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DavidxPxD t1_j5u2ghe wrote

Did you know that a grasshopper at the weight of an average human male would be able to kick a hole straight through your chest?

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vendetta0311 t1_j5ufx2j wrote

I love watching grasshoppers jump. It’s so weird to me that they have no landing cares. Like imagine jumping like 100 times your height and when asked what your plan to land is:

“hit the ground, wtf kind of stupid question is that!?” -- leap --

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inhale_data t1_j5xjn3m wrote

Grasshoppers have wings and can choose where and when they land.

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Nebuli2 t1_j5xm7s3 wrote

Also the cube square law means that falling isn't exactly dangerous to them, not even at terminal velocity. It's an inconvenience at worst.

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IFrickinLovePorn t1_j5vt4ik wrote

You let one grasshopper stand up to us and they all might stand up. Those puny little grasshoppers outnumber us a hundred to one, and if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life!! It's not about strong kicks! It's about keeping those grasshoppers in line.

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Shamon_Yu OP t1_j5u36df wrote

Unfair comparison when we go to the extremes. Tiny animals are strong simply due to how area scales with respect to volume.

For the same reason elephants need sturdy legs, but not mice.

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dr_xenon t1_j5u5oy9 wrote

  • By my standards I’m stronger than an elephant!

By the same standards a grasshopper is stronger than you.

  • That doesn’t count.

Great argument.

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Shamon_Yu OP t1_j5u8exg wrote

Straw man much?

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analthunderbird t1_j5ugcgg wrote

It’s not a strawman when it’s literally what you just said

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DavidxPxD t1_j5u4798 wrote

How is that not fair? It is literally a pound for pound comparison.

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Shamon_Yu OP t1_j5u5wsj wrote

It's fair within a range. Like comparing a horse to a dog. But not when it's a dog vs an ant.

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iestructural t1_j5u63sl wrote

Fun party guy over here.

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Shamon_Yu OP t1_j5u751e wrote

Thanks for the nostalgia trip. Brings me back about 20 years.

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bragov4ik t1_j5vq6cq wrote

Even considering this, what about jerboas?

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ImReverse_Giraffe t1_j5uw764 wrote

Then explain horses.

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Mikisstuff t1_j5vxank wrote

It actually isn't that much when you break it down by bodyweight like OPs initial showerthought.

A quick Google tells me a horse kick is, on the higher end, about 2000 pounds of force per square inch. Another quick Google search says the average, non-trained adult human male kicks at about 1000 pounds (though I found a video of a MMA fighter kicking @ 2400). Depending on how the person is kicking (toe, heel, flat) the PSI will shift, so let's say 2 square inches for a forward kick with point of impact being toes or shoe-tops. 500PSI, or 1/4 of a horse.

Google puts the weight of an 'average' horse (I know this is super variable but since I went for the high end kick strength it's hardly going to be a Shetland pony kick...) at about 450-500kg, which is more than 4x a standard male.

OPs premise of kick strength per pound holds up for human v. horse.

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ImReverse_Giraffe t1_j5vzkrt wrote

I meant horses having incredibly weak legs....OP said that elephants have sturdy legs because they have to carry a lot of weight and mice have small legs because they don't. Horses are a counter to that statement.

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ablondedude t1_j5wf1uf wrote

Their legs still allow them to run really well though. It's sort of like our shoulders. Our shoulder is the most flexible joint in the body, it's also the weakest. There's a tradeoff for everything.

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ImReverse_Giraffe t1_j5whpo3 wrote

Did I ever say that they couldn't? No, I didn't. I was refuting a specific point that the guy above me made. Nothing more, nothing less.

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ablondedude t1_j5wiki6 wrote

Chill tf out, I'm just adding to the discussion. Not everyone in the world is trying to argue with you and someone saying something you don't agree with isn't automatically an argument.

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beebsaleebs t1_j5w31yl wrote

Coolest thing about horses is that they are basically running on their evolutionary equivalent of their fingertips/toe tips.

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Shamon_Yu OP t1_j5uwvl8 wrote

They do break their legs very easily.

The strength of a bone is proportional to its cross-sectional area. The loading on a bone is proportional to the mass (volume) of the animal. Volume increases more rapidly than cross-sectional area when the animal gets bigger.

Edit: What was unsatisfactory?

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Den1alzz t1_j5v8jh3 wrote

if you have to say unfair criticisms in the comments the shower thought probably wasn't realistic

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t4thfavor t1_j5u74s8 wrote

Probably owing to the fact that we as humans have a tendency to over train a specific skill or strength whereas an animal has only a couple basic instincts one being "don't die" and the other one being "procreate".

If a horse trained like a kickboxer, it would be a totally different story.

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Broken_castor t1_j5uhcus wrote

Holy shit I know the ethical problems that would come with this but I would pay a lot of money to watch horse kickboxing

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Devone5901 t1_j5urjxr wrote

I saw a video of a female horse in heat kill the male that was approaching from behind with a kick straight to the skull. Was really sad to see actually. Maybe best not made into a sport.

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kierantheking t1_j5vjnvx wrote

Ok but maybe you train them to kick a ball through a field goal instead

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t4thfavor t1_j5uy47s wrote

That’s the most North Dakota sport I’ve ever heard of!

