Do you think animal's are stronger than humans?

Are you sleepy? There’s no apostrophe needed in your question. I won’t mention the other grammatical problems. Many animals are stronger than humans. The human advantage is intelligence.

Not all of them, but some of them are. An average grizzly bear is stronger than a strong human. A strong shrew isn’t.
Was that really your question?

Honestly, it depends.
How are we measuring strength? Man may not be very strong, physically, when compared to, say, @Fyrius’ bear. But he is rather competent, which is why bears are in greater danger of extinction than we are in the first place. Not only are we good and making weapons, we also have enough free cycles to come up with agriculture, which is far sturdier a system than the ursine method of hunting and foraging, allowing for tremendous technological advancement because less time had to be spent finding the next meal.

That’s better spears, to be used along with our cataloged observations on how to deal with wild animals. Eventually, you’re back up to guns again. Even if you’re not, a man with some know-how can kill a bear with nothing more than a well-placed club.

That said, I know a guy who wrestled a wild boar to the ground, where he killed it with a knife. And Gore help you if you forget the mighty Steve Irwin, who grappled with crocodiles for the heck of it.

Read some Burroughs; he wrote at a time when Man was very proud of his intellect, and would not hesitate to tell himself as much.

They certainly smell stronger, well most anyway.

How about grenades, shrink tubing with a hair dryer, an attack newt, an electric hamster? No one has my sense of humor. So we got to duke it out with gators and apes, or can I just crush a bunch of insects? You make a good point though. I think you’re touching on something very interesting. About the man versus beast dynamic, man has always used his superior intellect to kill beasts, including weapons and traps. But the interesting part is if you believe that man is destroying nature, that man is eventually going to totally destroy all animals due to his “superior” intellect. I don’t know, I guess I’d take a bat to a buffalo.

Rotweilers can bite with the force of 328 lbs!! That is pretty powerful and my MIL is the only human that can best that dog. Bottom line is animals are much tougher…many exist solely in the wild and that is though stuff period! You want to clear out a room in a hurry??? Toss in a snake a big hairy spider and a couple mice….job done!! Who is the tough guy now???

I think so. Generally, the only advantage humans have is intelligence and adaptability to a large degree. We are useless in hunting for prey (without any tools), although we are good gatherers. Any animal of similar size (and even some smaller ones) are stronger than us (muscle-wise).
And to add to what @truecomedian said, i also wonder whether our intelligence is indeed an advantage, because we are using it to destroy the natural world (be that intentionally or not).

Take away firearms and we’d be hunting the big ones with traps and sticks with stone points – like man did for 100s of thousands of years.

@Cruiser
>Mentioning an example of one animal being stronger than humans in one aspect
>Conclusion: Animals are much tougher
Ahem.

I think the truth is obvious. Strength is a relative property, a sliding scale. The humans are neither at the lowest nor at the highest end.
Some animals are stronger than us and some are weaker. And for all of them too, except two, there are animals stronger and weaker than they are.

@Fyrius All good…but try and tell that to a Chihuahua…vicious little buggers.

I wonder who is stronger a pitbull or rotweiller? Animals are stronger and smellier ,( hee hee) but we are smarter . I agree with everyone else has said.

I don’t know. Take personal fear and compassion out of the human. They become pretty strong.

Simply put…some humans are stronger than some animals. Just as some animals are stronger than other animals and some humans are stronger than other humans.

With no weapons, if all animals attacked at once, we’d be slaughtered.

@truecomedian
That’s not remotely fair. If all other animals attacked the grizzly bears at once, the bears would be slaughtered too.

@Fyrius
but that’s not the question.

You can’t compare humans against all other animals in strength unless you do a pound for pound comparison and that’s still not a real good comparison. What strength are you comparing exactly? Weight lifting? Jaw strength? Strength in water? A gorilla can lift more than a human but a human beats a crocodile because a croc’s strength is in his jaws. He can crush your bones to dust but he has no hands and his arms are relatively weak compared to ours.

This question is like comparing cars and college rule paper. It’s too difficult unless you get more specific with it. If you compared humans to just one animal or picked a certain strength then, and only then, could we compare animal strength to a humans.

My little cat Sy must be stronger than I am because when it comes to cleaning out his pan, feeding him or giving his tummy a rub, he always bring me to my knees.

@truecomedian Incidentally, Muy Thai apparently has in its repertoire an attack (called “Throwing Buffalo Punch”) which can kill a buffalo with a single blow.

My dog is more strong willed than humans…....that power inside your soul, lets you do anything.

I know the Orca killed the Great White. I really wouldn’t want to tangle with either, but I’ll take on that bunny in the back yard. Skwewy wabbit.

http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/videos/147-orca-v-shark-video

Americans have grown really wimpy in the last generation. I’d put money on the critters.

i think you have to be more animal specific, but i think we’re stronger as humans maybe not in physical strength but mentally that’s why we can catch them and eat them…scientific proof of brains over brawn because we can catch and eat shark.

Fleas are way stronger jumpers than humans. A flea can jump about 350 times its body length.

@Nullo
A punch that could drop a Buffalo, don’t believe it. Unless there is a weakspot on the buffalo and they exploit that. Seeing is believing, and I’d like to see that. I used to be able to low kick a two by four, bruised my shin but I had good form for awhile there.

