Physical strength of other Primates

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Chimpanzees are up to 8 times stronger than the average adult human male. Chimpanzees can lift nearly 8 times as much. An average human male would have trouble dead lifting 250lbs but a chimp could dead lift 600lbs with one hand without a problem.

Scientists have shown that the actual muscles of chimps aren't that different than our own.

So what is the cause of this strength difference?
Could it be the neocortex?

How about Gorillas? Do they have the same superior strength relative to bodyweight? Some gorillas weigh several hundred pounds. They should be able to lift thousands of pounds if a 130lb chimp can lift several hundred. No?



Discuss.

[Cuddles]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025540.600;

The muscles are different from our own.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025540.600;

The muscles are different from our own.



Post the article here... You have to pay to read it.

[richardm]

Post the article here...

Can't do that. The key bit appears to be

The answer isn't just sheer muscle bulk. It's also to do with that fact that their muscles work around five to seven times more efficiently than ours. Studies of human and other primates' jaw muscles show that our muscle fibres are far smaller and weaker than those of our cousins - roughly an eighth the size of those seen in macaques, for example.
The reasons for this remain poorly understood, but one contributing factor is the genes that encode myosin, the protein fibres from which muscles are made. Comparison of human and ape sequences for a myosin gene called MYH16 show that all humans have a mutant version of this gene.
Some have even credited the more diminutive muscles in human jaws for our larger intelligence. One theory says that these smaller muscles gave our skulls the room to grow rounder, allowing for a bigger brain cavity1.


Also it's probably a mistake to compare the average human male to a chimp anyway. Most chimps spend their entire lives lifting themselves up with their arms and swinging around, which would build up some impressive upper body strength, even without the larger muscle fibre size.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

The reasons for this remain poorly understood, but one contributing factor is the genes that encode myosin, the protein fibres from which muscles are made. Comparison of human and ape sequences for a myosin gene called MYH16 show that all humans have a mutant version of this gene.

I should of figured it had something to do with the Myosin gene.


So if Humans figure a way to change our Myosin gene to be similar to that of Chimps...We should become several times stronger?

[roger]

I recall reading (I have no cite) a long time ago that the ligaments and sinews are attached differently in their arms compared to ours. It's something to the effect that ours are attached right on the end of the bone, and make a right angle through the elbow, resulting in poor leverage, whereas the other primates the attachment point is different and doesn't run through the elbow the same way, so they get greater leverage, and less chance of damaging themselves under high loads. Kind of like the hydraulics are connected to a backhoe.

I don't know if it is true, but it sounds plausible.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

In times of stress in humans when their neocortex shuts down they are able to do amazing feats of strength.

Could the neocortex play a role in the chimps strength?



And how about Gorillas? Do they share the same super-strength as chimps?

[Cuddles]

I was under the impression that the extreme feats of strength were due to an extreme fight-or-flight response, mainly a huge surge of adrenaline. This response is very short term and can cause serious muscle damage if it carries on for too long. Whether part of the brain is involved or not, it seems unlikely that the same mechanism can be involved with natural strength of other primates.

Humans seem to be the mutants and all other primates are proportionally much stronger. There is a theory that expanding brain power required cutbacks in other areas due to energy considerations, but I'm not sure how well accepted this theory is.

[WildCat]

So if Humans figure a way to change our Myosin gene to be similar to that of Chimps...We should become several times stronger?
Is this (http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2434192005) what you were thinking of?

[andyandy]

christ! An evil empire run by humanzees :jaw-dropp

Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia - Stalin's birthplace - for the apes to be raised.

Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail.

A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar.

[Ziggurat]

First off, it doesn't make sense that our muscle cells are really weak compared to other animals. If they were, we should have gone extinct a long time ago. Pretty much all mamals should be operating near the biological limit, at least on the celular level. But there are two biological factors which can easily account for a difference in the "strength" of a human vs. other primates, both of them essentially issues of leverage.

