Ape Strength: Myth vs Reality

[BorneanTiger]

(09-30-2019, 11:06 PM)Shadow Wrote:

(09-30-2019, 10:58 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(09-30-2019, 10:07 PM)Shadow Wrote: It has been nice to see, that this topic is interesting. Still a reminder, this thread is created for postings about strength of a gorilla and for information concerning it. Not for information concerning behavior or predation situations unless some incident includes information about actions in which gorilla has showed how strong it is. That would be lifting, throwing or breaking something. For instance aggressive behavior alone isn´t proving anything. Many animals act aggressively in certain situations, but that alone tells nothing about it, that how strong they are. 

This thread is about it, that some people have in past made claims, like that gorilla would be even up to 20 times stronger than humans, some say 3 times, some 6 times.... but no-one has been really able to prove anything. Just hypothesis after hypothesis without real proof. Like myth, which even zookeepers or was it director said in sad case concerning Harambe, that gorilla could break a coconut crushing it in hand. Still in different clips gorillas use rocks to break coconuts. 

One hypothesis is something like that, that gorilla could lift even 2000 kg, first it seems to have been, that from ground and in time some people seemed to change it, that gorilla could lift such weight overhead. Same time there seems to be no proof to show, that gorilla would have lifted even a few hundred kg. Guinness Book of Records had at least one time hypothesis, that gorilla could lift over 800 kg, but also that is only hypothesis as far as I know. 

So depending about sources, hypotheses are variating quite a lot. Looks like, that reason is more or less it, that there simply isn´t information. So it´s very interesting to try to find out if there is anything, which would undeniable show something. I haven´t found so far practically anything proving, that gorilla would be stronger than other strong animals. Still even some articles give statements, that gorilla is in top 10 pound for pound, what comes to strong animals. But those articles give no good reasoning, nothing concrete (imo at least, I´m not convinced at all). It has to be remembered, that headlines sell and not all reporters are too eager to find real information, when good headline is all what is needed with some vague content.

So far, the only case where the gorilla has outclassed other animals in strength that I know of is in breaking glass with its own strength:

There are cases of a brown bear and polar bear breaking glass at zoos, but they used rocks to do so:

It jumped on that glass and those glasses can be worn out in time or have manufacturing defects. Zoo personnel have told, that those glasses have to be changed time to time. If gorillas could break those glasses by their strength, I think that we would have a lot of broken glasses. Not just one case. When only one case, impossible to know what was reason. Of course when 150-200 kg jumps on something banging it same time with fists, it´s quite a hit.

There is another case. Kumbuka, an aggressive male at London Zoo, is mentioned to have broken windows twice, though it wasn't always clear if he used an object or his own strength to do it, though it appears from a footprint on the window pane that it was the latter case: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/o...ore-escape Reply