Yeah, I know- what's this got to do with sci-fi?...but I need teh smart people here to weigh in on this!

It's always told that they are capable of incredible strength. The Jane Goodall special I just watched on Animal Planet cited that it is possible for one to pull 1000 lbs with one arm! That's friggen amazing!

The thing is, they never look all that imposing on tv. Even when visually in the same frame with humans, their stature isn't exactly impressive. So where does this muscle strength come from? Are they actually cyborgs underneath?
Are humans just inherently weak in the larger scope of the universe (referencing various sci-fi mythologies where it always seems other alien humanoids are incredibly stronger than humans "just because")?

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well, they do get a lot of exercises, swinging about all day.

Why are human legs so strong? Well, we walk around upright all day using our legs, and they are much stronger than a chimpanzees, not to mention longer and straighter. Chimpanzees knuckle walk so their arms get as much exercise as our legs and they also use their arms for climbing, digging, gathering, making nests, etc. And big male chimpanzees have pretty impressive shoulders. Find a human with big shoulders who works out with their arms as much as a chimpanzee does and see how strong they are.

The pulling 1,000 pounds with one arm doesn't tell you a great deal. I can pull 1,000 pounds if the friction is unusally low, but the stength will come mostly from my back and legs. My arm muscles will just be working to stop my arm coming off.

I've wondered about that whole "a chimp is ten times stronger than a man" thing, too. It sounds like a bunch of Madison Avenue hyperbole to me. I mean, what does it really mean?

There are many ways to look at such a statement. Let's say that the average man weighs 150lbs and can lift his own weight. Does that mean that the average chimp can lift 1500lbs? I seriously doubt it. Ok, so maybe it means that a chimp can lift ten times his own weight. So what does a chimp weigh? Fourty or fifty pounds? Can a fourty pound chimp pick up four-hundred pounds (about the size of a pony)? Again, I doubt it. Pound-for-pound, a chimp may be much stronger than a human, but without some qualification of the statement, any comparison is meaningless.

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I see your points, but I would still feel not particularly comfortable if I had to fight off an aggressive large male chimp. I could be wrong, but I think it would easily pull me limb from limb, literally.

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News @ nature.com: Chimps - How human are they?

Straight Dope: Can a 90-lb. chimp clobber a full-grown man? (Anecdotes, not heavy on science)

As to size: Wikipedia: Chimpanzee

That could be because the chimps you usually see hanging around humans are usually pre-adolescents. After a certain age, and size, they become a bit hard to manage.

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Huh? Their muscles work five to seven times more efficently? What are they getting at here? Of course chimp and human jaw muscles are different, a chimp spends much of the day chewing on tough, low energy, fibrous vegetation where as humans eat soft, cooked, energy rich, food. It's apples to oranges as far as jaws are concerned, but in general our muscles still use about the same amount of energy to do work as chimpanzees. Chimp muscles are not five to seven times more efficient.

I don't buy the chimp thing. Sounds like an exaggeration for dramatic effect. I would believe that a gorilla would be that much stronger than a human, but chimps are smaller than humans and I have a hard time buying it.

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Excellent point, and I had suspected this could be the case. I would definitely like to see a picture just once of a full grown male chimp and a man at same scale/perspective. I never knew they get as big as 160 lbs. I guess the chimp would look like a hunched over, little pro-wrestler guy in my hypothetical picture.

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There's a picture of skeletons of an human and adult chimpanzee, alongside this story: Terradaily: Most Human Chimp Differences Due To Gene Regulation Not Genes

From heads, down, head and neck are about the same length, ribcage about the same length, bottom of the pelvises are about the same, but we beat 'em in the leg department -- and they beat us in arm and hand length.

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Wow! Not that is an astonishing comparo!

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That whole genes and protein fiber talk in your reply has me thinking if there may be a time (or maybe has been already) where start finagling with these genetics to come up with a human/chimp hybrid. If they could restore that "super-muscle" back into a human, would he become "superhuman" in strength?...almost like a superman? If their became a sub-race of these superhumans, would it eventually come about that they threaten to take over the world from us mere "normal" humans? Is this essentially the tie-in to rounding them up and sending them to Seti-Alpha-5, because they are too dangerous to live in our society?

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Looking for a better image -- no luck -- I just saw someone else's photo of that same museum exhibit. It's not clear to me that it's a chimp skeleton. The labeling in the background makes me think they may be comparing family Hominidae with family Pongidae, and there's a section of text about subfamily Ponginae, so it's possible that's an orangutan skeleton -- then again, maybe they did use a chimpanzee as representative of Pongidae. Telling their skeletons apart is beyond me. Oh, one picture shows a bit of what looks to be a stuffed animal near that Ponginae text and it's a black hairy arm, not red, so maybe they are showing specimens of chimp.

Is there a doctor of veterinary in the house?

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Sorry but chimp muscle and human muscle is the same thing. We just have it in our legs and behinds and they have it in their arms and shoulders. And they get a lot of exercise.

I would say it's a chimp skeleton. Orangutans have larger jaws and canine teeth and a more robust skull than chimps, but it is hard to tell from the picture and there is considerable individual variation, just as with humans. Probably more so actually as humans are pretty uniform.

I see the difference at skullsunlimited.com and I think the museum display looks a lot more like a chimp than an orangutan.

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Wow, skullsunlimited.com. No more midnight trips to the graveyard for me!

People who design zoos know that they have to take extra care with whatever they house great apes in: a chimpanzee or a gorilla can undo with their hands a bolt that a human has tightened with a wrench.

And thread moved from "Small Media" to "General Science."

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I´ve seen a human pulling a 747 with the teeth...

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Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

To those who are skeptical that chimpanzees are much stronger than we are, I dare you to go in the ring with one. Even a relative 90lb weakling female. She will kick your hind end and mop up the floor with you. It's no contest. In fact, she could kill you with her bare hands in a second if she wanted to.

She would make short work of a Mike Tyson or whoever is the current champion. In a bar-room brawl, you'd see her literally throwing people, including the toughest bouncers out of the windows, just like in the movies.

Chimps vs humans is absolutely no contest, as any zoo officials will confirm.

-Richard