In order to contract, muscle cells use pairs of fibers aligned with each other, which grab ob to each other and slide. If these fiber pairs are long, there will be many connecting points along the fiber, and the force exerted by them will be large. If the fibers are short, the force will be correspondingly smaller, BUT since you can have more pairs along the length of the muscle, and each pair contracts at a fixed rate, the DISTANCE that the entire muscle contracts in a given time will also be correspondingly larger. So there's a tradeoff even on the celular level between strength and speed.

Now, as mentioned above, you can also play this tradeoff game when connecting the muscles to the joints. Here the leverage issue is a little more obvious: if you connect the ligament near the joint you're bending, then the muscle doesn't need to contract very far in order to move that joint through a certain arc. If you attach the ligament farther out, you need to contract the muscle more to achieve the same movement (so the limb moves more slowly), but you again have correspondingly more torque applied to the joint and the limb can exert more pressure.

So, are other primates "stronger" than humans? I don't doubt that they can exert significantly more force with their arms than we can. But you'll never get a chimp to run a marathon either, or throw a 90 mph fastball. In terms of POWER output (basically, strength x speed) per pound, I would guess our muscles are probably pretty similar not only to chimpanzees but to most mammals. The human body is not some weak, pathetic thing: we're just built to do different things than other animals.

[casebro]

Every healthy human I know can lift twice their body weight.

You can climb a flight of stairs? So each leg can lift your own weight. So use both legs together, lift double your weight. The most I've knowingly lifted is 400#, but I had a bad back disc at the time. I don't know how much I had lifted before, engines and things. Maybe monkeys lift more out of stupidity- they just don't know when to quit? Anyhow, I'd like to study how/what they measured the monkeys lifting. Perhaps we only use 10% of our bodies as well as of our brains? ;)

[Foster Zygote]

In times of stress in humans when their neocortex shuts down they are able to do amazing feats of strength.

Could the neocortex play a role in the chimps strength?



And how about Gorillas? Do they share the same super-strength as chimps?

The neocortex has nothing to do with it. Chimp and Gorillas (yes they are similarly powerful, pound for pound, to chimps) have much larger bone structure than we do. The areas of their bones where the muscles attach are huge, permiting a lot of muscle mass. Don't forget that adult chimps are very large, about 200 lbs. It's not the materials, it's the construction. =0)

Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago had an adult male gorilla whom I used to go see often. He weighed 500 lbs., had a ten foot arm-span and a 36 inch neck. Truly awesome.

Steven

[chance]

Perhaps it’s a trade off for endurance, young fit humans can walk/run for amazing distances if required. Saw a documentary where a Kalahari bushman (I think) ran down an antelope (the antelope basically overheated) took him all day to do it!

[WildCat]

Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago had an adult male gorilla whom I used to go see often. He weighed 500 lbs., had a ten foot arm-span and a 36 inch neck. Truly awesome.
Is that the one who would throw himself at the visitors w/ fangs bared and screaming until he hit the glass? Man, that was scary. Though I knew he couldn't break through the glass it was near impossible to stand still w/ that enraged ape coming at you like that. He must have gotten quite a kick out of scaring the visitors. They redid the ape house since so that doesn't happen any more, but it used to be one hell of a thrill!

[Foster Zygote]

Is that the one who would throw himself at the visitors w/ fangs bared and screaming until he hit the glass? Man, that was scary. Though I knew he couldn't break through the glass it was near impossible to stand still w/ that enraged ape coming at you like that. He must have gotten quite a kick out of scaring the visitors. They redid the ape house since so that doesn't happen any more, but it used to be one hell of a thrill!

That was him. I think he was named "Kundu". I understand that he was sent to another zoo in Ohio. He knew as well as anyone that he couldn't get through that armor-glass but he liked to get a rise out of people. He would get especially pissed-off when a crowd of adult men would stand around staring at him as this is considered very rude if you're a gorilla (or a human). He would pound that glass so hard that it would bow out and ring the structural framework of the building. That glass would stop a rifle round yet one of the keepers told me that they'd had to replace a couple of panes becouse he'd cracked them.

