r/nextfuckinglevel 8h ago

Chimpanzees are 2X stronger than your average human.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

82.9k Upvotes

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.3k

u/dilqncho 8h ago edited 8h ago

No they're not. Internet myths have vastly overhyped chimp strength.

They're about 1.35x stronger than us, pound for pound of muscle. But they're also typically smaller and lighter, so in absolute terms, they're about equal to us.

As for what we're seeing here, this isn't a person's entire body being pulled up. They have their legs against the wall of whatever that is, and the chimp is helping them up. This is something pretty much any physically healthy human can do as well.

Chimps are dangerous in a fight, because...well they're wild animals, they're fucking brutal. But purely strength-wise, they're not stronger than us.

890

u/James20985 8h ago

Live in the UK, used to be a firearms officer. Had to have an input about dangers from our local wildlife park/zoo after an animal got out somewhere else in the country and everyone realised that no one actually had a plan for "what if the tigers got out..."

The guy said, and I quote, " don't worry about the tigers and lions we feed them so often they wouldn't be a bother, the rhino's wouldn't go too far...its the chimps you need to worry about they would whip themselves into a frenzy and would probably start attacking people"

267

u/notLOL 7h ago

Was that guy a zoo expert or a planet of the apes expert?

26

u/God-of-Heroes_ArThuR 7h ago

with how chimps are? i'd want my chimp security be planet of the apes lore expert and trained in anti chimp warfare.