Human Muscles vs Other Mammals

[Kitsune]

I have read and been told that humans are not as strong per mass as Chimpanzees.
Is this go across the board when we are compared to other Mammals?
Also, is there any reason behind this?

[Formless]

Also, is there any reason behind this?

I believe the reason is evolution: humans evolved with tools, and we have the ability to do things with less muscle due to our ability to take advantage of leverage. Therefor, our muscles adapted to have less density because they would need less energy that way. Also, it keeps us from hurting ourselves doing some of the high dexterity work that tools let you do.

At least, I'm pretty sure that's the reason. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Gullible Jones]

IIRC it has more to do with the positioning of tendons - chimps having much, much more leverage than we do, so they can exert crazy amounts of force but can't throw worth a damn. Could be wrong though.

[loomer]

It's also likely that pre-modern humans had a far closer ratio of strength. Since we've been able to largely ignore natural selection for the last couple of centuries, it is not unlikely that not only has the increased reliance on technology allowed most of us to stay out of prime condition, but that individuals genetically predisposed to inferior musculature have bred (that's the excuse I use!).

A medieval farmer with relatively good nutrition, albeit a very rare fellow, would probably have been far closer in terms of strength to a chimpanzee than a modern man. If you go back even further into prehistory, it is not unreasonable to assume that a hunter in his prime age without health conditions or poor nutrition (let's say they have a shit ton of mammoths and wild cabbages roaming around) could equal or potentially surpass the strength of most professional athletes today.

Great guy in bed if you like immense strength, but the pillow talk afterwards would really suck.

[Bilbo]

Stronger more powerful muscles are going to take more energy to run. Considering how much energy our big brain takes if we also had high energy requirement muscles it might make acquiring food to much of a problem.

Just a quick idea based on the fact that our brain at 2% of our body mass requires 20% of the total energy we take in.

[B5B7]

It's also likely that pre-modern humans had a far closer ratio of strength. Since we've been able to largely ignore natural selection for the last couple of centuries, it is not unlikely that not only has the increased reliance on technology allowed most of us to stay out of prime condition, but that individuals genetically predisposed to inferior musculature have bred (that's the excuse I use!).

A medieval farmer with relatively good nutrition, albeit a very rare fellow, would probably have been far closer in terms of strength to a chimpanzee than a modern man. If you go back even further into prehistory, it is not unreasonable to assume that a hunter in his prime age without health conditions or poor nutrition (let's say they have a shit ton of mammoths and wild cabbages roaming around) could equal or potentially surpass the strength of most professional athletes today.

Great guy in bed if you like immense strength, but the pillow talk afterwards would really suck.

Rubbish. Human evolutionary changes rarely operate on such small time scales, and they certainly haven't as regards muscular strength. Humans have always been and continue to be subject to natural selection - it is not what you think it is.
People today in general are as strong as they have ever been. Of course, someone who does a lot of muscle training will be stronger - but that is an environmental effect, not evolutionary. Some people are genetically born with greater potential strength, but that strength exists prior to any additional bodybuilding.

Your medieval farmer does not have chimpanzee strength. Blacksmiths would have been among the strongest, but that is because the job itself selects men with great strength. Being a blacksmith or knight one would also get a lot of strength training.
The best athletes of today have all the advantages of superior nutrition and training, selection from a huge population pool, and the same genetic inheritance as the hunter you mention.
BTW, cabbages don't roam - not even wild ones. Also, would need some better nutrition than just mammoths and cabbages, but I guess you know that.

[cosmicalstorm]

Chimps also spend a significant % of their life in an endless state of gymnastic excersizes.

[Steel]

Humans are built to have much greater endurance than basically all other animals. There are different types of muscle fibres which are better suited to strength and others to endurance, and so depending on your levels of each type a person will be differently abled in different activities. Animals tend to be more slanted towards high strength at the expense of endurance.

[Dooey Jo]

I have read and been told that humans are not as strong per mass as Chimpanzees.
Is this go across the board when we are compared to other Mammals?
Also, is there any reason behind this?

It's partly because chimpanzees are basically all muscles (a handy thing if you like to swing around in trees), while humans have a fuckton of fat mixed in there. And that's not just fat people; all healthy humans are really fatty compared to most other mammals (and basically all land mammals). Humans have very good endurance, though. Probably better than chimps in most respects, and definitely much better in walking and long-distance running.

