

We are exactly the same height 1.86 m (6 ft 1 in) and almost the same age. (I am one year older)

As I am unsure how much weight I can lift over my head, or walk around with for 75m I can't really compare, but I guess you are right, with the 61% factor it won't be 4 times less.

Now I am getting curious, and want to test myself when the opportunity arises.

[Soapy Sam]

I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright. One side-effect of this was the very marked reduction in the size of the nose and the surface area of the nasal passages. This made respiratory tract evaporative thermoregulation (panting) ineffective to provide sufficient heat loss for distance running. So we evolved sweating.

Just about the only other species that evolved thermoregulation by the production of profuse volumes of watery sweat over most of the body surface is the horse. This is actually parallel evolution, because the horse uses different glands and manages the fluid-electrolyte consequences in an entirely different way.

The horse has it both ways. It sweats while running, but pants at rest. It pretty much has to, because sweating into a hair coat when there is no air movement past it doesn't work very well - there's not much evaporation. My main idea was that man lost his hair coat in order to allow sweating to be an effective thermoregulation mechanism at rest, because of the lack of sufficient nasal/buccal mucous membrane surface area to make panting a viable proposition.

Rolfe.

A couple of odd personal observations-
1. Given access to a water supply, human evaporative cooling is actually extremely effective in a sand or limestone desert- if the human is naked or nearly so.
2. A naked human , in such a desert, is all but invisibly well camouflaged at quite short ranges.

Now if I was an eedjit, I'd start a "Desert Ape" model of hominid evolution.
But I won't.

[Modified]

according to wiki he is 145 kilograms (320 lb)
I am 89 kg (196 lb) (61% of his weight)

We are exactly the same height 1.86 m (6 ft 1 in) and almost the same age. (I am one year older)

As I am unsure how much weight I can lift over my head, or walk around with for 75m I can't really compare, but I guess you are right, with the 61% factor it won't be 4 times less.

I'm 5'10" and exactly half of Pudzianowski's weight. Based on his PRs, he's about as stong as me, pound-for-pound, at bench and deadlift, and about 25% stronger at squat. Of course, strength doesn't scale linearly with size. There are tons of guys my size who are much stronger than me, but few his size who are stronger than him.

[MRC_Hans]

I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright. One side-effect of this was the very marked reduction in the size of the nose and the surface area of the nasal passages. This made respiratory tract evaporative thermoregulation (panting) ineffective to provide sufficient heat loss for distance running. So we evolved sweating.

Just about the only other species that evolved thermoregulation by the production of profuse volumes of watery sweat over most of the body surface is the horse. This is actually parallel evolution, because the horse uses different glands and manages the fluid-electrolyte consequences in an entirely different way.

The horse has it both ways. It sweats while running, but pants at rest. It pretty much has to, because sweating into a hair coat when there is no air movement past it doesn't work very well - there's not much evaporation. My main idea was that man lost his hair coat in order to allow sweating to be an effective thermoregulation mechanism at rest, because of the lack of sufficient nasal/buccal mucous membrane surface area to make panting a viable proposition.

Rolfe.Say, Rolfe, have you ever worked with horses in particular? ;)

Hans

[Rolfe]

Biochemical and Physiological Aspects of Endurance Exercise in the Horse (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biochemical-Physiological-Aspects-Endurance-Exercise/dp/B001A1PXO6), as you well know!

Actually, that link is very odd. Glasgow University don't seem to have their PhD theses cited online, but that citation is from Amazon as if it was a published book. Of course they don't know when it will be "back" in stock, because there were only ever a handful of copies. And the binding is black hardcover with gold lettering, according to the university regulations, carried out by a firm in St. Albans.

Rolfe.

[dogjones]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.

ISTR this is due to the preponderate type of twitch muscles we have (either fast or slow -- sorry it's past my time to Google).

Really?? I never knew that we could out-endure any other animal on this planet - are we really that awesome? Could we eventually chase down a horse?? This certainly seems counter-intuitive.

[Prometheus]

Really?? I never knew that we could out-endure any other animal on this planet - are we really that awesome? Could we eventually chase down a horse?? This certainly seems counter-intuitive.

If not, then how did people catch and domesticate them in the first place?

Anyway, here's one guy who could probably do it:

http://www.yianniskouros.com/

[commandlinegamer]

Getting back to chimps: film directors might just be feeling a bit uneasy now that our ape friends can operate a camera:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8472000/8472831.stm

Expect the DGA and associated organisations to lobby hard against this move, as obviously the question of payment becomes an issue: some apes are reputedly willing to work for peanuts.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Not me, unless you somehow had a way to keep a a chimp from tearing my head off with his bare hands.
Throwing rocks at them from a good distance would probably prevent them from getting near enough to do that.

Also throwing sticks like spears would probably keep them at a distance.

Humans are much better at throwing stuff. (Chimpanzees can throw with some strength, but almost no accuracy. Humans can do both.)

[JoeTheJuggler]

I think the very flat human face evolved to allow the large-brained head to balance on top of the body while walking upright. One side-effect of this was the very marked reduction in the size of the nose and the surface area of the nasal passages. This made respiratory tract evaporative thermoregulation (panting) ineffective to provide sufficient heat loss for distance running. So we evolved sweating.

Just about the only other species that evolved thermoregulation by the production of profuse volumes of watery sweat over most of the body surface is the horse. This is actually parallel evolution, because the horse uses different glands and manages the fluid-electrolyte consequences in an entirely different way.

The horse has it both ways. It sweats while running, but pants at rest. It pretty much has to, because sweating into a hair coat when there is no air movement past it doesn't work very well - there's not much evaporation. My main idea was that man lost his hair coat in order to allow sweating to be an effective thermoregulation mechanism at rest, because of the lack of sufficient nasal/buccal mucous membrane surface area to make panting a viable proposition.


Fascinating!

Thanks for putting the E in JREF, Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Really?? I never knew that we could out-endure any other animal on this planet - are we really that awesome? Could we eventually chase down a horse?? This certainly seems counter-intuitive.


Pretty much yes, given a long enough course. And a very fit runner.

Rolfe.

[Amapola]

Really?? I never knew that we could out-endure any other animal on this planet - are we really that awesome? Could we eventually chase down a horse?? This certainly seems counter-intuitive.

Yes, humans can out-run a horse. Although it takes a while, and it helps if your "tribe" is working together. There is a race called "Ride and Tie" where two humans and a horse seek to cover up to 100 miles faster than the other teams. The way it works is, one person starts out running, the other riding. The one riding stops and ties the horse when the horse gets tired, and starts off running. Eventually the first runner comes up, unties the horse and takes off. They pass the second runner, and continue on until the horse gets tired, then stop and tie the horse and take off running. Lather, rinse, repeat. But the truth is... two humans can run a horse right into the ground. One must train for this event very carefully. Also, read in this link (http://www.ultrarunning.com/ultra/features/world/chapter-i-in-the-beginnin.shtml) the parts about Big Hawk outrunning a horse.

[Uncayimmy]

Pretty much yes, given a long enough course. And a very fit runner.

Rolfe.

That kinda makes me wonder how many of us would be "very fit" if our hunting/gathering wasn't done in a grocery store!

[JoeTheJuggler]

Pretty much yes, given a long enough course. And a very fit runner.


Definitely. While I'm not a very quick distance runner (I joggle half-marathons mostly), I see plenty of marathon runners (and ultra marathon runners) who can keep up a pretty quick pace darn near indefinitely.

And if you add in a bit of cooperation*, it's no surprise humans were such successful hunters of even large prey.

*That's partly why I specified 10 on 10 in my humans vs. chimps hypothetical above. As complex and well-structured as their social groups are, that of humans is waaay better. (Plus we have true language, something that'd give us a huge tactical advantage.)

[JoeTheJuggler]

But again, I think the human hand and shoulder is a huge advantage too. We can get so much extra leverage (throwing something like a baseball, swinging well aimed clubs with accuracy and strength, and so on) that it makes up for a lot less strength.