Steven

[Dustin Kesselberg]

christ! An evil empire run by humanzees :jaw-dropp


Guess that says alot about the "humanzee" possibility.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

First off, it doesn't make sense that our muscle cells are really weak compared to other animals. If they were, we should have gone extinct a long time ago. Pretty much all mamals should be operating near the biological limit, at least on the celular level. But there are two biological factors which can easily account for a difference in the "strength" of a human vs. other primates, both of them essentially issues of leverage.

In order to contract, muscle cells use pairs of fibers aligned with each other, which grab ob to each other and slide. If these fiber pairs are long, there will be many connecting points along the fiber, and the force exerted by them will be large. If the fibers are short, the force will be correspondingly smaller, BUT since you can have more pairs along the length of the muscle, and each pair contracts at a fixed rate, the DISTANCE that the entire muscle contracts in a given time will also be correspondingly larger. So there's a tradeoff even on the celular level between strength and speed.

Now, as mentioned above, you can also play this tradeoff game when connecting the muscles to the joints. Here the leverage issue is a little more obvious: if you connect the ligament near the joint you're bending, then the muscle doesn't need to contract very far in order to move that joint through a certain arc. If you attach the ligament farther out, you need to contract the muscle more to achieve the same movement (so the limb moves more slowly), but you again have correspondingly more torque applied to the joint and the limb can exert more pressure.

So, are other primates "stronger" than humans? I don't doubt that they can exert significantly more force with their arms than we can. But you'll never get a chimp to run a marathon either, or throw a 90 mph fastball. In terms of POWER output (basically, strength x speed) per pound, I would guess our muscles are probably pretty similar not only to chimpanzees but to most mammals. The human body is not some weak, pathetic thing: we're just built to do different things than other animals.


Did you read about 140lb chimps being able to deadlift 600lbs with 1 arm?

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Every healthy human I know can lift twice their body weight.

You can climb a flight of stairs? So each leg can lift your own weight. So use both legs together, lift double your weight. The most I've knowingly lifted is 400#, but I had a bad back disc at the time. I don't know how much I had lifted before, engines and things. Maybe monkeys lift more out of stupidity- they just don't know when to quit? Anyhow, I'd like to study how/what they measured the monkeys lifting. Perhaps we only use 10% of our bodies as well as of our brains? ;)


"lift" is a very ambigious word. When we are walking up stairs we're 'lifting' but we aren't trully going through the full range of motion.

Most people can't do a full squat with 1 single leg. But most people can squat down maybe 1 or 2 inches with 1 leg.

Remember Pat Robertson claiming he lifted 2,000lbs on the smith machine? The range of motion was maybe 1 or 2 inches.

The same applies for walking.

[MRC_Hans]

I was under the impression that the extreme feats of strength were due to an extreme fight-or-flight response, mainly a huge surge of adrenaline. This response is very short term and can cause serious muscle damage if it carries on for too long. Whether part of the brain is involved or not, it seems unlikely that the same mechanism can be involved with natural strength of other primates.

Humans seem to be the mutants and all other primates are proportionally much stronger. There is a theory that expanding brain power required cutbacks in other areas due to energy considerations, but I'm not sure how well accepted this theory is.Heheh, or maybe we evolved a brain to compensate for our physical shortcomings?

Other than that, there is the issue of stamina, as others have mentioned. Humans can outrun all other primates, both in speed and distance. This is consistent with the assumption that early hominids evolved when geological changes forced them out of the woods and into open plains. In the plains, it doesn't matter how strong you are, if you cannot outrun that prey (or that predator).

