![]() Read: Chimps Have Their Own Cultural Traditions Too This new research shows the muscles themselves are 35 percent stronger, and when you take the entire body as a whole, the chimp strength jumps up to 50 percent more powerful than humans. Still, they are indeed stronger than the people poking at them. Often they concluded chimps were absurdly strong. Umberger describes these old experiments as typically involving a chimp and a human taking turns at pulling on a rope or a lever attached to some gauge to see who exerted more force. There are historical anecdotes describing great power, and at least as early as the Roaring ‘20s, scientists have been testing it out. The idea that chimpanzees are amazingly strong may have originated in the 1920s, the study noted, and persisted despite research showing only slight advantages over humans. “Humans are rather unusual,” Umberger said. Chimps and humans diverged several million years ago. It suggests humans are the ones who during their evolution moved away from the muscle traits that were present in the last common ancestor we shared with chimpanzees and other modern primates. The researchers also reviewed scientific information about the muscle makeup of other animals, including other primates, and found that although there was some variation, the chimpanzees fit in with that group - other mammals predominantly have the fast-twitch muscle fibers. Such activities were better performed by muscles with endurance that “operate at a lower cost,” Umberger said, and now more than two-thirds of human muscle fibers are slow-twitch. Throughout their history, human ancestors had to be able to cover long distances, finding food along the way, both as those prehistoric people expanded their range slowly on a more regional level and as they migrated more widely around the world. “Our ancestors long ago gave up that reliance on existing in the trees,” Umberger said. That’s where the researchers’ analysis starts to touch human evolution. Their lifestyle requires them “to rapidly climb up trees, swing around in the branches.” In that respect, they benefit from their strength and from the fast-twitch fibers that give it to them. ![]() “It’s important for chimps because they live primarily in an arboreal environment, in the trees,” he told International Business Times. It’s a value that’s hard to put into real-world terms such as by describing a specific show of strength, like what size weights a chimpanzee could lift at the gym. The results showed on a muscular level, chimps were 1.35 times stronger than humans. Researcher Brian Umberger, an expert in musculoskeletal biomechanics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said to analyze the muscle fibers from the two species, the group hooked them up to a device that measures how much force they can generate. ![]() Read: Can Wild Chimps Live as Long as Humans?Ĭhimp muscle fibers are also longer, but there are otherwise no real differences in muscle makeup between the species on a cellular level - it’s how everything comes together that counts. One way to think about them is to compare sprinting and long-distance running: Sprinters go faster for shorter periods of time while distance runners move more slowly but can last longer. The former are quick and powerful but run out of gas quickly while the latter are built for endurance. A study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains chimpanzees have more of the muscle fibers known as fast-twitch while humans have more slow-twitch fibers. That has something to do with the types of muscle fibers. ![]() Scientists have analyzed the muscle makeup and strength of chimps and compared that to humans, finding that chimp muscles are about 35 percent stronger than ours, pound for pound. But the small difference there is, which researchers have now measured, is related to how humans evolved and what makes our species special. Why are chimpanzees so much stronger than us? Despite what historical accounts of their strength would have you believe, they aren’t actually that much more powerful than humans. Footage from the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo showed a chimp riding a kid's bike with a disinfectant tank strapped to the back. ![]()
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