[Broomstick]

Obviously, our evolution did not favor strong muscles. As has been pointed out, the human brain consumes a great deal of our total energy intake/production - if we also maintained chimp-level muscle strength our caloric requirements would be even higher than they are now which would be a bad thing when food was in short supply, as frequently happened before the modern era and still happens now in some parts of the world. Total speculation here, but it may be that humans evolved greater levels of fat storage than most land mammals in order to better survive periodic famine (there is also the fact that without fur to keep us warm we use body fat for insulation, which is also a factor. Anorexics and famine victims are both chronically cold and prone to hypothermia.) We are also geared more towards endurance than burst strength, also presumably due to evolutionary pressures in prehistory.

Certainly, today's average human could be stronger but that's a development of potential that's already there, not an evolutionary leap. Even the strongest humans can not match the typical, average strength of a chimp of the same gender. On the other hand, chimps do not have nearly the manual dexterity of a human being - the ligaments and muscles required to stabilize joints for physical strength are at odds with the characteristics required for dexterity and flexibility. Consider that, within our own species, women tend to be more flexible/dexterous (but are also more likely to suffer joint injuries during exercise and sports) and men tend to have more brute strength.

Humans are not as strong as chimps because we don't rely as much on muscles to solve our problems. Human evolution favored brains and social systems to solve problems, enabling us to settle lands from the equator to the arctic regions, to cross oceans and mountains, and basically take over the planet. Clearly, we didn't need raw muscle power to be successful as a species, our species experience evolutionary pressures that favored other characteristics.

[Count Chocula]

Humans have less muscle per body mass than other mammals. According to the American Council on Exercise, an 18% - 25% body fat percentage is typical for males. An adult chimpanzee, by contrast, has around 3% body fat. Other mammals also have more energy to burn - literally - on their muscles. A human's brain consumes around 1/4 of the body's energy needs; all our skeletal muscles combined consume 25%-30%, meaning that humans expend equal amounts of energy on thinking as we do using our muscles. Primates and other mammals have much much lower energy requirements for brain function.

We are also built differently than (for example) other primates. Chimpanzees and gorillas have shorter legs and longer arms than humans, and as Broomstick mentioned different ligament and tendon connections. They also have more fast-twitch muscle than humans, especially in the legs. If you take the combination of better leverage (shorter legs and thicker tendons), more muscle mass per weight, and more fast-twitch muscle, humans lose against other mammals of equal weight.

Note that biologically our muscles are not inferior to those of other mammals, we just use them differently.

[Singular Intellect]

Humans, by far, have gotten the better deal from evolutionary selection.

Sure, your average chimp would beat the crap out of your average human in a straight up fight, but that isn't how the overall 'war' went, is it? From your typical animal's perspective, humans are practically gods with mastery over reality well beyond their comprehension.

[Academia Nut]

A human with proper training is like the Terminator of the animal kingdom: nothing can stop it. Unlike pretty much every other physical performance trait, endurance is one of those areas where we actually come out very close to the top of the pile. Combined with our brains ability to process lots of information making us excellent trackers, it is quite possible for a human being to run a gazelle to exhaustion on a hot day. The fact that our brains also give us the willpower to overcome limitations that animals would flinch away from, a human being is pretty much a tireless killing machine that cannot be deterred from its mission to an animal's perspective.

And that's not even including our ability to pull out things that must have seemed absolutely alien to animals like projectile weapons or even just weapons in general. In animal terms, humans are much insanely tough in that even if you smash up their 'tusks' (spears) they not be crippled like a normal predator. So let's see here: tireless, capable of holding a grudge seemingly forever, and damage that would kill other species is merely an inconvenience. Yup, that sounds like the Terminator to me.

[Junghalli]

A human with proper training is like the Terminator of the animal kingdom: nothing can stop it. Unlike pretty much every other physical performance trait, endurance is one of those areas where we actually come out very close to the top of the pile.

It has occurred to me that to aliens we might seem sort of like the Gorn in TOS The Arena, minus the enormous strength. Not very fast or strong, but we just keep going and going.

*Puff* *Gasp* Shit man, I've been running for a whole five minutes and he's still after me! This is ridiculous!

A less pleasant thought is that this would probably be a good quality in a slave (not strong or fast enough to be a big threat to the guards, but can work forever). Of course, realistically I doubt any spacefaring aliens are going to need slaves to bust rock, and in the case of primitive ones, well, let's just say I don't see the issue coming up.

[Academia Nut]

I can only imagine the feeling the deer and gazelles had when humans and wolves started teaming up.

"Fuck! I thought just dealing with one of these groups of bastards was hard enough, and now they're together! Fuck!"

Although possibly what aliens might find stranger than that is our taste in consummables. If it doesn't kill us right away, someone out there is going to make a habit of eating, snorting, injecting or smoking something. I can only imagine interacting with aliens with blander tastes and them looking at some of the seasonings and spices and asking, "Isn't that stuff toxic to your biology?"

