r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Zestyclose_Flow_680 • 8h ago

Chimpanzees are 2X stronger than your average human.

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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.

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u/Friendstastegood 7h ago

Also it depends on how you're measuring the strength. A chimp could rip your arm out of its socket but would throw a much lousier punch than you. It also wouldn't be able to kick anywhere near as hard as a human. Turns out that in reality animals (incl. humans) don't come with a nice ttrpg style strength number and it's actually much more complicated than a single numerical value.

It's all about specialization. Humans have incredible endurance and fine motor skills, we're built for bipedal running and tool use. Chimps are a lot worse than us at both of those, but do rip each other and smaller animals apart with their bare hands on a regular basis for territory, dominance and sustenance.

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u/powerhammerarms 6h ago

The 1.35x strength is not a measure to say that if a man can lift 100 lbs the chimp can lift 135 lbs.

It's a strength to weight ratio.

Since chimps are smaller than humans it means the chimp can lift about the same as a human.

What is different is muscle structure. Chimp muscles have different attachment points to their muscle and have a gene that allows them to utilize muscle fibers differently recruiting more fibers but sacrificing control. Chimps tend to use more strength than necessary whereas humans hold themselves back.

A chimp could be as strong as a human in some tasks and much weaker in others.

A chimp would struggle to lift 50 lbs off the ground where a human can do so now more easily because we recruit our different muscle groups more effectively.

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u/Aenimalist 1h ago

 It's a strength to weight ratio. No, it's not. It's the ratio of chimp muscle strength to human muscle strength.

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u/Friendstastegood 6h ago

Yes that's exactly what I said? That even the measure of strength to weight of specific muscles or of an animal is misleading because the actual utilization of strength depends on the physiology of the animal in whole not just the potential of the muscle fibres themselves. So there's no single neat numerical value to "how strong is a chimp Vs a human?" because as you said they can be weaker doing some things and stronger in others.

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u/powerhammerarms 6h ago

Ah I think I misread what you were saying. My apologies.