Strongest animals in the world

Posted on Sep 15, 2010 in Skills

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Strongest bite – The saltwater crocodile

This fearsome chomper can inflict a bone-crunching bite that is around 3-4 times stronger than a lion. To give you a rough idea, the force of this bite would be a bit like having a car fall on top of you! However, the muscles that open these deadly jaws are very weak and theoretically could be held shut by a human. Although this isn’t an advisable thing to try.

More strongest chompers

 

 

Strongest relatively speaking – The rhinocerous beetle

In absolute terms, the African elephant is by far the strongest living animal but it can only lift 25% of its bodyweight. Unlike the mighty rhinocerous beetle who thinks nothing of carrying 850 times its own weight. To put that into perspective that would be like one of us lifting a 65 ton armoured tank

 

Strongest arm wrestler – The gorilla

Whereas we have stronger muscles in our legs, gorillas have much larger muscles in their arms. They use their tremendous arm strength for bending and gathering foliage and, when called upon, for defence.  Based on conservative estimates, an adult gorilla’s upper body strength is around 4-6 times more powerful than that of an adult human - giving them probably enough power to bench press a couple of cars. In our book, that qualifies the gorilla for the super hero alias of Mr. Muscle. Discover more animals with amazing super powers here.

 

Toughest skin – The whale shark

The skin on the back of a whale shark is the thickest and toughest in the world and can be up to 6 inches (15cm) in thickness. The outer layer is covered in tiny tooth-like denticles. These denticles combined with ridges that run along its back make its skin pretty much harpoon and bullet proof. However it is still vulnerable to injury from passing boats.

 

Strongest natural material – Spider’s silk

Based on weight, spider’s silk is far stronger than steel and is more elastic than nylon. In fact, its estimated that a strand of silk no thicker than a pencil could stop a plane in flight. It’s also so light that a strand long enough to circle the world would weigh less than a kilo. It really is a true miracle of nature and no spider weavers a stronger web than the recently discovered Darwin’s back spider.

Strongest air lift – The eagle

Some eagles such as the African crowned eagle can carry around 4 times its weight during flight.

 

Why are insects so much stronger than us?

Answer : First a bit of maths: If you double the length of something, its surface area and cross section increase FOUR times. However its volume and weight go up EIGHT times. Okay, why is this a big deal?

Well, imagine a giant who was ten times taller, wider and deeper than yourself. Because of this simple rule of maths, this giant would be 1,000 times heavier. But because the giant’s legs are a 100 times bigger than yours, they’re only a 100 times stronger – far too weak to take the giant’s huge weight. He would simply topple over. Basically, due to this rule of maths, the bigger we get, the comparatively weaker we become. And this is why insects appear to lift such astonishing weights relative to their size.

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