[Singular Intellect]

One can easily imagine that humans are moving towards incorperating, or outright replacing, our biological makeup with artificial designs. Thus the whole 'muscle versus muscle' becomes a moot comparison, since our new found 'standard' muscles could be artificial components like hydraulics and/or electroactive polymers that would increase our normal strength by a factor of a hundred or more.

Never minding the mental enhancements of integrating computers with our minds.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I can only imagine the feeling the deer and gazelles had when humans and wolves started teaming up.

"Fuck! I thought just dealing with one of these groups of bastards was hard enough, and now they're together! Fuck!"

Although possibly what aliens might find stranger than that is our taste in consummables. If it doesn't kill us right away, someone out there is going to make a habit of eating, snorting, injecting or smoking something. I can only imagine interacting with aliens with blander tastes and them looking at some of the seasonings and spices and asking, "Isn't that stuff toxic to your biology?"

A lot of that is actually adaptive. Spices contain chemicals that kill bacteria. That is why we like them.

As for strength... think about what a chimp does for a living. They make tools, climb trees, and hunt monkeys. Chasing a rhesus monkey requires throwing yourself from tree to tree with your forearms. Humans dont have to do this. We need to throw stuff with precision, track, and chase our prey overland for long distances.

Mechanical strength we dont need as much of, at least not along the same axes of motion that a chimp does.

[Broomstick]

One can easily imagine that humans are moving towards incorperating, or outright replacing, our biological makeup with artificial designs. Thus the whole 'muscle versus muscle' becomes a moot comparison, since our new found 'standard' muscles could be artificial components like hydraulics and/or electroactive polymers that would increase our normal strength by a factor of a hundred or more.

Ah, yes, the wannabe transhuman speaks...

WHY would we want to replace functional muscle? And why with something "one hundred times stronger" when we don't need such strength? That makes no fucking sense at all.

Never minding the mental enhancements of integrating computers with our minds.

That is probably more likely to happen.

[Molyneux]

One can easily imagine that humans are moving towards incorperating, or outright replacing, our biological makeup with artificial designs. Thus the whole 'muscle versus muscle' becomes a moot comparison, since our new found 'standard' muscles could be artificial components like hydraulics and/or electroactive polymers that would increase our normal strength by a factor of a hundred or more.

Ah, yes, the wannabe transhuman speaks...

WHY would we want to replace functional muscle? And why with something "one hundred times stronger" when we don't need such strength? That makes no fucking sense at all.

Never minding the mental enhancements of integrating computers with our minds.

That is probably more likely to happen.

I believe the answer is "the coolness factor".
I can't see that happening quickly myself, but eventually...maybe.

[Singular Intellect]

Ah, yes, the wannabe transhuman speaks...

Actually, I quite agree with you that this is an ideal goal of mine. Whether it could ever be realized in my lifetime however is another story. At the moment I rather doubt it.

WHY would we want to replace functional muscle?

Because 'functional' does not equate 'superior' or 'efficient', nor do I have the same attachment to frail human existence most other people seem to (which I gather you do?).

Personally, if I could safely discard my organic body for a superior artificial one surpassing all or even most the capabilities of my organic one, I'd do so without a second thought.

And why with something "one hundred times stronger" when we don't need such strength? That makes no fucking sense at all.

Define 'need'. I doubt you 'need' to post on this board, yet you go out of your way to do so. I could compile an enormous list of things people do not 'need' but still desire and acquire nonetheless. Furthermore, enhanced personal strength, endurance and durability would certainly come in very useful in many situations, which presumeably I don't have to list for you.

Never minding the mental enhancements of integrating computers with our minds.

That is probably more likely to happen.

I suppose technically speaking it already has, just not as directly as I was implying.

[Modax]

Humans have less muscle per body mass than other mammals. According to the American Council on Exercise, an 18% - 25% body fat percentage is typical for males. An adult chimpanzee, by contrast, has around 3% body fat. Other mammals also have more energy to burn - literally - on their muscles. A human's brain consumes around 1/4 of the body's energy needs; all our skeletal muscles combined consume 25%-30%, meaning that humans expend equal amounts of energy on thinking as we do using our muscles. Primates and other mammals have much much lower energy requirements for brain function.

Certainly, today's average human could be stronger but that's a development of potential that's already there, not an evolutionary leap. Even the strongest humans can not match the typical, average strength of a chimp of the same gender. On the other hand, chimps do not have nearly the manual dexterity of a human being - the ligaments and muscles required to stabilize joints for physical strength are at odds with the characteristics required for dexterity and flexibility. Consider that, within our own species, women tend to be more flexible/dexterous (but are also more likely to suffer joint injuries during exercise and sports) and men tend to have more brute strength.