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UtahDarkHorse t1_j5u7gyo wrote

I don't think so. I think that relative to the rest of living things, we're pretty much walking water balloons.

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Lallner t1_j5uqzsy wrote

LOL - Our only biological advantages are our huge frontal lobes and opposable thumbs. Turns out, those are really good advantages.

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TroyBenites t1_j5v08gb wrote

We have many other charactheristics, like sweating that we take for granted

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GodofWar1234 t1_j5vgenz wrote

Absolute giga Chad moment when our ancestors could literally outpace and tire out prey animals who were fast but couldn’t maintain the speed for a long distance.

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eazy_64 t1_j5wrob9 wrote

I’ve tried my hand at a couple different hunting methods, but persistence hunting like the Raramuri is definitely the hardest. Setting traps and running prey into your trap is one thing, but running down a deer until it collapses of heat exhaustion… yikes.

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OmegianLord t1_j5v6dvz wrote

We also are the most stamina efficient creatures on land.

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Joe30174 t1_j5wa7q3 wrote

That's what I originally heard. And then I heard for mammals that run, we are. So idk which is true.

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annomandaris t1_j5wenpx wrote

Horses are the only animals that can outrun us over distances.

The key difference is sweat glands and the ability to cary water. Humans have sweat glands all over their body, horses also have a large area they can sweat from.

This means other animals can run, or get rid of heat, but not both at the same time, whereas humans can run for many hours if they have water. And eventually the animal they are chasing wil overheat.

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Joe30174 t1_j5wfvmz wrote

Interesting, I didn't know about that at all. What about camels?

Also, my response was to argue against that we are the most stamina efficient land mammals. We'll not argue, but note that I have heard (watched a science video on it not too long ago) that there are land mammals that DONT run and are more stamina efficient than humans.

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annomandaris t1_j63phyg wrote

I dont know about stamina efficiency, humans superpower is that we can get rid of heat efficiently. Take wolves, they can only sweat thru their paws, and their main way to lose heat is by panting, which they cant do while running. So if you were to just keep after them, even if your slower, they will eventually pass out from heat stroke. The same applies to other animals.

Meanwhile the human is jogging after them, sweating all over, the faster they run the more efficient the sweat evaporating is, and they can drink or pour water over them selves as well.

Thats why we win persistance hunting.

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I-dont-rickroll t1_j5y81nj wrote

Horses can only do it in cold weather, in hot weather we still beat them.

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ablondedude t1_j5wfn36 wrote

To my knowledge dogs (and wolves I guess) are the closest to beating us in endurance, we still have the advantage over large distances though.

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Joe30174 t1_j5wg5pf wrote

Maybe. But I'm referring to all land mammals, including ones that don't run.

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Soggy_Midnight980 t1_j5wpnah wrote

I’ve heard that a dog would die if it tried to keep up with a marathon runner.

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Grinagh t1_j5uofwm wrote

Since OP is a bit daffy, deer, kangaroos have as powerful if not more so, can they do a roundhouse? No but few animals would be able to given that bipedalism isn't common. Then again there are animals that can exert as much force as a fired .22 round and they are smaller than us, so I don't know how OP would interpret those animals in his comparison.

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LeTroxit t1_j5v6b4e wrote

Understandably OP has fallen into a very anthropocentric view on this. I would certainly argue that all species currently existed have evolved methods that justify their current existence that become very hard to compare the second you think about things like how dexterity and strength together allow certain combinations that really make either individual stat not mean a whole lot.

If you really want to think about what makes humans impressive let's go with some neuronal factors like cortical surface area and thickness in proportion to cranial volume, that'd be a neat thing to compare.

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OmegianLord t1_j5v6kjj wrote

Those aren’t kicks those animals do, so their argument’s safe from them.

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Puzzleheaded-Poet392 t1_j5u7tq1 wrote

First I recalled a horse kicking a human, but I just got what does "pound to pound" mean. Indeed, I can't think of an animal specie weighing 75 kgs and having powerful kicks. Someone should tell us about seeing a gorilla or some other big monkey fighting. Maybe they are stronger than us, but I don't know.

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J-Dabbleyou t1_j5woes2 wrote

Based off what study? There are certainly smaller animals kicking way out of their weight class

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Substantial-Ad6622 t1_j5vsp1j wrote

I wonder if it's partially because we're bi-pedal and most other animals are not so most carry their weight dispersed on 4 legs whereas all our weight is carried on 2, building strong legs. Kangaroos, ostriches are also bi-pedal and have strong ass legs.

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eternalankh t1_j5wrr0e wrote

yeah... turns out that, contrary to popular belief, humans are surprisingly good at a lot of things.

Not sure when we collectively decided that all animals are better than us at everything except thinking.

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batsoupseller t1_j5x73kl wrote

I mean…name one wild animal that is similar/greater in size to a human you think every fully functional human can beat in a one on one.

Heck, I’ve seen people lose fights with geese before

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Still09 t1_j5xeecp wrote

We have very high highs, amd superbly low lows.

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Showerthoughts_Mod t1_j5u291q wrote

This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.

Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"

(For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)

Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.

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Drunkjesus0706 t1_j5xi2x0 wrote

Try a kickboxing match with a kangaroo. Pound for pound that welterweight whoops some ass against a heavyweight human.

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