But never never get into a close-range unarmed one-on-one fight with a healthy adult chimp!

In fact, don't keep a chimpanzee as a pet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_(chimpanzee)).

[JoeTheJuggler]

That kinda makes me wonder how many of us would be "very fit" if our hunting/gathering wasn't done in a grocery store!

I was going to respond, "Only those that survive!", but that's obviously not true. Even in hunter/gatherer society, the hunters would have been the skilled, able-bodied athletes. Almost everyone could act as a gatherer, and even those who could contribute nothing would be provided for by the group.

Since the neolithic revolution, though, our hunter skills have mostly been irrelevant (for survival, that is) and relegated to the role of sport of one kind or another.

[Uncayimmy]

Throwing rocks at them from a good distance would probably prevent them from getting near enough to do that.

Also throwing sticks like spears would probably keep them at a distance.

Humans are much better at throwing stuff. (Chimpanzees can throw with some strength, but almost no accuracy. Humans can do both.)

I'm not disputing the throwing accuracy, but I think your vision of the "battle" is all wrong. At 40 yards you're not going to be able to throw a rock accurately enough to concern me. I can (well, could when I was in shape) cover that 40 yards in five seconds. During that time you'd be lucky to throw five rocks. Considering the uneven shape of rocks, the adrenalin rush and speed involved, I doubt you'd hit me (snowball fights come to mind). Unless you hit me in the head, I'd keep coming. Chimps can sprint just as fast and present a smaller target.

Therefore, in a battle, I'm going to bet on the chimps (assuming equal numbers). Rocks and spears are great when you gang up on an animal, but I don't think a battle even among humans wouldn't end up in hand-to-hand combat.

[Rolfe]

Think about the anatomy of the horse versus man. Specifically, the relative size of the hind limbs (especially the musculature), and also the relative size of the belly. (I'm talking fit and trim, here!). Man is the persistence hunter,

Rolfe.

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm not disputing the throwing accuracy, but I think your vision of the "battle" is all wrong. At 40 yards you're not going to be able to throw a rock accurately enough to concern me. I can (well, could when I was in shape) cover that 40 yards in five seconds. During that time you'd be lucky to throw five rocks. Considering the uneven shape of rocks, the adrenalin rush and speed involved, I doubt you'd hit me (snowball fights come to mind). Unless you hit me in the head, I'd keep coming. Chimps can sprint just as fast and present a smaller target.

Therefore, in a battle, I'm going to bet on the chimps (assuming equal numbers). Rocks and spears are great when you gang up on an animal, but I don't think a battle even among humans wouldn't end up in hand-to-hand combat.

I've seen video of a chimpanzee battle where the "enemy" (another chimp tribe) was driven off by rock throwing (and the highly-inaccurate chimpanzee version of it).

I think humans could easily keep chimps at a distance this way. And we could make up for the strength disadvantage closer up using clubs and poking sticks too.

I think our ability to grip things with strength and precision grips, and our shoulder arrangement gives us a pretty considerable advantage that would offset strength alone. (When chimps carry a club, it's more for making noise and "bluffing" --they tend to drag it behind them.)

[Uncayimmy]

I've seen video of a chimpanzee battle where the "enemy" (another chimp tribe) was driven off by rock throwing (and the highly-inaccurate chimpanzee version of it).
There's only one way to settle this. I'm in. How about you?

[falkowsi]

In running down an animal, there are also some techniques that can be used to improve the chances for groups of men. If you can manage to cause panic in the animal, they'll run in a gallop, which is less energy efficient, and tires them out quicker. While the animal takes a rest, the group of men keep running at an efficient pace, and will eventually catch up again. At that time, the muscles of the prey have gone cold, and you force them into another gallop, and so on.

[Doghouse Reilly]

[QUOTE=

We would have similar strength if we lived their lifestyle.[/QUOTE]

This is absolutely not true. The strength of a chimpanzee is due to biological and physiological traits that are not due to lifestyle.

[mbp]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.
I seriously doubt it. Sled dogs, for example, have incredible endurance.

The Kuskokwim 300 (http://www.k300.org) mile sled dog race was won in a time of 47 hours and 56 minutes this year.

The human 48 hour world record appears to be (http://www.americanultra.org/stats/world_records.htm) around 254 miles.

And just imagine how much faster the dogs would be if they, like the human record setters, were running in perfect conditions and without dragging a sled.

[godless dave]

But remember that sled dogs were bred by humans for their endurance.

[mbp]

But remember that sled dogs were bred by humans for their endurance.
They're still animals, though. Right?

And in any case - in a long distance race between a human and a wolf I'd certainly put my money on the animal.

[dogjones]

But remember that sled dogs were bred by humans for their endurance.

Yeah, but so are some horses, yes?

[Delvo]

Wolves are known to be endurance hunters. The same is only partially true of humans. Some cultures do it and some don't, and it's not the exclusive hunting method in any. And the same traits of ours that are said to be useful for this type of hunting are also useful for just spending a lot of time standing or walking and carrying loads, in an environment that gets hot and doesn't always provide lots of food.

[Modified]

This is absolutely not true. The strength of a chimpanzee is due to biological and physiological traits that are not due to lifestyle.

Sure, but you should compare chimps to highly trained humans rather than couch potatoes. What we call intense training a chimp calls "life".

[GlennB]

I seriously doubt it. Sled dogs, for example, have incredible endurance.

The Kuskokwim 300 (http://www.k300.org) mile sled dog race was won in a time of 47 hours and 56 minutes this year.

The human 48 hour world record appears to be (http://www.americanultra.org/stats/world_records.htm) around 254 miles.

And just imagine how much faster the dogs would be if they, like the human record setters, were running in perfect conditions and without dragging a sled.

Yep, but the dogs in this case are being driven at an ideal pace for the driver's desired outcome. The point has been made several times now that a hunted animal is not escaping in an optimal way, it's escaping in a series of panicked long sprints.
Put it this way - a 2hr10 marathon runner with a head start cannot be run down by a 2hr30 marathon runner over an indefinite distance, right? But if the faster guy is running 800m at a time to exhaustion, resting, then starting up again,then I'd imagine the slower guy will run him down quite quickly.

[Amapola]

As a side note, one of the reasons humans were able to run prey into the ground was because they worked together as a team. The large herbivores have a tendency to run in a very large circle. It was easy to spot some humans ahead, who would lie in wait for the animal to take up the chase, panicking it ahead again. It wasn't always one human being.

Wolves take advantage of this same propensity for circling in their prey, and spot wolves ahead that can take over the chase.

I agree with the people who are pointing out that chimpanzees are very strong, not due to their lifestyle - it is due to their physiology. Even a chimpanzee who has lived its life in a zoo will be stronger than a human. It has nothing to do with the chimp's daily life.

[mbp]

Yep, but the dogs in this case are being driven at an ideal pace for the driver's desired outcome.If not for the driver the dogs could certainly get there faster, although they'd lack the motivation to do so.

The point has been made several times now that a hunted animal is not escaping in an optimal way, it's escaping in a series of panicked long sprints. A sled dog wouldn't be. It's so much faster than a human at short distances that there'd be no panic involved. It could just leisurely keep its distance.

Have you ever tried catching a dog that didn't want to be caught? I have and I certainly didn't notice it doing a lot of panicked sprints. It seemed to find the whole thing rather entertaining, actually.


And in any case - what you're saying isn't that humans are better endurance runners. You're just claiming that dogs are too stupid not to get caught.

[Rolfe]

Dogs have a lot more trouble doing that in temperate climates. It's back to thermoregulation again. They tend to cook.

Rolfe.

