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Monkey Business

My articles regarding sauropods have always included the following
short quote from Knut Nielson's, "Scaling, Why is Animal size So
Important", Cambridge Univ Press, 1984, page 163:

"It appears that the maximum force or stress that can be exerted
by any muscle is inherent in the structure of the muscle
filaments.  The maximum force is roughly 4 to 4 kgf/cm2 cross
section of muscle (300 - 400 kN/m2).  This force is body-size
independant and is the same for mouse and elephant muscle.  The
reason for this uniformity is that the dimensions of the thick
and thin muscle filaments, and also the number of cross-bridges
between them are the same.  In fact the structure of mouse
muscle and elephant muscle is so similar that a microscopist
would have difficulty identifying them except for a larger
number of mitrochondria in the smaller animal.  This uniformity
in maximum force holds not only for higher vertibrates, but for
many other organisms, including at least some, but not all
invertibrates."

The quote basically says that quality of muscle tissue doesn't vary by
an amount worth talking about for known vertibrates, and that strength
is dependant upon how much muscle tissue you have, and how well it is
trained.

That obviously leaves no room for any sort of an exception in the case
of apes or monkeys, but I no sooner post any such article, and
somebody wants to talk about monkeys and apes.

Monkeys are made for swinging in trees; a disproportionate amount of
their muscle mass is in their arms, hence, particularly to Americans,
who mostly see strength as arm strength, they often appear to be
"stronger" than we are. Nonetheless, men,and not apes or monkeys rule
this planet, and you can be sure that there are reasons for this and
not all such reasons involve technology. If you wish to see how truly
lame apes and monkeys are, have one try to perform any feat which
doesn't resemble swinging in trees: a competitive 100 meters, a
competitive 440, a competitive hammer-throw, discus throw, javelin
throw, shot-put...

Or have one of them try to pick up an upright freezer and run up a
hill with it, which is something I once saw Bill Kazmaier do.

An ape's major limbs are his arms; ours are our legs. The much
ballyhooed feat of a chimp doing a five or six hundred pound
dynamometer pull is entirely similar to a human doing a 500 - 600 lb.
leg press on an incline press or some similar sort of yuppie leg-press
machine. That simply isn't that big a deal; I can do that myself.
That's not close to being the amount of effort involved in a 1000 lb.
squat.