I wonder what the ratio of muscle / brain energy consumption is for a modern bodybuilder. Are bodybuilders known to have difficulties with manual dexterity tasks?

A human with proper training is like the Terminator of the animal kingdom: nothing can stop it. Unlike pretty much every other physical performance trait, endurance is one of those areas where we actually come out very close to the top of the pile.

How do humans compare with horses? I remember hearing about how some horses can cover over 100 km in a day. If any marathon runners can do that, its probably at a significantly lower average speed. There must be a reason for having domesticated horses after all. They must be about the only animal that can outlast humans.

Humans, by far, have gotten the better deal from evolutionary selection. Sure, your average chimp would beat the crap out of your average human in a straight up fight, but that isn't how the overall 'war' went, is it? From your typical animal's perspective, humans are practically gods with mastery over reality well beyond their comprehension.

Awesome. I am tempted to ask you if I can use this as a sig. At the risk of sending this thread off on a tangent, I wonder how a Karate master would fair against a very angry chimp. Sure, the chimp is much stronger, but it has no technique...yeah, the human would still probably lose.

Personally, if I could safely discard my organic body for a superior artificial one surpassing all or even most the capabilities of my organic one, I'd do so without a second thought.

If you want to start some kind of 'Alberta Transhumanist Association', I will be your first member.

[Starglider]

How do humans compare with horses? I remember hearing about how some horses can cover over 100 km in a day. If any marathon runners can do that, its probably at a significantly lower average speed. There must be a reason for having domesticated horses after all. They must be about the only animal that can outlast humans.

Not even close; many migrating birds fly for days, non-stop, at highway speeds. The best example is the Bar-tailed Godwit, which has been tracked flying 11026 km in a single 9 day flight.

Frankly avian biology is just more impressive than mammal biology; almost every organ and even the biochemisty is more efficient than the mammalian equivalent.

[Modax]

Not even close; many migrating birds fly for days, non-stop, at highway speeds. The best example is the Bar-tailed Godwit, which has been tracked flying 11026 km in a single 9 day flight.

How the heck do they do that? Are they plutonium-powered? If so, do they also have laser turrets on their backs like your avatar?

no, but seriously, that's amazing. Humans can't LIVE more than a couple days without water, nevermind RUN. They must have some highly efficient way of cooling themselves, because a marathon runner would sweat out his entire body's water supply in half a day, IF he could run non-stop and couldn't depend on Gatorade to rehydrate.

[Starglider]

no, but seriously, that's amazing. Humans can't LIVE more than a couple days without water, nevermind RUN. They must have some highly efficient way of cooling themselves, because a marathon runner would sweat out his entire body's water supply in half a day, IF he could run non-stop and couldn't depend on Gatorade to rehydrate.

Migrating birds fly quite high and breathe very rapidly - also their respiratory system includes a network of air sacs and a continuous flow system (as opposed to the inefficient in-out system in mammals) that helps with heat rejection as well as oxygen extraction. They get all the water they need from metabolic water; birds have much more efficient kidneys than mammals, so they waste a lot less in urine.

Are they plutonium-powered?

Migrating birds can store up to 50% of their bodyweight as fat before taking off, then burn off almost all of it in one flight. As noted above humans are pretty good at storing and then burning off fat compared to most animals, but birds can do it much faster. A human burning fat at that rate, with that regularity, would literally die of metabolic stress. Avian cells have superior antioxidant systems that can handle the strain.

If so, do they also have laser turrets on their backs like your avatar?

My legions of genetically engineered hawk-men will indeed be supported by squadrons of giant death chick... damn, you almost got me monologuing

[Modax]

Migrating birds fly quite high and breathe very rapidly - also their respiratory system includes a network of air sacs and a continuous flow system (as opposed to the inefficient in-out system in mammals) that helps with heat rejection as well as oxygen extraction. They get all the water they need from metabolic water; birds have much more efficient kidneys than mammals, so they waste a lot less in urine.

Wow. How does this continuous flow system work? Does it work at rest at sea level, or only when the bird is in flight? How do you get a high enough flow rate without any "in-out" pumping?

Migrating birds can store up to 50% of their bodyweight as fat before taking off, then burn off almost all of it in one flight. As noted above humans are pretty good at storing and then burning off fat compared to most animals, but birds can do it much faster. A human burning fat at that rate, with that regularity, would literally die of metabolic stress. Avian cells have superior antioxidant systems that can handle the strain.

That would look pretty weird in humans, wouldn't it? I can see these fat guys lining up for a 2000 km marathon, and crossing the finish line as skinny guys in really loose clothing.