[Cuddles]

A few points to make. Firstly, just because humans are built as endurance pack hunters does not necessarily we must be absolutely the best at it under all conditions, or even under any. Wolves, as an example already given, also hunt in a similar way. Which is better? Pretty much irrelevant. Competition would rarely have been directly between a pack of wolves and a pack of humans, it would be indirect in the sense that they both tend to go after the same things and therefore affect the availability of food. Clearly both were good enough to survive up to now, and that is all evolution cares about.

Secondly, it's already been hinted at, but there's a very big difference between a modern urban human and one living wild. People travelling in less developed regions are often amazed at what the locals are capable of. The reason is that that is how they live. Someone who has to walk long distances carrying heavy loads every day of their life will of course be much better at travelling long distances carrying heavy loads than someone who spends a few evenings at the gym. Keeping fit and exercising as a hobby simply can't compare to an entire lifestyle built around physical labour.

There was a thread a while back that ended up discussing ancient sailors/rowers and comparing them to modern ones. As I recall, the general gist was that your average Greek rower would easily be a match for the top world athletes today. Even professional athletes who spend huge amounts of time training will have trouble competing with someone who has essentially spent their entire life doing the same thing.

Obviously there are other factors. Nutrition being one of the more obviously important ones, especially when concerned with hunter-gatherers. But the point is that humans are generally far more capable than most people seem to think, simply because our urbanised lifestyles usually lack anything near the kind of training that simply living a more primitive life provides. When making comparisons to other animals, it makes little sense to take the average modern first world human, what needs comparing is a human who has lived in the kind of conditions that our bodies evolved in. That kind of human will be a lot tougher, stronger and fitter than many people seem to think.


Finally, regarding this:
However THIS bloke is also X times stronger than me. How does he compare to a chimp?

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID2854/images/pic1.jpg

5 times World Strongest Man winner Mariusz Pudzianowski.

The problem here is in defining "strength". That guy may well be stronger than a chimp when it comes to lifting weights in a particular way. But ask him to swing around trees for a few hours and see how he compares. Modern athletes tend to be extremely specialised. A person who excels at one sport rarely excels at another very different one (although obviously there are plenty of exceptions around). Decathlon is a perfect example of this. How many world champions in a single event also win decathlons? Not a lot, because training to be world class at one event takes so much time you can't get to the same standard in 9 more.

It's therefore somewhat unfair to compare a world class specialist in one area to an average animal (human or otherwise) living in the wild. Is this guy stronger than the average chimp dragged off the street? In some sense probably yes, in others probably no. But have him and the chimp live and work in similar conditions for a few months and then see how they stack up.

[GlennB]

And in any case - what you're saying isn't that humans are better endurance runners. You're just claiming that dogs are too stupid not to get caught.

That's exactly what I'm saying. If the dog/horse/kangaroo ran at its optimal pace they might win the race, in that the human would be exhausted before them and just give up (depending on the weather conditions, as Rolfe has pointed out). They don't because they can't work out the best strategy. Probably fair to say at this point that I don't suppose a human hunter would bother to chase a dog for some hours as there's not much return on the effort ;)

And then, a flat man vs. dog endurance race would be difficult to organise. Maybe if Haile Gebrselassie took out a good and well-trained 'distance dog' on a leash to see if it could keep up over 26 miles on firm grass (so as not to be too unkind on the dog's paws)?

[mbp]

They don't because they can't work out the best strategy. Have you got any evidence to suggest that a dog wouldn't be able to work out a strategy good enough to keep it from being caught by the significantly slower human hunting it on his own without any tools? :)


I don't see how a man would stand any chance at all unless he was able to find and surprise the dog while it was sleeping or something like that, but then we're not talking about anything even resembling a race.


And then, a flat man vs. dog endurance race would be difficult to organise. Maybe if Haile Gebrselassie took out a good and well-trained 'distance dog' on a leash to see if it could keep up over 26 miles on firm grass (so as not to be too unkind on the dog's paws)?If he tried that the only thing keeping Haile anywhere close to the dog would be the leash. It really wouldn't be a contest at all.

[Soapy Sam]

But remember that sled dogs were bred by humans for their endurance.

You think humans were not?

I do think we are overdoing the "endurance hunter" idea though.
Running down an elk after a ten mile chase just isn't worth it.
You're going to get hurt, you're going to burn a load of fuel and even if you win out , you're ten miles from where you started, with a dead elk. You now have to get home without sharing that elk with the hyenas who have been lying 300 yards from where you started, shaking their heads in amazed disbelief.

[JoeTheJuggler]

There's only one way to settle this. I'm in. How about you?
:)

I suspect where humans and chimps live in proximity, it has been field tested at one time or another.

[William Parcher]

I agree with the people who are pointing out that chimpanzees are very strong, not due to their lifestyle - it is due to their physiology. Even a chimpanzee who has lived its life in a zoo will be stronger than a human. It has nothing to do with the chimp's daily life.


This seems to come from my original statement that chimps are stronger than humans because their habitat and lifestyle dictates such strength. This has to do with evolutionary adaptation to environment. Trees are not the habitat of humans but they are for chimps. It is necessary for them to have such great strength to climb trees and move through them at speed. Their lifestyle is entirely dictated by natural selection and whatever evolutionary trajectory they are on.

The chimp lineage evolved great strength as an adaptation to life in the trees (as well as other factors). This is not limited to the chimpanzee. It can be seen in other great apes like the orangutan and gorilla.

[GlennB]

Have you got any evidence to suggest that a dog wouldn't be able to work out a strategy good enough to keep it from being caught by the significantly slower human hunting it on his own without any tools? :)


It's theoretical. The dog, being a powerful carnivore, would fight back. Damned if I would take on a big dog, even with my flint axe handy ;)

[Toke]

:)

I suspect where humans and chimps live in proximity, it has been field tested at one time or another.

Regarding the sticks and stones, the sticks are likely to have well honed fire hardened points and be balanced for easy wielding or throwing.
My experience from snowball fighting is that the more coherent and organised group can easily rout the other.

How often do chimps go human hunting?

[GlennB]

This seems to come from my original statement that chimps are stronger than humans because their habitat and lifestyle dictates such strength. This has to do with evolutionary adaptation to environment. Trees are not the habitat of humans but they are for chimps. It is necessary for them to have such great strength to climb trees and move through them at speed. Their lifestyle is entirely dictated by natural selection and whatever evolutionary trajectory they are on.

The chimp lineage evolved great strength as an adaptation to life in the trees (as well as other factors). This is not limited to the chimpanzee. It can be seen in other great apes like the orangutan and gorilla.

Yep. Earlier today I was watching an old episode of 'Monkey Business' where (the late, bless him) Jim Cronin was in Turkey to bring back, to his primate sanctuary, a 7-year old female chimp that had outgrown its 'pet' status. Her owners were very wealthy and employed a body-builder type just to control this 30kg juvenile in difficult moments. Cronin played with the animal but feared for his safety at the same time, as it was poorly socialised and prone to tantrums. He - an expert if there is one - made it perfectly clear that humans totally underestimate chimpanzee strength.

[Rolfe]

The thing about the dichotomy between dog abilities and human abilities is, there isn't one. Dogs have been domesticated for a very long time, and there is a very reasonable point of view that suggests man would never have been able to move away from hunting/gathering to agriculture if it hadn't been for his best friend - the sheepdog.

Rolfe.

[mbp]

there is a very reasonable point of view that suggests man would never have been able to move away from hunting/gathering to agriculture if it hadn't been for his best friend - the sheepdog.Interesting idea. Is the reasoning that herding (or just animal domestication) is somehow a prerequisite for the development of agriculture?

[Rolfe]

There was a recent Horizon programme on this which was very interesting, but it seems they are no longer updating the Horizon web pages.

Rolfe.

