Any thoughts on why? There must be some kind of Darwinistic reason:
Excerpted from nature.com…
"Animal strength
Chimpanzees are different from humans in several obvious ways, one of which is their sheer physical strength. But why are they so much stronger than us?
The answer isn’t just sheer muscle bulk. It’s also to do with that fact that their muscles work around five to seven times more efficiently than ours. Studies of human and other primates’ jaw muscles show that our muscle fibres are far smaller and weaker than those of our cousins - roughly an eighth the size of those seen in macaques, for example.
The reasons for this remain poorly understood, but one contributing factor is the genes that encode myosin, the protein fibres from which muscles are made. Comparison of human and ape sequences for a myosin gene called MYH16 show that all humans have a mutant version of this gene.
Some have even credited the more diminutive muscles in human jaws for our larger intelligence. One theory says that these smaller muscles gave our skulls the room to grow rounder, allowing for a bigger brain cavity."
I’m not so sure that other primates are really the much stronger than we would be if were were raised under the same conditions. If we, from birth, swung from branches and climbed trees instead of walking and being pushed around in strollers, I’m sure we’d be much more physically impressive.
I’ve actually seen an example of this. I used to have a friend who would do several hundred pullups a day starting when he was 5-6. By the time he got to fifth grade, he could knock out 60 straight pullups. He could also fly up and down a rope with his legs dangling below him. As he got older, he stopped doing the pullups, and his strength dropped dramatically.
So, we have the potential to be just as strong as other primates, it’s just that our sedentary lives don’t allow us to live up to that potential.
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
Don’t forget that from the moment they are born, to the moment they die, all primates are active, using all their limbs for movement, balance, gripping, etc. This must have a great effect on conditioning those super-strong muscle fibres. Also, they live a ‘pure’ life, without the artificial shit that we have in our lives. I don’t know how much this helps, but I’m sure it does.[/quote]
The use/disuse has something to do with it. Strength is a favorable and almost always useful skill in their world, making it selected for more often. This isn’t always so in ours.
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
Don’t forget that from the moment they are born, to the moment they die, all primates are active, using all their limbs for movement, balance, gripping, etc. This must have a great effect on conditioning those super-strong muscle fibres. Also, they live a ‘pure’ life, without the artificial shit that we have in our lives. I don’t know how much this helps, but I’m sure it does.[/quote]
yeah sometimes i think its the high volume work. carrying their bodyweight up trees all day plus short quick bursts of running and jumping .
sometimes i think its because they produce far more testosterone from the very beginning.
probably a combination of both and lots of other stuff we dont understand.
but here’s what’s bugging me… HOW do gorillaz have so much muscle and strength while living off vegetables? same with many other herbivores. is it that if you have testosterone at incredibly freaky levels and are constantly working your muscles you just get them to grow? what the hell is it.
i mean, vegan bodybuilders keep saying “well look at bulls and gorillaz, they only eat grass and stuff”… that’s bullshit, we have completely different genetics and hormonal levels probably.
We actually talked about this in my physics class briefly a while back. Apparently Apes have muscle insertion points (lets say the bicep, for example) which are slightly farther from the hinge of the joint. This slight difference in physiology creates a very substantial increase in strength and makes sense when you think about the mechanics of it.
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
Don’t forget that from the moment they are born, to the moment they die, all primates are active, using all their limbs for movement, balance, gripping, etc. This must have a great effect on conditioning those super-strong muscle fibres. Also, they live a ‘pure’ life, without the artificial shit that we have in our lives. I don’t know how much this helps, but I’m sure it does.[/quote]
Zoo chimps eat Monkey Chow. I suspect it is crap food.
[quote]Driven88 wrote:
We actually talked about this in my physics class briefly a while back. Apparently Apes have muscle insertion points (lets say the bicep, for example) which are slightly farther from the hinge of the joint. This slight difference in physiology creates a very substantial increase in strength and makes sense when you think about the mechanics of it. [/quote]
Like it was said earlier, its about the levers. The insertion points of the muscles causes these levers, that gives Apes and Monkeys their strength.
Along with the levers, one reason has to do with the surface of the bones where the tendons are attached. The surfaces on the non-human great apes are rough, providing much more surface area for adhesion strength. Human bones are relatively smooth, which lowers the surface area and adhesion strength.
Their muscles are attached in such a way that they can contract to a far greater potential without the danger of pulling the tendon attachments off of the bone surface.
Why did we evolve weaker muscles and mutant MYH16 genes? I think you have no further to look than the what’s sitting between your two ears: the human brain.
At rest the human brain uses up 30% the energy from a person’s daily calorie intake. 30%! That’s a hell of a lot of energy to devote to something that is less than 2% of the body’s mass.
Well, if the human brain needs that much energy where did it get it from? Yeah, now a days all we have to do is walk to the fridge. But from an evolutionary standpoint, agriculture and the availability of a constant and adequate supply of energy has only been very recent on that 5-6 million year evolutionary timeline there between chimp and human. In fact, it would be a almost unnoticeable sliver there at the end of that timeline.
Well, if our ape like ancestors had no way of dramatically increasing their available food supply it’s pretty hard to find all that extra energy to feed more glucose to that growing brain of theirs, so how did they do it?
Well, that extra energy had to come from somewhere and I think you need to look no further than the pathetic relative power of our muscle tissue. A chimps muscles are not physically that much larger than a humans, but he could easily tear your limbs off with relative ease if he wanted to:
A chimp can also work those muscles out all day swinging and climbing around without ever tiring out. Try visualizing one of your office mates even trying that for 30 seconds. It’s not pretty. Those muscles are burning the same glucose that the brain relies on.
