Often, I have wondered if the apparent strength of a human is skewed toward smaller people. The people who can lift themselves up ropes with ease; do 100 pull-ups and push-ups; and those who are more agile are generally smaller in size, weighing far less than their Herculean neighbors at the gym, who can probably lift twice as much as they can.
I’d put myself in the category of bigger men. I’m pretty strong, but not Herculean. As a man who can bench press 220 lbs- slightly more than my weight- I can’t even do a pull-up. I can barely do 20 push-ups. And I certainly can’t climb up a rope. A man weighing 100 pounds less and can bench his weight can probably do at least 10 pull-ups, twice as many push-ups, etc.
What finally explained this for me was the concept of surface area in relation to size, also called the square-cube law. Think of a bodybuilder. As their muscles get bigger, their strength only increases by the cross-section, whereas their mass increases by the entire volume. Increasing the size of muscles while maintaining its proportions renders the bodybuilder weaker relative to his/her overall mass.
The same can be said of many other animals. Bigger animals have more surface area. They therefore need a wider muscle-and-bone relationship to support their weight. That’s why elephants can’t jump and ants can lift 50 times their weight.
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