[Beerina]

Chimps' neuro-musculature is also wired up differently. They can easily engage nearly all the muscle fiber in a given muscle simultaneously. We can only contract a fraction of our muscle fiber at once, but we have a great deal more fine motor control. I read somewhere that under certain conditions, people can overcome the neurological inhibition on contracting an entire muscle at once and exhibit chimp-like strength for an instant, but that doing so will usually result in injury since we don't have a strong enough skeleton to support that type of exertion. I can't remember where I read this at the moment.

I recall a study that showed people who didn't exercise would gain something like 30% in strength within two weeks of weight lifting, not because of a tiny amount of muscle growth, but because the brain was re-figuring out how to contract more of the fibers at once.

[dogjones]

It's theoretical. The dog, being a powerful carnivore, would fight back. Damned if I would take on a big dog, even with my flint axe handy ;)

I reckon I could beat your avatar though.

[Modified]

I recall a study that showed people who didn't exercise would gain something like 30% in strength within two weeks of weight lifting, not because of a tiny amount of muscle growth, but because the brain was re-figuring out how to contract more of the fibers at once.

As I pointed out before, this is not true. Sometimes there are such initial strength gains that don't correspond to increases in muscle size, and many people had guessed that the cause was "more fibers firing at once", but studies have shown that this is a minor effect. Coordination of movement and tolerance for discomfort are probably significant reasons, among many others. For some movements, you don't see these kinds of gains at all. For example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1859378/ "The mean ratio of strength to cross-sectional area was 9.20 +/- 1.29 for the untrained group whereas for the trained group this ratio was 9.53 +/- 1.01" (if corrected for muscle size, the difference would have been a bit more, because strength does not scale linearly with muscle size and the trained subjects were bigger). This appears to have been tested using some sort of leg extensions. I suspect if they had used squats or even leg presses as the measure, they would have noted a huge difference in that strength ratio.

[ponderingturtle]

Throwing rocks at them from a good distance would probably prevent them from getting near enough to do that.

Also throwing sticks like spears would probably keep them at a distance.

Humans are much better at throwing stuff. (Chimpanzees can throw with some strength, but almost no accuracy. Humans can do both.)

10 on 10? I will bet on the 5 humans with long spears and 5 humans with spear throwers.

See how well the chip does with a spear through them.

[ponderingturtle]

Wolves are known to be endurance hunters. The same is only partially true of humans. Some cultures do it and some don't, and it's not the exclusive hunting method in any. And the same traits of ours that are said to be useful for this type of hunting are also useful for just spending a lot of time standing or walking and carrying loads, in an environment that gets hot and doesn't always provide lots of food.

The theory is that technology advanced to were you didn't have to run after a deer all day long until it collapses from exertion to kill it. So it is unclear how much the neolithic hunting techniques we have good documentation on fit into the paleolithic evolution of humans.

[ponderingturtle]

Sure, but you should compare chimps to highly trained humans rather than couch potatoes. What we call intense training a chimp calls "life".

The apes were less-than-willing participants in the study. They were more apt to tear apart the shiny dynamometer than pull on it, and, unless the ape had a "distinctly vicious disposition," she was unlikely to approach the experimental task with much vigor. Bauman managed to rig his device outside the cage, feeding in a rope for the apes to work on. Then, amazingly, one of the Bronx chimpanzees—a former circus ape named Suzette—managed to pull 1,260 pounds.

Bauman took his study on the road, attempting tests at the Philadelphia Zoo and making inquiries as far afield as Chicago and Cincinnati. In 1926, he returned to the Bronx Zoo, successfully testing the largest chimpanzee then in captivity. That animal, named Boma, pulled 847 pounds one-handed.



link (http://www.slate.com/id/2212232/)

[ponderingturtle]

Dogs have a lot more trouble doing that in temperate climates. It's back to thermoregulation again. They tend to cook.

Rolfe.

MMMMMM, Hot dogs.....

[Modified]

link (http://www.slate.com/id/2212232/)

I'm not sure how this is a response to my post about trained and untrained humans, but the article agrees with my thoughts. Repeated tests in the 1960s confirmed this basic picture. A chimpanzee had, pound for pound, as much as twice the strength of a human when it came to pulling weights. These "five times stronger" claims are exaggerated. And "pulling" is what they excel at - they are tree climbers.

[mike3]

There was a thread a while back that ended up discussing ancient sailors/rowers and comparing them to modern ones. As I recall, the general gist was that your average Greek rower would easily be a match for the top world athletes today. Even professional athletes who spend huge amounts of time training will have trouble competing with someone who has essentially spent their entire life doing the same thing.


So does this mean that someone of average genetics, would, if they "trained" for it their entire life time, spending virtually every hour of every day doing the stuff, be able to near or beat today's "elite" athletes supposedly with special genetic "talent"? And if this is just the average, wouldn't that mean that their "best" be way better than the best professionals today? If so, how come then it seems that a point of "diminishing returns" has been reached with professional athletics, were they put in more effort but it yields only a small percentage over the last record? To me that looks like a genetic limit of the species being reached, not something else, but maybe it isn't.

And finally, how then would these people compare, weight-for-weight (or whatever measure is appropriate here), against a Chimpanzee?

[mike3]

They're still animals, though. Right?

So are you saying that pretty much any animal, will have more strength/endurance/etc. than humans?

[lomiller]

So are you saying that pretty much any animal, will have more strength/endurance/etc. than humans?

Very few would have more endurance then humans, a great many would have more strength, very few would be able to hurl a projectile at 100mph, a great many would be able to achieve faster sprint speeds etc.

[mike3]

So does this mean that someone of average genetics, would, if they "trained" for it their entire life time, spending virtually every hour of every day doing the stuff, be able to near or beat today's "elite" athletes supposedly with special genetic "talent"? And if this is just the average, wouldn't that mean that their "best" be way better than the best professionals today? If so, how come then it seems that a point of "diminishing returns" has been reached with professional athletics, were they put in more effort but it yields only a small percentage over the last record? To me that looks like a genetic limit of the species being reached, not something else, but maybe it isn't.

And finally, how then would these people compare, weight-for-weight (or whatever measure is appropriate here), against a Chimpanzee?

Bump... does anyone have any answers here? I'd bet the answer to the last question would bet the chimp would probably still be stronger, but would the margin be less by any noticeable amount? If so, how much? And furthermore, the one that I'm really interested in, is does this mean the diminshing returns in athletics/sports world records are just a red herring, and even the best athletes don't use anywhere near their true genetic potential, or what, so the diminishing returns is caused by something other than reaching the genetic potential (which would still be a long way off)?

[mbp]

So are you saying that pretty much any animal, will have more strength/endurance/etc. than humans?
No, what on earth gave you that idea?
I was reacting to the claim that humans can run down any other animal by givng an example of an animal for which I don't think that is true. It was then commented that this kind of dog had been bred by humans. And my point is that this doesn't change the fact that it's an animal humans can't beat in an endurance race on foot.

[mbp]

So does this mean that someone of average genetics, would, if they "trained" for it their entire life time, spending virtually every hour of every day doing the stuff, be able to near or beat today's "elite" athletes supposedly with special genetic "talent"? No, certainly not.

It takes "above average" genetics to even be able to handle the amount of training done by an elite distance runner - and of those who can do that only a few will get near the top level doing so. There have never been people doing more or faster running than what you see today.

[mike3]

No, what on earth gave you that idea?
I was reacting to the claim that humans can run down any other animal by givng an example of an animal for which I don't think that is true. It was then commented that this kind of dog had been bred by humans. And my point is that this doesn't change the fact that it's an animal humans can't beat in an endurance race on foot.

Because you said "they're still animals, though", as though they had it merely by virtue of being an "animal", as this somehow automatically implied this property.

[mike3]

No, certainly not.

It takes "above average" genetics to even be able to handle the amount of training done by an elite distance runner - and of those who can do that only a few will get near the top level doing so. There have never been people doing more or faster running than what you see today.