Hans

[Cuddles]

First off, it doesn't make sense that our muscle cells are really weak compared to other animals. If they were, we should have gone extinct a long time ago. Pretty much all mamals should be operating near the biological limit, at least on the celular level. But there are two biological factors which can easily account for a difference in the "strength" of a human vs. other primates, both of them essentially issues of leverage.

Complete nonsense. All animals operate near the lower limit of their potential. Any extra muscle or whatever would be a drain of their limited resources. We seem to have traded muscle strength for brain power. Obviously we haven't gone extinct through lack of strength.

So, are other primates "stronger" than humans? I don't doubt that they can exert significantly more force with their arms than we can. But you'll never get a chimp to run a marathon either, or throw a 90 mph fastball. In terms of POWER output (basically, strength x speed) per pound, I would guess our muscles are probably pretty similar not only to chimpanzees but to most mammals. The human body is not some weak, pathetic thing: we're just built to do different things than other animals.

If you actually read the articles linked you would know that primate are much stronger than humans, and yes they can exert much more foce with their arms than we can. Chimps can't run marathons because they are adapted to swing from trees. No-one is claiming we are weak and pathetic. We are built to do different things, and one of the consquences of this is that we have different muscles.

[Foster Zygote]

Chimps can't run marathons because they are adapted to swing from trees.

But they can out-run humans when running on all fours.

Steven

[dogjones]

Complete nonsense. All animals operate near the lower limit of their potential. Any extra muscle or whatever would be a drain of their limited resources. We seem to have traded muscle strength for brain power. Obviously we haven't gone extinct through lack of strength.



If you actually read the articles linked you would know that primate are much stronger than humans, and yes they can exert much more foce with their arms than we can. Chimps can't run marathons because they are adapted to swing from trees. No-one is claiming we are weak and pathetic. We are built to do different things, and one of the consquences of this is that we have different muscles.

I don't mean to pry, mate - but relax! No need to go ape.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Complete nonsense. All animals operate near the lower limit of their potential. Any extra muscle or whatever would be a drain of their limited resources. We seem to have traded muscle strength for brain power. Obviously we haven't gone extinct through lack of strength.



If you actually read the articles linked you would know that primate are much stronger than humans, and yes they can exert much more foce with their arms than we can. Chimps can't run marathons because they are adapted to swing from trees. No-one is claiming we are weak and pathetic. We are built to do different things, and one of the consquences of this is that we have different muscles.




I highly doubt 600lb Gorillas are using the "lower limit of their potential" when it comes to strength. Any more muscle mass and they wouldn't be able to move.


Or that Cheetahs are using the "lower limits of their potential" when it comes to speed.

[Soapy Sam]

It's horses for courses. Chimps are forest animals, humans are grassland animals. They climb and swing, we walk. Humans can - and do- walk up mountains and across continents. Some of them can drag a 300lb sledge across Antarctica when over 50 years old.
On the savannah, there is no real requirement for the ability to deadlift 600lbs. What is there to carry? A 600lb corpse will rot before you carry it far and you'll have every hyena in Africa with you all the way.
On the other hand, if you can chop it up and give everyone in the troop a chunk...
Humans cooperate

[andyandy]

who would win out of a gorilla, chimp and orang?

Say, in a cage match.....

my money's on the gorilla.....:)

[Soapy Sam]

It's horses for courses.
Chimps are forest animals, humans are grassland animals. They climb and swing, we walk. Humans can - and do- walk up mountains and across continents. Some of them can drag a 300lb sledge across Antarctica when over 50 years old.
On the savannah, there is no real requirement for the ability to deadlift 600lbs. What is there to carry? A 600lb corpse will rot before you carry it far and you'll have every hyena in Africa with you all the way.
On the other hand, if you can tear it up and give everyone in the troop a chunk to carry...
Humans cooperate. Presumably that goes back a long way. That must have greatly changed the direction in which evolution pushed our ancestors.

[hgc]

who would win out of a gorilla, chimp and orang?

