As I understand it, apes are able to activate far more muscle fibers at once, something like 5 times the number a human can do, and this is what gives them their massive strength. The thing is, a very strong human, like a powerlifter, and plowing out their muscles, tendons and ligaments once they get past a certain point. And they are not activating any more muscles fibers than the next guy. How is it a chimp can do these powerful things and not end up in the waiting room of their orthopedic surgeon? I can understand if their parts were even twice as tough as a humans, but 5 times?
In: Biology
The powerlifters you’re talking about are most certainly on performance enhancing drugs. These drugs allow the body to recruit more resources to build significantly more muscle significantly faster than a normal human, but it doesn’t really do much for tendon and ligament growth.
Some of them put on strength too fast and the ligaments can’t keep up, some of them are just pushing the human body beyond what it is capable of handling.
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