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
I think this has been answered sufficiently but I’ll give you a car analogy.
Why don’t high horsepower muscle cars blow up their transmissions all the time? Because builders put in stronger transmissions (tendons).
If you put a 1000hp LS engine (gorilla muscles) in a Honda Civic, it will destroy that (human) transmission the first time you put your foot down.
If you mate that engine to a proper performance transmission, you might break the driveshaft, so upgrade that and you finally have your horsepower to the wheels.
Same thing with gorillas, their tendons are larger and stronger than ours to match the muscle they have. The corollary is that we don’t have tendons that can handle gorilla strength because we don’t need them, and why would your body waste resources building something it doesn’t need?
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