![]() Just like humans, animals can also build extra muscle by doing the same thing over and over again: a draft horse will build different muscles than a race horse just because it is using them differently. The downside of intelligence is that you can use it in self-destructive ways. This is especially true of less intelligent species, because the conditions to be sessile are too rare to waste "instinct space" on, but humans who have a much more broader range of behaviors with far more learning behaviors, so we can become very sessile. Some animals are less lazy than humans: many animals will also instinctively stay active even when provided with the conditions to be sessile, but when forced to not be active we do indeed see muscle atrophy. We used to see atrophy in animals a lot more, but with animal welfare laws we usually don't keep animals in tiny cages that prevent them from moving anymore. Walking 10km a day or more is normal for most humans without advanced technology. If you are constantly active you don't need to "exercise" to build muscle - you are getting loads of physical activity. Consider how physically fit hunter-gatherer humans are in terms of their cardiovascular systems. However in nature it is hard to be sessile. If anyone has some useful references with quantitative data, that would be great as well.Īnimal muscle does atrophy and gain depending on use.įirst, animal muscle does atrophy if the animal is too sessile. I also recall reading a study in grad school of an orangutan pulling over 600 lbs with one arm clearly not straining according to the article (though I failed to find the reference while searching today, unfortunately). I am skeptical of this last part because some estimates of gorilla strength suggest they can lift upwards of 10 times their body weight. So do animals like gorillas have muscles that either start and stay stronger than humans or just atrophy much more slowly? Or is it just a matter of constant use? Or is it just a different proportion of fast vs slow twitch muscles as this study suggests? Meanwhile, I've watched various types of monkeys and apes do handfuls of seemingly effortless pull ups at zoos as part of their play. However, even then I would have struggled to do more than a few pull ups with a 170 lbs strapped to my waste. ![]() ![]() I used to workout heavily and used to hold my high school bench press record (330 lbs in the 160-171 lb weight class). However, last I checked a male silver back can easily lift several times its own body weight. I cannot imagine ever seeing one in the wild intentionally doing something akin to weightlifting like humans solely for the purpose of getting stronger (if I'm wrong about this, that would be fascinating to know as well). Suppose I consider the silver back gorilla as an example.
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