Say, in a cage match.....

my money's on the gorilla.....:)Totally. Put a gorilla up against Chuck Norris though...

[Ziggurat]

Complete nonsense. All animals operate near the lower limit of their potential.

That's not what I mean. I mean that each muscle cell in a fit adult is about as strong as that cell can possibly be.

If you actually read the articles linked you would know that primate are much stronger than humans, and yes they can exert much more foce with their arms than we can.

Which doesn't discount anything I said.

Chimps can't run marathons because they are adapted to swing from trees. No-one is claiming we are weak and pathetic. We are built to do different things, and one of the consquences of this is that we have different muscles.

Well, if you read what I wrote, you'll note that I specifically pointed out one aspect of how even individual muscle cells can be differently optimized while still having the same power output. Power and force are not the same thing. The comparison of "strength" is usually done in terms of force, not power.

[Ziggurat]

Did you read about 140lb chimps being able to deadlift 600lbs with 1 arm?

Did you read my post?

I can lift a lot more than 600 lbs. I can lift half my car, which is about 4,000 lbs. I just need a little leverage to do so, and it's easy. Leverage can also come from skeletal structure, and we don't have identical skeletal structure to chimps. That a chimp can deadlift 600 lbs and I cannot does not necessarily mean anything other than that they are essentially leveraged differently than we are.

[ponderingturtle]

But they can out-run humans when running on all fours.

Steven

So can a great many kinds of animals, but humans a great at distance running. This is because humans do not have their gate tied to their breathing and such that quadrapeds do, we can breath and run independantly so we don't have the certain fixed speeds that quadrapeds have. This means that humans can run down much faster animals becuase they have to use alot of energy to move really fast and then slow down while humans can move at a steady intermediate speed

[Foster Zygote]

Totally. Put a gorilla up against Chuck Norris though...

That would be similar to Chuck Norris vs. a large, speeding truck. =0)

Steven

[Ziggurat]

That would be similar to Chuck Norris vs. a large, speeding truck. =0)

Steven

In other words, an easy victory for the Chuck-man.

Q) Why doesn't Chuck Norris have hair on his testicles?
A) Because hair doesn't grow on steel.

[Cuddles]

I highly doubt 600lb Gorillas are using the "lower limit of their potential" when it comes to strength. Any more muscle mass and they wouldn't be able to move.


Or that Cheetahs are using the "lower limits of their potential" when it comes to speed.

Fair point. I meant requirements rather than potential. If a cheetah ran faster it would still catch the same prey, but if it ran slower it wouldn't catch anything (without changing tactics at least). However, in order to run faster it would need more energy and so operates as close to the lower limit as possible. The same goes for gorillas. I see no reason to think they wouldn't move with more muscle, but it would not benefit them, whereas having less muscle would be detrimental. Humans don't live the same way as gorillas so the lower limit for muscle strength is a lot lower. Hopefully that's a little clearer.

But they can out-run humans when running on all fours.

Steven

In that case I'm going to have to cancel my gorilla-taunting trip. :p

[Ziggurat]

In that case I'm going to have to cancel my gorilla-taunting trip. :p

Do they have tour packages for that? :D

[casebro]

Apparently, the difference in strngth is due to leverage. But I did try googling and couldn't find any explanation of how they measure the chimps strength except that they used a dynomometer mounted to the wall of the chimp's enclosure. I suspect the when a chimp goes ape-s**T he could really jerk on the handle, using his momentum to momentarily raise the needle on the dyno. I wonder how the ape setup compared to the human metrology? Apples and oranges? Human actual dead weight, ape on a dynomometer? Most of the dyno's I've seen are like a hanging scale, like in the grocery store, with a 'follower needle' that gets pushed by the normal needle, then stays at the maximum reding until you re-set it. So it would measure impact and momentum more than actual power.

The "8 times the power of humans" seems to have taken on urban mythical proprtions. Can anybody else find the actual study (with methodology)that is so often quoted?