That would make more sense. So why then was it said that even the "average" (note though this may not mean "average genetics", but would it mean "genetics at least equal to the best professionals today"?) ancient Greek athlete (rower, in this case, not runner, though, but i presume the same principles about genetics apply), would be "hard" for professional athletes today to match, if the same genetic limits still apply, as though "whole life" training somehow seems to "make up" for the genetic limit?

[JoeTheJuggler]

No, certainly not.

It takes "above average" genetics to even be able to handle the amount of training done by an elite distance runner - and of those who can do that only a few will get near the top level doing so. There have never been people doing more or faster running than what you see today.

Amen. Even if I'd trained since I could walk, I will *never* be even close to being an NBA player (much less one of the best of them).

I'm 5'7" tall. While nutrition may have had something to do with my height (probably not much, since I grew up at the tail end of the baby boom era, when nutritious food was abundant), my genotype definitely precluded me from ever being 6'5" or taller.

On the other hand, I think almost any human (who doesn't have a disability or disease) can train to be pretty good at almost any athletic endeavor. I've seen people who definitely don't have the typical body type for distance running complete half marathons and marathons. All that means is most humans are capable of running that distance.

Only very few are capable of running that distance very fast!

ETA: And to tie this back to the topic--any normally-functioning human can grip and throw a baseball (or a rock of similar size) with greater force and accuracy than a chimpanzee, but only a very few can throw it at 90+ mph. Almost any of us can hold and swing a baseball bat better than a chimpanzee can, but only few humans can hit a 90+ mph pitch (much less the breaking stuff). As I said above, our advantage in these things are related to the leverage we get from our shoulder arrangement and the grip from the way our hands work.

[Delvo]

Amen. Even if I'd trained since I could walk, I will *never* be even close to being an NBA player (much less one of the best of them).

I'm 5'7" tall... my genotype definitely precluded me from ever being 6'5" or taller.Do an internet search for images of Muggsy Bogues... Of course, there's been only one of him out of thousands in his profession...

any normally-functioning human can grip and throw a baseball with greater force and accuracy than a chimpanzee... Almost any of us can hold and swing a baseball bat better than a chimpanzee can.. our advantage in these things are related to the leverage we get from our shoulder arrangement and the grip from the way our hands work.A lot of it comes from our upright stance, legs, and back, too.

[ReverendClog]

Test have shown that chimps are about twice as strong as humans, and the earlier bauman study has been discredited by a researcher at Yale's primate lab.

I read somewhere that bears are the strongest animal pound for pound, something to do with having a unique muscle fibre structure.

[Vorticity]

I read somewhere that bears are the strongest animal pound for pound

If you're talking pound-for-pound, isn't the strongest animal something like an ant?

[Juniversal]

Because you said "they're still animals, though", as though they had it merely by virtue of being an "animal", as this somehow automatically implied this property.Well I think it's neccesary to acknowledge the fact that human beings ARE "animals". Intelligent as we may be, we didn't shed our "animal hood" by becoming intelligent. ;)

[Uncayimmy]

If you're talking pound-for-pound, isn't the strongest animal something like an ant?
Ants don't weigh a pound, silly.

Well I think it's neccesary to acknowledge the fact that human beings ARE "animals". Intelligent as we may be, we didn't shed our "animal hood" by becoming intelligent. ;)
I did.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well I think it's neccesary to acknowledge the fact that human beings ARE "animals". Intelligent as we may be, we didn't shed our "animal hood" by becoming intelligent.
Ants don't weigh a pound, silly.


I did.
:D

So what kingdom are you in now? (This is a set up for an undoubtedly witty answer!)

[UNLoVedRebel]

The Chimpanzee won.

Of course, the chimp was shot dead by a cop. He would've killed the cop too if it weren't for human ingenuity.

NSFW - very graphic.
a3DeJjHAz8I

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't see that anyone has mentioned the recent NOVA program, "What Darwin Never Knew". They revealed some fascinating new genetic research which found humans have a major defect that involves muscle weakness when compared to chimpanzee DNA. But it has been hypothesized this defect also resulted in a much smaller jaw muscle that then allowed for significant expansion of the cranial size.

Here's a link to the program, you can watch it Online. I have to refresh the page every once in a while and after the few seconds of intro, slide the cursor to the time frame where the video froze for me.

What Darwin Never Knew (http://video.pbs.org/video/1372073556/)

The section I am referring to in this fascinating 2 hour program starts ~ minute 90.

[Prometheus]

I don't see that anyone has mentioned the recent NOVA program, "What Darwin Never Knew". They revealed some fascinating new genetic research which found humans have a major defect that involves muscle weakness when compared to chimpanzee DNA. But it has been hypothesized this defect also resulted in a much smaller jaw muscle that then allowed for significant expansion of the cranial size.

Here's a link to the program, you can watch it Online. I have to refresh the page every once in a while and after the few seconds of intro, slide the cursor to the time frame where the video froze for me.

What Darwin Never Knew (http://video.pbs.org/video/1372073556/)

The section I am referring to in this fascinating 2 hour program starts ~ minute 90.

Actually, I mentioned this idea back in post #35:

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.

Though I heard about it somewhere other than the Nova program. Thanks for the link, anyway! It is a fascinating show. :)

[Delvo]

found humans have a major defect that involves muscle weakness when compared to chimpanzee DNA. But it has been hypothesized this defect also... allowed for significant expansion of the cranial size.Actually, I mentioned this idea... Though I heard about it somewhere other than the Nova program.Nova's way of describing and illustrating it didn't make much sense. They said the gene was "obviously damaged" and that this kind of thing always causes a muscular "disease". What in the world do words like those and "defect" have to do with an improvement? By looking at only the DNA and not its effects, how could we allegedly distinguish between a change that should create bad results and one that shouldn't?

They said in narration that we're missing two nucleotides, and showed a double-helix with one side getting two nucleotides taken out so the other strand was now two nucleotides longer. So maybe they meant that just getting the two strands to be of unequal lengths was what made this particular change a "damage" and "defect", whereas other types of change that don't result in unequal strand lengths wouldn't necessarily be inherently bad. But in the following minutes, they used similar images again, of nucleotides missing from one strand and not the other, to depict other mutations, without saying that those changes should have been inherently bad. It's as if they had no way of illustrating ANY kind of genetic change except with the missing-nucleotides image and double helix with mismatched strands... but then, that takes us back to what kind of changes should always be inherently bad and what kinds shouldn't, and their complete lack of a distinction between them (or an explanation of how/why they'd say it's supposed to be so at all right before telling us themselves about the proof that it isn't).

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nova's way of describing and illustrating it didn't make much sense. They said the gene was "obviously damaged" and that this kind of thing always causes a muscular "disease". What in the world do words like those and "defect" have to do with an improvement? By looking at only the DNA and not its effects, how could we allegedly distinguish between a change that should create bad results and one that shouldn't?The nucleotides were missing their partners, rather than just having substituted molecules.

All normal nucleotides in both DNA and RNA are paired.

[Skeptic Ginger]

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.I only searched for "NOVA" looking to see if someone posted this already.

The NOVA program was the first I'd seen this new hypothesis. But I thought they said it was the size of the foramen the muscle had to go through which left no room for skull expansion. A larger area for attaching a larger muscle would mean a bigger skull.

Anyway, it's the same idea.

Previous hypotheses about brain size increasing involved the ability to speak, and/or the freeing up of hands by walking upright and the opposable thumb led to accelerated brain development. And another hypothesis I've read was that walking upright and the development of the central sulcus (a big vein draining brain blood) allowed more blood flow and with it more cooling which allowed the brain to expand, since it creates a lot of heat to think. :)

[Prometheus]

I only searched for "NOVA" looking to see if someone posted this already.

The NOVA program was the first I'd seen this new hypothesis. But I thought they said it was the size of the foramen the muscle had to go through which left no room for skull expansion. A larger area for attaching a larger muscle would mean a bigger skull.

Anyway, it's the same idea.