@truecomedian It would just have to be sufficient to concuss the critter.; we’re all kinda fragile in the brain area. How are you measuring “weak points”?
Such wild animals as are inclined to hunt also exploit weak points. Necks are especially popular.
There’s no word on the state of the attacker’s hands/elbows after the fact.

@gondwanalon
They also weigh bugger all, so that’s not much of an achievement. If you could make a flea grow to be roughly human-sized and human-weighted, I’d be impressed if it could jump twice its own height.
You can’t just translate such things to smaller or larger scales.

Incidentally, if I lie down flat, my body height is about 30 centimetres. I can jump at least four times that high.
As an upright biped you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to jumping several times your body height. The bar is higher than it would be if you were a quadruped.

If a human was the size of a flea I wonder if he could jump 350 times his body lenght….NOT!

@gondwanalon
No? Are you sure? Have you tried?

To be fair, our bodies are adapted to our size, so if a human were shrunk down to flea size I suppose it makes sense to expect he wouldn’t be as nimble as a flea. Though I’d be surprised if his maximum jump height compared to his body would be remotely the same as that of you and me.
In the same way a flea blown up to human size would probably be pretty clumsy and inept, because a flea body just isn’t made for being that large and heavy.
Like I said, you can’t just translate everything to a larger or smaller scale. The proportions of physical forces are different depending on size.

So is it really a fair comparison if you take the jump height to body height ratio of a human and a flea?

I’m not an expert on physics or entomology but I know that fleas are designed for jumping and human realy aren’t as well equiped for jumping. The jumping power of fleas comes both from strong leg muscles and from pads of a rubber-like protein called resilin (Like large bungee cords). The resilin is located above the flea’s hind legs. To jump, the flea crouches, squeezing the resilin, which stretches it to create potential engery. Stored energy from the resilin works like a spring that aids in launching the flea. Would this spring-like mechanism work well if the the flea was human size? Maybe, and maybe not but a human shrunk down to a flea’s size has no built in bungee cords to aid in launching into a jump the size that a flea is capbable of.

@gondwanalon Some perspective is warranted here.
A flea might be able to jump 350 times its body length, but in absolute terms, that’s about 0.30 m. As a species, humans have successfully pwnt the flea at both the high jump (world record: 2.45 m) and the long jump (world record: 8.95 m)

As Fyrius didn’t quite say, we are all suited to our sizes. A human-sized flea would not have the structure needed to support its mass, and would die quite quickly. All the resilin in the world isn’t going to make flea-legs sturdy enough to support a 900-fold increase in mass, to say nothing of the reduced efficiency of enormous flea-organs.

Here, have a look at this.

@Nullo
Thanks for that link. It says everything clearly that I was having trouble putting into words.

@Fyrius You did a good job explaining how a flea wouldn’t function well if it were as big as a human. The reverse is also likely true in which if a human could be reduced to the size of a flea then the flea would be by far the stronger and superior jumper.

No, because humans have powerful machines. Board a fighter jet with sidewinder missiles and even a T-Rex will be very scared of you. And it doesn’t stand a chance. No animal that ever existed would.

@gondwanalon
Fair enough. Every life form is adapted to its own scale and would be pathetic at a larger or smaller one. Notwithstanding deep-sea gigantism.

Maybe then it would make more sense, in the context of this question, not to look for misleading pseudo-equivalency like strength relative to size. We can always fall back on absolute strength as a consistent standard. Where humans can squeeze fleas to death by accident, and in turn it would take several unarmed men to kill one lion.

@mattbrowne magnificent answer! The human brain has more potential energy than any animal on earth. Human power may someday be infinitely strong if or when we master such power as nuclear fusion. That is if we don’t first blow ourselves up. HA!

Okay for those asking “what do you mean by strength?” I mean in both wisdom and physical strength. And I mean HUMANS WITHOUT FIREARMS. The only possible things they could use were probably something like they used back then (spears,bow and arrow, etc.) No fire arms including cannons or fireworks or what ever else there is. It’s obvious with that said. Though the human body can go over limits which also can animals. But it’s an obvious question. What’s everyone’s opinion on it?

@Fyrius Apparently, if you’re strong enough, skilled enough, and foolish gutsy enough, you can break a lion’s neck barehanded. The main thing would be avoiding the pointy ends.
I’d bet that Steve Irwin could have done it.

@Vincent_Lloyd People have been killing animals of all sizes without the aid of chemical propellant for a very long time. It has even been speculated that primitive Man would actually run down gazelles and such.

@Vincent_Lloyd
When was “back then”? How long ago are we talking here?
There was a time when our ancestors couldn’t make bows and spears either. Why allow that technology, but not guns? The bow doesn’t rely much on physical strength either. And both are a product of human intelligence.
If the issue is that fire arms rely on an understanding of chemistry, would a crossbow be okay?

You could make the question simple and clear-cut by comparing physical strength only, but then all weapons are out, even sharp rocks. As soon as there are weapons involved, the winner is no longer decided only by who is stronger.
Just put one man and one of any animal in the ring together and let them duke it out.

If a man is not allowed to use tools or machines then there are many animals that specialize in running, swimming and flying that can beat the strongest man easily.

@Fyrius Missouri hunting regulations classify the crossbow as a firearm, since it shares many characteristics with one. Like not having to actually use your arms to keep the string taught.

@Nullo
Interesting fact, but not overwhelmingly relevant.

@Fyrius I live to staff the peanut gallery, sir.

@gondwanalon – We are headed toward a intergalactic Kardashev III civilization ;-)