why are chimps and gorillas so strong when their food is mainly vegetation ?

Answer 1

There are two reasons

1.
Gorillas and chimps spend relatively more energy on muscles and less on brains.

We human spend an estimated 10 to 20 percent of our calories (depending on how active we are both physically and mentally) on our brain. Want evidence? Have you ever taken a huge test and felt physically drained? It was because you spent a LOT of energy creating the electricity that runs your brain!

As a result of this we are adapted to spend less energy on muscle.

2.
Reason number two is that our muscles are designed for stamina not strength! No we are not as strong as a chimp or gorilla. But a fit human can cover over 100 miles in 24 hours. I had a professor who ran 24 hour marathons and had a best distance of 108 miles. He said he could not even place in the nationals where 124 miles would be more average.

The most primitive hunting technique still in use is done by some African tribes in the Kalahari. They run there prey down. It tends to take all day and night but after a little tracking and a LOT of persistence they often succeed at bringing down antelope such as oryx. No kidding here folks! They really do!

Answer 2

This is where we get the old chestnut about gorillas and elephants being vegetarians and having large muscle groups. So why do humans need to supplement their diets with meat? Why don't we eat sticks of celery, ignoring the obvious protein deficiency and end up like Charles Atlas.
These creatures are not exclusively vegetarian, not even close to it. Take the elephant, how many highly nutritious protein packed insects do you think that they eat in one large mouthful of foliage?
Chimps and gorillas also eat a huge amount of insects, sometimes actively but also especially in the case of gorillas unintentionally. Chimps do also eat monkeys as witnessed and first filmed by Jane Goodall. The insect world could greatly reduce the human hunger problem, I can't help wondering where vegetarians would stand on this, beetles are hardly cuddly are they. And yes I do eat insects, I have been living in Asia for 14 years and some of them are very tasty.
But another of your respondents also gets the point, it is not just diet but the use of that diet. The chimp world is a very violent one and strength is necessary for survival, our evolution has focused more on the development of our brains, and one of the many compromises that evolution has made is to greatly reduce our muscle mass.
Where will this lead? To 9 foot tall, skeletal humans with no visible muscle tone? Possibly.

Answer 3

What Makes Gorillas So Strong

Answer 4

Gorillas are vegetarian but Chimps are omnivores.
The apes use much more muscle than the humans. The newborn apes wouldn't survive if they don't be strong to hold on their mom

Answer 5

What Do They Eat?

When it comes to food primates are not fussy eaters. The majority of species are omnivorous, although most eat mainly plant food and only tarsiers are purely carnivorous. Fruit tends to be the favourite food of the apes, all the New World monkeys and roughly half of the Old World monkeys. Colobines, however, have specialised to survive on leaves.
Macaques have been observed washing potatoes in the sea to season them with salt

Answer 6

Probably for self defense. It may also be that stripping bark from plants, takes more strength than stripping flesh from bone.

Elephants are exclusively vegetarian and they are pretty strong as well.

Come to think of it, the largest landbound mammals are all vegetarian...except for bears.

Perhaps, size is no disadvantage when you are trying to sneak up on a tasty looking shrub...

Answer 7

Many of the world's current animals are highly evolved for their primary method of sustinence. Man's primary method of sustinence is through tool-making and cultivation. Our muscles and bones are capable of doing less work with the same amount of material simply because we do not need to.

Walking upright requires significantly more energy. Our brains are significantly larger and more refined for very different purposes. We don't need to devote brainpower to truly significant muscle development, therefore we do not.

Answer 8

Even in humans, a healthy and balanced vegetarian diet can provide just as much, if not more, strength than a diet that includes meat.

Having said that, you have to remember that the nutrition needs for different animals are all different. Chimps and Gorillas are herbivores, that's what their body is developed for, their optimal health comes from an herbivore diet. But if you fed the same thing to a tiger, for instance, it would be a disaster, because their digestive systems and nutrition needs aren't the same.

Answer 9

I'm shocked nobody's really mentioned this.

Yes, chimps and gorillas climb trees.....and when they are on the ground, they walk with their knuckles touching the earth a lot of the time. Why is this?

Look at their bodies. Their *arms* are longer than their legs. I know, really obvious, but to be technical about it, their primary modes of transportation are climbing and brachiation (swinging from arm to arm through tree limbs), and for them, walking is secondary.

For us humans, *walking and running* are primary, and everything else is a back-seat concern.

So yes, *chimp and gorilla* arms are going to be way stronger than the human counterparts, just because *they* support their *body weight* on their arms, shoulders and chests at least part of the time. Humans, on the other hand, do this with their legs almost all of the time.

Seriously, if you want to compare apples to apples, compare chimpanzee arm strength to human *leg presses*. It's a closer contest because the muscle mass is more similar in proportion.

I hope this helps....thanks for your time! ^_^

Answer 10

They are omnivores, just like us. Humans are bit more evolved and our brains require more protein to sustain higher level thinking processes so we need a bit more meat (note, I said a bit more - most people eat more meat than they actually require though)