Previous hypotheses about brain size increasing involved the ability to speak, and/or the freeing up of hands by walking upright and the opposable thumb led to accelerated brain development. And another hypothesis I've read was that walking upright and the development of the central sulcus (a big vein draining brain blood) allowed more blood flow and with it more cooling which allowed the brain to expand, since it creates a lot of heat to think. :)

In the NOVA program, they mention that it's not the size/amount of bone, but that the stronger muscle in other apes prompts the bone plates to fuse together at a much younger age. That's a little different than what I'd read before. As for the other hypotheses, I wonder if they're not all correct and that each of these physiological differences co-evolved.

[Skeptic Ginger]

In the NOVA program, they mention that it's not the size/amount of bone, but that the stronger muscle in other apes prompts the bone plates to fuse together at a much younger age. That's a little different than what I'd read before. As for the other hypotheses, I wonder if they're not all correct and that each of these physiological differences co-evolved.OK, I remember the bone fusing comment now that you mention it.

I like the idea new hypotheses continue to be proposed. Sometimes we get real comfortable thinking we know something and along comes a new idea that challenges what we had thought. :)


So was your Avatar part of the Apr 1st joke? I see your old one is back.

[Prometheus]

OK, I remember the bone fusing comment now that you mention it.

I like the idea new hypotheses continue to be proposed. Sometimes we get real comfortable thinking we know something and along comes a new idea that challenges what we had thought. :)

Me too. And it bugs the heck out of me when people misinterpret such challenges as evidence that scientists should not be trusted.

So was your Avatar part of the Apr 1st joke? I see your old one is back.

Me? April Fools joke? Never! :redface1

[Skeptic Ginger]

Me? April Fools joke? Never! :redface1I miss Articulett.

[mike3]

I don't see that anyone has mentioned the recent NOVA program, "What Darwin Never Knew". They revealed some fascinating new genetic research which found humans have a major defect that involves muscle weakness when compared to chimpanzee DNA. But it has been hypothesized this defect also resulted in a much smaller jaw muscle that then allowed for significant expansion of the cranial size.

Here's a link to the program, you can watch it Online. I have to refresh the page every once in a while and after the few seconds of intro, slide the cursor to the time frame where the video froze for me.

What Darwin Never Knew (http://video.pbs.org/video/1372073556/)

The section I am referring to in this fascinating 2 hour program starts ~ minute 90.

So it seems that Brawn had to move aside to make room for Brains :)

[mike3]

Hi.

I was wondering about this. It seems that, apparently, the reason that the chimpanzee and many other primates have so much strength compared to humans is not so much that they evolved their muscle system to be stronger, but that we _lost_ power during our own evolution. Is this right? If so, then when did it start, and when did we reach a level of "wimpiness" comparable to what we have now ("physiologically", i.e. what we are _capable_ of in terms of physiology _if we were trained for it_), and what was the reason for it?

[drkitten]

Hi.

I was wondering about this. It seems that, apparently, the reason that the chimpanzee and many other primates have so much strength compared to humans is not so much that they evolved their muscle system to be stronger, but that we _lost_ power during our own evolution. Is this right?

More or less.

If so, then when did it start, and when did we reach a level of "wimpiness" comparable to what we have now ("physiologically", i.e. what we are _capable_ of in terms of physiology _if we were trained for it_),

Dunno offhand.

and what was the reason for it?

Because we didn't need "superhuman" strength. Maintaining capacity you don't need is costly, and we could use the same resources (food and whatnot) building other stuff like language faculties in the brain.

This article (http://www.livescience.com/5370-chimps-stronger-humans.html) suggests that it was a tradeoff between fine motor control and brute strength; this site (http://aolanswers.com/questions/chimpanzees_stronger_humans_biology_2735215315154? #answers) suggests (as well) that speed may be an issue as well.

Certainly by the time you're hunting on the savannah, you need the ability to throw a rock far and accurately, something that chimps don't really have. If you're trying to make a sharp rock that you can tie to the end of a spear, you need even more fine manipulative capacity.

[Ziggurat]

This article (http://www.livescience.com/5370-chimps-stronger-humans.html) suggests that it was a tradeoff between fine motor control and brute strength; this site (http://aolanswers.com/questions/chimpanzees_stronger_humans_biology_2735215315154? #answers) suggests (as well) that speed may be an issue as well.

I think speed is a big part of it. We're much better runners than other primates. And I think we're also much better throwers. A chimp can beat me at arm wrestling, but I bet I can throw a faster pitch. Once you really start using tools, throwing speed becomes damned useful, in ways that it just isn't without tools. I can organize with other humans and we can collectively make up for our lack of individual brute strength, but chimps can't collectively make up for their lack of speed.

[TubbaBlubba]

Also, our brains guzzle a lot of juice. Don't want a lot of inefficiently used musculature to keep it back.

[Mr. Purple]

Just wanted to concur with the other posters. Brains and fine motor control were more "thirsty" for resources than the long leverage and muscle mass of non-human primates.

Sexual selection probably figures in as well at some point.

[Mirrorglass]

How much of this really is in the genetics? Is a chimp really notably stronger than a human who's spent most of his life swinging on trees?

[drkitten]

How much of this really is in the genetics? Is a chimp really notably stronger than a human who's spent most of his life swinging on trees?

Yes.

For example, the muscle attachment on the arms is entirely different in chimpanzees and humans. This in turn creates entirely different leverage, which in turn affects both strength (the amount of force that can be applied) and precision (the amount of control you have over force).

There are also well-documented differences in the muscle structure and the proteins that make up the muscles; in fact, there are even a few mutations that have been tied to these differences in proteins. (Wikipedia: "The MYH16 gene encodes a protein called myosin heavy chain 16 which is a muscle protein in mammals. At least in primates, it is a specialized muscle protein found only in the temporalis and masseter muscles of the jaw. Myosin heavy chain proteins are important in muscle contraction, and if they are missing, the muscles will be smaller. In non-human primates, MYH16 is functional and the animals have powerful jaw muscles. In humans, the MYH16 gene has a mutation which causes the protein not to function.")

So, yes, Virginia, there is a genetic difference.

[mike3]

Yes.

For example, the muscle attachment on the arms is entirely different in chimpanzees and humans. This in turn creates entirely different leverage, which in turn affects both strength (the amount of force that can be applied) and precision (the amount of control you have over force).

Is there some level of tradeoff between these, i.e. if the leverage is pushed over to the "strength" end, it lowers the "precision" end, and vice versa? (So then that in human evolution, a greater push toward precision could have helped to erode strength?)

There are also well-documented differences in the muscle structure and the proteins that make up the muscles; in fact, there are even a few mutations that have been tied to these differences in proteins. (Wikipedia: "The MYH16 gene encodes a protein called myosin heavy chain 16 which is a muscle protein in mammals. At least in primates, it is a specialized muscle protein found only in the temporalis and masseter muscles of the jaw. Myosin heavy chain proteins are important in muscle contraction, and if they are missing, the muscles will be smaller. In non-human primates, MYH16 is functional and the animals have powerful jaw muscles. In humans, the MYH16 gene has a mutation which causes the protein not to function.")

So, yes, Virginia, there is a genetic difference.

Hmm. What about other muscles like body muscles (arms and what not)? As those are what I usually associate with "strength" when I think about it...

Also, I'm curious: how much of the strength advantage is generated by each of these mechanisms?

[drkitten]

Is there some level of tradeoff between these, i.e. if the leverage is pushed over to the "strength" end, it lowers the "precision" end, and vice versa? (So then that in human evolution, a greater push toward precision could have helped to erode strength?)

Yup.


Hmm. What about other muscles like body muscles (arms and what not)? As those are what I usually associate with "strength" when I think about it...

There are definite structural and compositional differences in arms and whatnot, but I don't think we've yet identified the differences in genes for all of the anatomical differences.

... which is part of why research biologists are still in business.

