Chimps, Gorillas, Baboons and Gibbons

[Being_the_Don]

Why is it that other primates are stronger than humans? Even the best Olympic weight lifter wouldn't be in the same class as gorillas, chimps, etc. They spend most of their waking hours foraging, swinging from trees or chasing each other yet they are stronger than humans. Does anyone have a theory as to why there are such noticeable differences between human and animal strength classes? Oh, and most of them are obligatory vegetarians, too.

 

[eko]

brawn vs brains. we use our brains to make our lives easier so we don't have to swing from tree to tree. but yes primates and even 'cavemen' have/had higher muscle densities

 

[Drum&Bass]

They spend their whole lives doing pull ups, we do them once a week.

 

[Being_the_Don]

They spend their whole lives doing pull ups, we do them once a week.

Yeah, but it would seem that pullups alone wouldn't be enough. Genetics surely plays a role in all of it, lower primates add muscle mass faster than humans. Still, it makes me wonder why they are stronger when they don't perform the various exercises most humans do.

 

[Master Bates]

It's just the way they're built. Ants can carry objects 20x their weight (or something along those lines); we sure as hell can't. You ever see an ant doing squats or deadlifts?

 

[int3l]

Master Bates is right. i mean we don't have 6 legs and crap to go around supporting the weight.

 

[BluEyes]

They are stronger because they need to be. If they came out of the trees, they would lose muscle mass in evolution too. Nature is a very lazy, conservative, and efficient thing. Use it or lose it.

 

[mintxx]

as blueyes says, genetic code builds cells in a certain way. nature will only allocate as many resources (in growth, energy, metabolism etc) to an area (strength, speed, brainpower, flexibility etc) as is strictly necessary for the survival and proliferation of an organism. so, we are limited and defined by our genes. it's not that apes train more, it's that their cells are designed to take more load in certain areas at the expense of others (i.e. a baby chimp will learn to climb immediately but will stop mental development at the level of a 3 year old human, while a human baby will not be able to walk let alone climb for 3 years but will then master the most complex communication tool in known existence - human speech).

 

[Being_the_Don]

Master Bates is right. i mean we don't have 6 legs and crap to go around supporting the weight.

Humans have more in comon with chimps and gorillas than ants. When was the last time you saw a six legged chimp?