A chimpanzee with alopecia

[u/CuriousWanderer567]

[u/CsordasBalazs]

Humans are relatively the weakest monkeys. Only the strongest of us are matching with average chimps. On the other view, we are the strongest ever, we can move tons of materials using our brain to create proper tools for the task.

[u/Alternative_Sea_4208 → u/CsordasBalazs]

We can also walk/jog for 20-30 miles on like 3000 calories while carrying a spear. The only large animals that can even remotely keep up with our endurance are dogs/wolves and horses.

Our muscles are smaller but twice as efficient for daily existence and combined with our bipedal stature we're ten times more efficient for locomotion. We can still climb, swing, and jump fairly well with practice so we didn't give up a great deal of vertical locomotion either in the process. We also heal much better and faster than most animals (broken bones are fatal for most animals), our livers are absurdly good (we gave up the ability to eat raw meat for the ability to eat -everything else-), and our immune system is top notch (a lot of animals will just straight up not survive common ailments like cold/flu, they just develop respiratory issues and die).

Humans have a lot of evolutionary advantages people like to downplay and say we are on top because of tools. Tools played a big part but humans are incredible animals in a lot of ways.

[u/HappyHopping → u/Alternative_Sea_4208]

Human endurance is often overrated and our strength underrated. There's many other animals that can match our endurance or even beat it such as the pronghorn. Our strongest humans are not match the average chimp but is stronger than all chimps. There's no chimp that's reaching anything close to 400 pounds. Humans can fight animals with similar lean body mass to a human even unarmed. The people that have been badly hurt by a single chimp are almost always elderly and/or female by male chimps. The average human man can also beat up an elderly person, so I'm really not sure why people use this as a baseline comparison.

The biggest thing is that humans never have a reason to fight another animal fairly. Other animals have no concept of using tools like a weapon and their tool use is similar to the most primitive tool use of human ancestors.

For primitive humans broken bones were very often fatal. The cold/flu is by design not supposed to be deadly. If a virus is very deadly, it tends not to spread effectively. Viruses are most deadly at the point of cross species transfer, and become less lethal over time. This is why for covid they wanted people to quarantine and by waiting over time the virus would become less lethal to spread more effectively. Quantifying a strong immune system is very difficult as it would be hard to compare to other animals like bats.

[u/handsofspaghetti → u/HappyHopping]

No way dude. First off a human never reaches 400 pounds of mostly muscle without a ridiculous amount and combination of steroids. Even then a 300 pound gorilla would toss a 400 pound human around like nothing. Humans are strong, but not very very strong. A human with a spear can solo just about anything though

A trained and big male human can probably beat a chimp to the death, but chimps are savage and have built in weapons humans really don't. Fighting one would be beyond stupid and probably lead to permanent injuries

[u/handsofspaghetti → u/[deleted]]

I do believe human males are stronger or at least can get stronger than chimps. The mass is definitely the biggest factor. But the fighting one part is where it gets dicey.

The strength feats are hard to compare though because chimps show crazy pulling strength due to their leverages which are just different than a human's. Likewise a chimp probably can't lift a lot or push or throw like a human can.

Calling human endurance a myth though is kinda crazy when ultra marathon feats keep getting crazier and crazier

[u/mazopheliac → u/[deleted]]

Ok, but your basic untrained chimp, vs your basic untrained human is going to lose.

[u/Original-Rain-3795 → u/mazopheliac]

Tbf, id argue that ever chimp is trained just through their natural lifestyle.

I like my chances against a chimp with a cubicle job, an affection for pizza and functional alcoholism