[mike3]

There are definite structural and compositional differences in arms and whatnot, but I don't think we've yet identified the differences in genes for all of the anatomical differences.

... which is part of why research biologists are still in business.

So is there any good data on the relative importance of these differences in creating the effect, is there? I.e. how much of the strength advantage is created by differences in small scale structure of the muscle tissue itself vs. differences in the larger-scale structure of the body?

[William Parcher]

I was wondering about this.


Did you forget that you already started a thread on this exact same subject one year ago? Chimpanzee Strength? by mike3 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=165328)

Older JREF thread on primate strength. (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=62828)

[Mr. Purple]

Is a chimp really notably stronger than a human who's spent most of his life swinging on trees?

Holy FSM, yes. They are built to be strong- their arms and legs are more efficient levers and they have greater muscle mass : body mass ratio than humans.

(I am totally pulling the second point out of my butt, but I will eat my shoe if I am wrong).

ETA: Uh, I mean what Dr. Kitten said, with like science and stuff. Note to self: read entire thread before outing yourself as an idiot.

[mike3]

Did you forget that you already started a thread on this exact same subject one year ago? Chimpanzee Strength? by mike3 (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=165328)

Yes, I know that. But I didn't think it was okay to go and "gravedig" old threads to ask more questions. I guess I was wrong. Right?

[Beerina]

If you compare human musculature to chimpanzee musculature, or ape musculature in general, we're more gracile. That's a fancy way of saying, "pansy." They have more muscle attachments, more fast twich muscle than we have, which is much stronger, but less slow twich.

You can easily outwalk any other ape, they can easily rip your $%& off.

Nova had a fascinating show about the theory that early humans evolved to run down their prey on the plains of Africa. They followed modern bushmen who used this technique -- they followed an antelope at a slow jog for four hours, until it stood there with heat stroke, and they could just walk up and kill it.

This was the reason, they said, humans lost body hair -- it allows one to sweat, and thus lose heat better, and thus you could do exactly this type of thing.

So...yeah, you probably can't outsprint an ape on all fours, but you an out-run just about anything, long-distance, by causing it to overheat eventually, while you can stay cool indefinitely.

[Modified]

Yup.

I would say no. A chimp's muscle attachments favor both strength and fine control. A human's muscle attachments favor speed. Imagine holding a very light and stiff ten foot rod with a pivot on one end. With your hand close to the pivot, it's easy to swing the rod quickly. With your hand far from the pivot, it's easier to lift a heavy object with the rod tip, and easier to write your name with the rod tip.

Maybe the fine control tradeoff is in the structure of the muscle itself?

[Halfcentaur]

What's the (evolutionary) reason for having the stronger bite, or on the flipside, why we'd have a weaker bite?

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.


Indeed, it may just be that the massive jaw muscles the apes share inhibited our brain growth. It's a nice trade off, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0D_k4lYrdo

The discovery is pretty interesting, it was an accident while searching for origins of muscular dystrophy.

*EDIT*

Ah, drat. I see a similar video was linked I didn't notice in skimming over, apologies.

[Delvo]

It seems that, apparently, the reason that the chimpanzee and many other primates have so much strength compared to humans is not so much that they evolved their muscle system to be stronger, but that we _lost_ power during our own evolution. Is this right?Not necessarily. The common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees could have either been smaller and lighter than modern chimpanzees, or spent more time on the ground and less in trees, or both. If so, then chimpanzees' need for arm strength has increased since then.

Certainly by the time you're hunting on the savannah, you need the ability to throw a rock far and accurately, something that chimps don't really have. If you're trying to make a sharp rock that you can tie to the end of a spear, you need even more fine manipulative capacity.I think we're also much better throwers. A chimp can beat me at arm wrestling, but I bet I can throw a faster pitch.Another thing about throwing, aside from a choice of "speed versus strength", is that most of a human throw doesn't come from the arm anyway. Even if a chimpanzee can out-throw a human who is restricted to using only an arm, we'd still out-throw them in real life anyway because we use our legs and torso for it in a way they just can't.

Hmm. What about other muscles like body muscles (arms and what not)? As those are what I usually associate with "strength" when I think about it...Using our legs and torso to move our arms around helps us not only with throwing, but also with swinging or thrusting with a pole-weapon that's kept in the hands the whole time. Chimpanzees' reputation for strength is based on an arm pull test; other tests don't show the same difference.

Nova had a fascinating show about the theory that early humans evolved to run down their prey on the plains of Africa. They followed modern bushmen who used this technique -- they followed an antelope at a slow jog for four hours, until it stood there with heat stroke, and they could just walk up and kill it.They actually spend parts of that time walking or standing still (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUpo_mA5RP8) to give themselves time to evaluate tracks/signs and try to think like the animal, which only highlights even more the physical differences between the human hunter and the non-human prey. For the human, the pursuit is not merely survivable but is a step beyond that: something that doesn't even require going to great extremes to succeed.

Muscles, BTW, are a big heat source, as you demonstrate yourself when you unconsciously try to generate more heat by shivering. So having the smallest ones you can get away with not only means having less need for nutrients to feed them but also means not lugging around an extra heat source when you want to stay cool. That makes small muscles better than big ones for an animal that relies on fuel efficiency and/or temperature control in hot conditions, so developing smaller muscles was an improvement, not a loss.

* * *

This is making me wonder whether interactions (of any kind, not just fights) between chimpanzees and gorillas have ever been observed.

[mike3]

Not necessarily. The common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees could have either been smaller and lighter than modern chimpanzees, or spent more time on the ground and less in trees, or both. If so, then chimpanzees' need for arm strength has increased since then.

Have bones for it been found, or something close to it at least? If so, what does that suggest?

Another thing about throwing, aside from a choice of "speed versus strength", is that most of a human throw doesn't come from the arm anyway. Even if a chimpanzee can out-throw a human who is restricted to using only an arm, we'd still out-throw them in real life anyway because we use our legs and torso for it in a way they just can't.

Hmm.

Using our legs and torso to move our arms around helps us not only with throwing, but also with swinging or thrusting with a pole-weapon that's kept in the hands the whole time. Chimpanzees' reputation for strength is based on an arm pull test; other tests don't show the same difference.

How does that work? If the arm is strong wouldn't adding the rest of the body just make it even more? So how does the gap narrow with the other kinds of tests, as you seem to imply it does?

They actually spend parts of that time walking or standing still (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUpo_mA5RP8) to give themselves time to evaluate tracks/signs and try to think like the animal, which only highlights even more the physical differences between the human hunter and the non-human prey. For the human, the pursuit is not merely survivable but is a step beyond that: something that doesn't even require going to great extremes to succeed.

Muscles, BTW, are a big heat source, as you demonstrate yourself when you unconsciously try to generate more heat by shivering. So having the smallest ones you can get away with not only means having less need for nutrients to feed them but also means not lugging around an extra heat source when you want to stay cool. That makes small muscles better than big ones for an animal that relies on fuel efficiency and/or temperature control in hot conditions, so developing smaller muscles was an improvement, not a loss.

Hmm.

This is making me wonder whether interactions (of any kind, not just fights) between chimpanzees and gorillas have ever been observed.

How's that?

[plumjam]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.


Except whales.

[Toke]

Except whales.
Ok then, chase and row up.

[Ziggurat]

Humans are built to run long distances and (when we are in shape :D) we can chase and run down any other animal on this planet.

Not birds. There are many species of birds that can outdistance us.

And not grizzlies, because we can't chase them at all.

[lomiller]

Is there some level of tradeoff between these, i.e. if the leverage is pushed over to the "strength" end, it lowers the "precision" end, and vice versa? (So then that in human evolution, a greater push toward precision could have helped to erode strength?)



Hmm. What about other muscles like body muscles (arms and what not)? As those are what I usually associate with "strength" when I think about it...

Also, I'm curious: how much of the strength advantage is generated by each of these mechanisms?

