How many times stronger is a chimp than a man

Journal Reference : Matthew C. Umberger, Nicholas B. Holowka, Susan G. Larson, Peter J. Chimpanzee super strength and human skeletal muscle evolution.

ScienceDaily, 26 June University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Chimpanzee 'super strength' and what it might mean in human muscle evolution: Researchers conduct first direct chimp muscle measurements.

Retrieved November 12, from www. Blocking this protein increased muscle strength and endurance in old animals. It may play a role in Humans are genetically similar to chimpanzees and bonobos, yet there exist obvious behavioral and cognitive The interdisciplinary team of scientists was able to document the ultrafast dynamics of the Although the researchers saw evidence of a new malaria species in ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.

But the difference in chimp-human muscle performance is more modest than sometimes depicted in popular culture. In the s, anecdotal evidence along with investigations by the biologist John Bauman, helped feed a perception that chimps were between four and eight times stronger than an adult human. But subsequent studies failed to replicate these figures, as later researchers found that chimps did not greatly outperform adult males when given physical tasks.

According to ideas put forward in previous work, the difference might be accounted for if chimpanzee muscles were able to generate more force per area, or, alternatively, if chimp muscle was able to shorten faster than human muscle - helping increase its power output.

Dr O'Neill and his colleagues set out to test these ideas and others, by directly measuring the properties of muscle fibres taken from chimps that had been frozen after death. Along with cardiac muscle and smooth muscle, skeletal muscle is one of the three main muscle types, and is mostly found attached to bones via the bundles of collagen known as tendons.

However, they did find key differences in the length of the fibres - chimp muscle fibres tend to be longer than corresponding ones in humans - and in the distribution of different muscle fibre types. Chimps possess about twice the amount of "fast-twitch" muscle fibre. This type of fibre contracts quickly and is useful for rapid movements such as sprinting. But fast-twitch fibres have a downside: they quickly tire.

By contrast, corresponding human muscles are dominated by "slow-twitch" muscle fibres, which contract more slowly, but keep going for longer. Looks like I really am a softy, after all. Chimpanzees do have stronger muscles than us — but they are not nearly as powerful as many people think. This result matches well with the few tests that have been done, which suggest that when it comes to pulling and jumping, chimps are about 1.

His findings suggest that other apes have similar muscle strength to chimpanzees. To create an accurate computer model of how chimps walk, the researchers needed to find out whether their muscles really are exceptionally strong.

So they removed small samples of leg muscle from three chimps under general anaesthetic and measured the strength of individual fibres.