Bear Strength

[Polar]

(12-20-2018, 03:25 AM)Shadow Wrote: This link is to article in digital version of finnish science magazine. This is from section, where people can send questions and then they get answers from specialists. Anyway most people here don´t understand a word from that text, so I put here a short summary. Someone has made a question, that how much could a bear bench press? Person answering to question is Heidi Kinnunen, who has doctoral degree in zoology. She is quite well known animal expert in Finland and can be found from University of Helsinki.

She tells, that compared to ordinary human, bear has very strong muscles what comes to forelimbs, pecs and shoulders. Even cubs have been observed to flip easily flat stones weighing 140 kg (about 309 lbs). In fight a bear can lift with forelimbs another bear which has thrown itself over it. Then she tells, that canadian researchers recommend, that when bear is wanted to catch alive with a rope to leg, there should be used a coil able to withstand force of 16,8 kilonewton, which might be easier to understand if putting figure 1713 kg (3777 lbs).

Then Kinnunen explains, that bench press isn´t for a bear natural thing to do which everyone should understand. Mentioning also, that bears can do kind of pull-ups with branches. Then she does a little comparison to human but final statement from her is conclusion, that what comes to strength, adult bear would be able to bench press at least double of its own body weight. 

Here is link to article if someone wants to check and maybe try to learn finnish. If you try to use google translator..... good luck. Finnish-english translations are nightmares/torture for anyone trying

https://www.tiede.fi/artikkeli/kysy/palj...i_penkista

Here is some info about Kinnunen: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heidi_Kinnunen

Her credentials (from ResearchGate link) seem more suited to ecological preservation and habitat-related relationships rather than on animal morphology.

But even if the study is possibly faked or simply not publicly released in an academic institution, the videos and some of the evidence gathered so far tell me that there might be a middle ground here. If a bear can "bench" at least twice his weight (and without even training for it), we as normal humans would have to put many times the effort to get to even get close to that point.

In my powerlifting years, it took me three years to get my bench up to 355-pounds at the age of 18, and I was 215-pounds heavy at the time. Imagine being a 175-pound bear and benching that outright, lol. That would be a huge difference if true. Reply