The bench press is considered a hallmark of all powerlifters, and a true test of your
raw, physical strength.
With some light training, pretty much any human is able to bench press their own weight,
but what about a full-grown male silverback gorilla?
How much would a wild gorilla really bench if they were trained to do so?
Mountain gorillas are pound for pound, one of the strongest animals in the world.
In fact a ranking looking at animal strength versus body weight found that the top four
strongest animals in the world were, in order: number one, the dung beetle which can lift
weight up to one thousand times its own body weight.
That would be the equivalent of the average human picking up a small building and chucking
it over their shoulder.
At number two is the rhinoceros beetle, that can grow to six inches and carry weight up
to 850 times its own body weight- that would be the equivalent of a human carrying a train
passenger car!
At number three is the leaf cutter ant, which can carry weight up to 50 times its own body
weight, or the equivalent of a human carrying a not-quite adult hippopotamus.
At number four is the gorilla, capable of carrying objects up to 10 times their own
body weight.
Gorillas need all this strength too in order to defend their group of younger males, females,
and babies from wandering predators or other males looking to take over a group for themselves.
While rare, fights between big silverbacks are vicious, and often end in death or severe
injury to one or both of the animals.
Because of their massive strength, it's perhaps surprising then to discover that gorillas
actually prefer not to fight, and actively engage in threatening displays and false charges
to scare away competitors.
After all, even if you were a big, bad silverback in charge, you probably would rather find
a more diplomatic solution to a problem than going toe to toe with another gorilla that
has almost as much strength as you.
With great power comes great responsibility, but also an extremely high risk of death or
injury, and gorillas simply rather not risk it most of the time.
In fact, gorillas are amongst some of the most peaceful primates, next to bonobos, though
they have suffered a maligned reputation around the world thanks to their fearsome displays
and massive size.
In truth, a wild gorilla would prefer to avoid a confrontation with you, and if he did charge
it's almost certainly going to be a false charge meant to scare you away.
Outside of zoos where animals can be extremely depressed or stressed by their living situation,
wild gorillas have only ever been recorded attacking humans who were actively hunting
them or when in fear of being harmed by the human.
But let's say that we wanted to train a gorilla to go for the world record in bench pressing-
well actually a gorilla would easily be able to beat the world record even without training,
but let's say we wanted to find out what the maximum power of a gorilla would be.
Because they use their arms for walking around, climbing, punching poachers in the face, and
pulling down thick tree branches so they can munch on leaves and fruits, gorillas have
seriously more developed arms than humans do.
Their upper body strength is around six times greater than the average human, so breaking
that record is no problem for even the weakest gorilla.
But what would the maximum a gorilla be able to lift be?
Right now the world record for a raw bench press is 739.6 lbs (335.5 kg), set by American
Julius Maddox.
This isn't the greatest weight ever bench pressed, as those numbers were accomplished
with the help of a bench shirt.
A bench shirt is a shirt of extremely rigid fabric or materials that artificially moves
certain muscles into better positioning, allowing for more lifting potential, and we're not
interested in having our gorilla cheat, he's going to do things the all-natural way.
Also a lot of those record holders for non-raw presses were never drug tested, and once more,
we're not going to let our gorilla cheat his way to glory.
At one of his latest weigh-ins Julius weighed a whopping 449.5 pounds (204 kg), meaning
that he was able to bench press 164% of his body weight.
Assuming that with training, a gorilla could match the level of physical fitness Julius
has, that means that the average male gorilla, which weighs 430 lbs (195 kg) would be able
to bench press a whopping 4,242 lbs (1924 kgs).
The largest gorilla on record was an animal shot in 1938 who weighed in at 483 lbs (219
kg), and if he had been trained to power lift instead of being shot by idiots, he would've
been able to lift an incredible 4,753 lbs (2,156 kg).
That is a serious amount of lifting potential, and a trained powerlifter gorilla would definitely
come in handy when moving day comes around.
A Stalin era scientist once dreamt of creating an army of genetically engineered human-gorilla
hybrid soldiers, who would have the strength of a gorilla and the intelligence of a man.
For us though, we think this scientist was in the wrong business, because if we used
the power of genetic engineering for evil, we would definitely create a moving company
made up of hybrid human-gorillas who could effortlessly lift furniture over their head.
Moving would be a snap, and because they aren't really people you could, much like the average
American worker, deny them health insurance or benefits of any sort while literally paying
them bananas!
Do you think we could ever train a gorilla to be a powerlifter?
How much do you think a hulked-out gorilla would be able to lift?
Are you an unemployed geneticist with few if any moral scruples looking for an exciting
business opportunity?
Let us know in the comments!
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