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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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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.

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

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• 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.

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

Fun party guy over here.

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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.

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

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

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.

Straw man much?

I’d kick the shit out of him if he did

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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 --

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

Literally?

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

Few times a week.

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

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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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Then explain horses.

Yep

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?

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

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

Would you like any more shovels for that hole, OP?

No thanks. You seem to be doing the shoveling part.

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.

We also are the most stamina efficient creatures on land.

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

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

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.

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

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Even considering this, what about jerboas?

straight into orbit

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mmm.. Ok. Checks out.

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

For running mammals, we rank quite high in endurance.

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

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.

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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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.

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.

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

Horse Gracie would be a champion!

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.

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.

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

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

Bug's Life reference, very nice.

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.

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.

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

That moment when Kevin Spacey was a Disney character for a loveable Pixar kids' movie.

I’ve seen this; can confirm and agree

We have very high highs, amd superbly low lows.

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

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

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.

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

Highest*

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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.