APES AND MEN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 20

APES AND MEN

*A QUESTION OP MUSCULABITY.

That a. chimpanzee is three or four times as strong as a husky farm lad appears from test* made by John E. Bauman and described by him in the "Journal of Mammalogy" (Baltimore). This result, Mr. Bauman says, raises several interesting - question*. Why this execs of strength I How was it acquired? Did our remote ancestor* possess it? How did they lose ft? As a matter of fact, Mr. Bauman say*, few animals are stronger, museularly than man when the necessary reductions for size and muscular cross-section are made. Since chimpanzees are so much stronger weight for weight, and also muscle girth for muscle girth, than men, to what factor* do they owe this very striking superiority t Is the chimpanzee muscle of superior contractile quality! Or is superior nervous stimulus exerted on the muscle fibres! Or is it partly one and partly the otherfA three or four to one difference certain--ly demands an explanation. No one could attribute it to exercise in comparing long-captive' chimpanzee! wjth students fresh from strenuous fc»nn labour. Heredity suggests itself immediately, and rightfully so, but as the ek? igencies of an arboreal life in which strength is a prime asset have probably resulted in natural selection maintaining this high strength level, the further question suggests itself: Did our arboreal ancestors possess a comparable strength,, and if so at what period did; such a high degree of strength cease to be an object of stringent selection and gradually diminish to a lower level!' Furthermore, ' heredity -"and selection might explain the original acquirement "and subsequent transmission of such; strength, but they leave the physiological problems1 of its immediate causation unexplained. It is the pliysiologist who must deal with these. Taking a comparative view we find that, making the necessary allowances for difference in stature and' amount of crosssection of muscle in proportion to body weight, man compares favourably with many, probably with most, other anii mals. We rank considerably above the, Ungulata (hoofed animals), and the oft-cited strengths of the beotle and ant, when duly corrected a* just indi;cated, appear to be/materially less than our own. Probably croM-iection for cross-section of muscle man stands materially .above the bulk of the animal species. The animals outranking him, it would seem, are the carnivora, the other primates, and such animals as the mole, etc. It would be an experiment both interesting and valuable to test the relative strength of the felidae (cat tribe) and the chimpanzee and orang, in order to determine which is entitled to the rank of greatest strength in the animal world.per unit area of muscle crosssection. The author has thought of do-, ing so himself, but the practical difficulties are immense in the case of the felidae." Milo Hasting*'*, statement is a, true one that:. "The cat tribe and man seldom if ever test their powers save in a manner in Which Weapons and not, strength decide ..the issue.',' The power of blow of the paw of a lion or tiger might perhaps be measured with a specially constructed apparatus, and the power of spring by an arrangement of a net attached to a dynamometer dropped over the beast in the act of springing, but, difficult'M this would probably prove to do, homolo-^ gising the result with those of tests on the primates bids fair to be a greater problem. . (