Instead of relying on the efficiency and power of our muscles for our survival, we adapted this wonderful brain of ours for things like fire, pointy sticks, and more modern tools like Honda Civics and 58" plasma TVs. Personally, I think the energy allocation was a good trade off. But then again, those chimps don’t have to spend 50 hours each week in an office listening to some asshole… and they also don’t have to pay taxes. They also all get to have orgies every day:
but here’s what’s bugging me… HOW do gorillaz have so much muscle and strength while living off vegetables? same with many other herbivores. is it that if you have testosterone at incredibly freaky levels and are constantly working your muscles you just get them to grow? what the hell is it.
i mean, vegan bodybuilders keep saying “well look at bulls and gorillaz, they only eat grass and stuff”… that’s bullshit, we have completely different genetics and hormonal levels probably.
but HOW…i gotta find out.[/quote]
Unlike humans, the digestive tract of gorillas is equipped to manufacture the essential amino acids and other vital nutrients. Also a male gorilla will eat 32 kg of leaves a day. I’ve searched everywhere for the amount of protein in leaves and can’t get squat but even if there was only 1 gram of protein for every 100 grams of leaves a gorilla eats that’s still 320 grams of protein a day!
There arms are longer in relation to their size, thus creating a longer lever. It is the same reason why people with longer legs do well with dead lifts and not as well with squat. I believe CT mentioned this once in an article of his.
Coming out of left field here, but does it have to do with the fact that they’re lives are so much shorter? For example, it seems like a dog lives much shorter, but way more intense, life than a human. Do they somehome compress the lifespan of their strength into a shorter period?
There is also our much larger neocortex to factor into many of the above reasons.
Parts of the nervous system tend to be inhibited when “higher” areas are active. This is why you can stop the hand-retraction-from-painful-stimulus reflex if you consciously want to.
Since chimpanzees have a less developed neocortex (frontal lobe) than we do, they may have less inhibited motor areas of their brain leading to a stronger neural drive.
This could also be why people only tap into their true strength reserves in emergency situations. The forebrain gets completely shut down in a panic situation, more primitive centers become more active, and the person’s strength potential goes through the roof.
It’s genetics, folks. A sedentary chimp is still way stronger than any human. It’s not all limb length and insertion points either. Scientist can dangle weights from chimp muscle fiber and an equal sized human fiber, run a current through it, and the chimp fiber can lift a heavier weight.
Chimps didn’t evolve with the same level of intelligence that humans did. For this reason the chimps always required their physical prowess for their species to continue. Any chimp born with a mutation to be weaker would perish before reproducing.
Humans, on the other hand, developed great intelligence. Having strong muscles was no longer a requirement for reproducing. Being weaker may also be advantageous in some ways. I’m guessing but, being weaker may be more energy efficient which allowed the humans to travel further to find food or reach shelter. It may require less sleep which allows the humans to stay up and work on projects or make plans that enhance survival.
but here’s what’s bugging me… HOW do gorillaz have so much muscle and strength while living off vegetables? same with many other herbivores. is it that if you have testosterone at incredibly freaky levels and are constantly working your muscles you just get them to grow? what the hell is it.
i mean, vegan bodybuilders keep saying “well look at bulls and gorillaz, they only eat grass and stuff”… that’s bullshit, we have completely different genetics and hormonal levels probably.
but HOW…i gotta find out.
Unlike humans, the digestive tract of gorillas is equipped to manufacture the essential amino acids and other vital nutrients. Also a male gorilla will eat 32 kg of leaves a day. I’ve searched everywhere for the amount of protein in leaves and can’t get squat but even if there was only 1 gram of protein for every 100 grams of leaves a gorilla eats that’s still 320 grams of protein a day![/quote]
Exactly…gorillas can synthesize every amino acid…therefore they have no “essential” amino acids as their bodies make all of them. Since protein is made up of chains of amino acids they get tons of protein despite their vegetarian diet.
There are, of course, other factors. We must always consider that muscle insertions/origins have a profound effect on the amount of power any combination of limbs can generate. Case in point; my cat can jump to a surface that is easily twice as tall as she is. Of course if I slept on top of the TV for 18 hours every day I would probably have the energy reserves to pull off the same feat.
[quote]Five wrote:
Exactly…gorillas can synthesize every amino acid…therefore they have no “essential” amino acids as their bodies make all of them. Since protein is made up of chains of amino acids they get tons of protein despite their vegetarian diet.
[/quote]
We should really find a way to get these “no essential amino acids needed” genes and add them to our own.
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
Five wrote:
Exactly…gorillas can synthesize every amino acid…therefore they have no “essential” amino acids as their bodies make all of them. Since protein is made up of chains of amino acids they get tons of protein despite their vegetarian diet.
We should really find a way to get these “no essential amino acids needed” genes and add them to our own.[/quote]
I did not realize the brain consumed that much energy.
Of course, that is likely the evolutionary tradeoff that required human muscle strength to decline. Does anyone think there is a possiblity for ‘reverse evolutionary engineering’…i.e. surgically altering insertion points to imitate the apes. Or possibly altering the body’s ability to produce aminos?
First off, evolution is a poor theory with no evidence to back it up. As far as I’m concerned, evolution ranks up there with Santa Claus. Chimps are stronger because God made them that way. QED.