Throwing speed is highly dependant on how much power your muscles can generate, yet a chimp will not be able to compete with a human it’s not nearly as simple as humans having traded physical for control or intelligence. We are capable of many physical feats that a chimp could never hope to accomplish.

The bottom line is that chimps have a number of evolutionary adaptations to perform certain tasks while we have adaptations for different tasks. If we compare ourselves to chimps on tasks closely related to their physical adaptations, *of course* they will come out ahead.

[Ethan Thane Athen]

I seriously doubt it. Sled dogs, for example, have incredible endurance.

The Kuskokwim 300 (http://www.k300.org) mile sled dog race was won in a time of 47 hours and 56 minutes this year.

The human 48 hour world record appears to be (http://www.americanultra.org/stats/world_records.htm) around 254 miles.

And just imagine how much faster the dogs would be if they, like the human record setters, were running in perfect conditions and without dragging a sled.

I admit to not having read the links but I think you may be missing a crucial detail here in that the dogs would have been fed during the race by their human handlers (a recent programme about the Inuit revealed how often sled dogs have to be fed extremely energy rich meat, by their human handlers, just to keep going). In a real 'wild on wild' chase down between humans and 'sled' dogs, the dogs would not be able to replenish their spent energy without hunting (and you can't hunt whilst being chased) and that's assuming they'd have the energy to do so, whilst the humans could carry the food with them. Eventually, if sufficiently motivated, the humans are going to catch up.

[Bikewer]

Wolves evolved to hunt rather like humans, at least in regards to large prey. They do have superb endurance, and they also have portions of the pack rest while the others chase, then the resting wolves can join in.
I don't know how the matchup of dog vs.human might go; provided similar opportunity to hydrate and eat it might be pretty similar.
There are those crazy Indians in South America who engage in weekend runs of 200 some miles.... The whole tribe turns out for the fun.

[CORed]

One possibility is that our weaker bite enabled us to evolve a different skull with room for a larger brain, because weaker muscles don't require as much bone to attach to.

Speech was also likely a factor in tooth and jaw structure, and vice versa.

[GlennB]

Of humans runing down prey - there's also the fact that the prey (a deer, say) will tend to run much too fast until it feels safe, rest, then panic again when the human jogger looms close once more. That's a very inefficient way to run. If the deer had the brains to jog just fast enough to stay ahead it might be that it could outrun a human to exhaustion.

Dogs are an interesting case as these remarkable feats of dog endurance occur with a driver in charge. How they'd manage left to their own devices I don't know, plus there's a chance, presumably, that they'd just turn round and face the human hunter. If not I'd have a small bet on the human being able to run down the Husky. Being in front constantly looking back can be a bad place to be.

[Denver]

I wonder if this thread could replace the famous "Man Bites Dog" news flash, with "Monkey Spanks Man".

[Puppycow]

The brain is mightier than muscle.

[Roboramma]

Dogs are an interesting case as these remarkable feats of dog endurance occur with a driver in charge. How they'd manage left to their own devices I don't know, plus there's a chance, presumably, that they'd just turn round and face the human hunter. If not I'd have a small bet on the human being able to run down the Husky. Being in front constantly looking back can be a bad place to be.

Those comparisons also seem to be missing out on a crucial detail: humans are evolved to running long distances on the African savanna. Sled dogs probably have to worry a lot less about overheating. So they may be better adapted to long distance running in Alaska, but our adaptations are for a hot environment where sweating wins.

[Cuddles]

Of humans runing down prey - there's also the fact that the prey (a deer, say) will tend to run much too fast until it feels safe, rest, then panic again when the human jogger looms close once more. That's a very inefficient way to run. If the deer had the brains to jog just fast enough to stay ahead it might be that it could outrun a human to exhaustion.

Although that's not really about brains, it's again simple adaptation. As the discussion has pointed out, humans are fairly unusual in the way they hunt. Most hunters go with a quick sprint or ambush, then give up if the prey gets away. So the few prey that end up eaten by humans are more than outweighed by the ones that escape being eaten by lions, or whatever.

Presumably this is actually one of the factors in our development - our ancestors couldn't compete on sheer running speed, so instead we evolved a hunting technique that bypassed our prey's defence rather than just trying to beat it in a straight sprint like cheetahs.

[rocketdodger]

Chimps' neuro-musculature is also wired up differently. They can easily engage nearly all the muscle fiber in a given muscle simultaneously. We can only contract a fraction of our muscle fiber at once, but we have a great deal more fine motor control. I read somewhere that under certain conditions, people can overcome the neurological inhibition on contracting an entire muscle at once and exhibit chimp-like strength for an instant, but that doing so will usually result in injury since we don't have a strong enough skeleton to support that type of exertion. I can't remember where I read this at the moment.

That sounds awesome. Can anyone teach me this?

No, seriously ...

[rocketdodger]

I'll take determined chimps any day of the week. Here (http://www.esquire.com/features/chimpanzee-attack-0409-3)'s a situation where an attacking chimp was apparently undeterred by being shot. (Warning, the details are beyond gruesome.)

Not sure why the guy at the sanctuary didn't have loaded dart guns ready to go ...

[excaza]

That sounds awesome. Can anyone teach me this?

No, seriously ...

I'd advise against it if you value having an intact skeleton and ligaments.

[excaza]

If ten humans and ten chimps faced off with nothing but rocks and sticks, I'd still bet on the humans.

I'll take that bet (http://www.eva.mpg.de/primat/staff/boesch/pdf/fol_prim_tool_use_making.pdf).

[Modified]

That sounds awesome. Can anyone teach me this?

No, seriously ...

Doesn't sound like a good idea. Regular guys lifting weights at the gym tear muscles and ligaments all the time.

[Damien Evans]

We can cheat and carry a sack of food and water while we walk. A kangaroo has to stop to eat and drink.

At which point the Kangaroo is already 10 km in front of you.:D

Seriously, aborigines didn't hunt kangaroos by turning it into a stamina race, they wouldn't have won. They hunted by ambush, spearing from a distance, panicked animals from fire stick farming and various other methods, but they didn't hunt kangaroos on open plains by running for longer, because Kangaroos have excellent stamina and are much faster than humans.

[Skeptical Greg]

I'll take that bet (http://www.eva.mpg.de/primat/staff/boesch/pdf/fol_prim_tool_use_making.pdf).I don't think he had nut-cracking and termite eating in mind ...

[Toke]

I don't think he had nut-cracking and termite eating in mind ...

Hopefully not, stone age spears and arrows looks unsuitable for termite fishing.

[Delvo]

Have bones for it been found, or something close to it at least? If so, what does that suggest?The closest things to the human-chimpanzee ancestor that have been found are Orrorin and Sahelanthropus. But whether they are from before or after the split, and whether they're ancestral to either or both of us or a side group without living descendants, is not clear, but the timing is close enough to infer that they're probably pretty similar to the common ancestor.

Sahelanthropus is nothing but a crushed skull. Apparently most people figure the position of the foramen magnum (the hole where the neck attaches) is farther forward than a chimpanzee's, indicating a more upright routine posture, but that's disputed, the source of the doubt being the damage to the fossil.

Orrorin fossils don't include any parts of the brain case but do include parts of the mouth and limbs. Its femur seems adapted for relatively upright walking, but it has curved finger bones and thickening of certain parts of the humerus, which are chimpanzee tree-climbing traits, although not as drastic as they are in chimpanzees. Ratio of leg size to arm size (one of the biggest differences between a human and a chimpanzee) doesn't seem to have been determinable, perhaps because the humerus and femur pieces were from different individuals. Overall body size seems similar to a modern female chimpanzee, but the sexes of the fossilized individuals are unknown.

How does that work? If the arm is strong wouldn't adding the rest of the body just make it even more?Not if the rest of the body is not proportional to the arm or not arranged to coordinate in a way that can use the parts together in synergy for whatever the given task is.