eli5 why chimps are able to easily rip off human arms and faces, despite only being around 1.5 times the strength of an average human
In: Biology
It takes almost no force for you to do incredibly awful stuff to a human. Self defense courses used to say that 5-ish pounds of force can tear off an ear or lip and like 15 can split your arm in half length-wise, etc. No clue how much of that is precise, but it’s definitely close.
Chimps are absolutely stronger than humans. Their muscles are more dense and have different distribution of muscle fibres.
That being said, a human being can rip off a face or arm.
An element that comes into factor is that when an animal goes into attack mode or defense mode, 100% of its energies, focus, and attention are on THAT exact moment and action. Animals don’t have the element of distraction that takes away some of our power/strength. We have so many distractions and so much in our minds at any given time we’re never absolutely committing every part of ourselves to a specific activity. When a chimp says it’s go time, he’s not thinking about taxes or if he’ll get arrested by the cops after he rips a human’s face off. He’s only thinking about how he’s feeling and what to do about it.
They don’t, chimps can be dangerous in a group, but as individuals they represent almost zero threat to a single human.
It comes down to different types of muscle fibers. Our arms are mostly slow-twitch fiber muscle with more nerve endings that give us more precise control over our actions but less power where other primates have more fast-twitch muscle which gives them more power but less fine control.
The most important thing one can do when faced by a chimp of the human-killing sort is to do this one thing:
Hail to the Chimp.
Whatever you do, make sure you Hail to the Chimp.
History has shown us time and time again that it is the only way.
Example: https://youtu.be/4DZtMlNKggk
Good luck.
And remember… Hail to the Chimp.
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