# Are Humans the Weakest Animals "Pound for Pound"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 22, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016 "2014-05-22T16:47:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/41 "2014-05-31T01:54:21Z")
> [@Dog80](#): > > Humans may be weak, but they have some tactical advantages. > > They have long arms that can wrap around things. I believe it could be possible to kill an animal like a leopard by performing an MMA style chokehold. > > Also the legs of most animals look like having a very limited range of motion. I guess if a human could grab a limb and pull it sideways with enough force it could incapacitate the animal, or at least, inflict great pain. Again, it’s hard to compare animals with very different builds. A human has some advantages because of its extremely mobile arms and grasping hands. It’s probably easier for humans to immobilize most other four-legged animals than vice-versa. Also, as in Akeley’s case, humans have the capacity for strategic thinking and can attack another animal in the best way to incapacitate it. > [@Incubus](#): > > Given our advantages, are there animals particularly wary of humans due to our builds? I’m not taking about prey animals that will bolt from so much as an errant shadow, but animals comparable to a human size and weight? > > I imagine to many animals we are quite strange. Not a ton of bipeds out there. We can also throw things well, which I imagine would confuse some animals. On continents, there are few if any animals that have not encountered humans and learned fear of them - or at least learn to fear them through the actions of other animals. In the case of remote areas where animals are not hunted but other predators are present, I think humans would be more likely to be ignored because we wouldn’t be recognized as predators. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2014, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/42 "2014-05-31T04:34:27Z")
> [@Batistuta](#): > > The answer is sloths > > While we’re on it, I’m not sure how ‘strong’ some of the larger dogs really are. Great Danes look stunning from my point of view, but they don’t look particularly strong. Maybe I’m wrong though > [@Batistuta](#): > > Fair enough, I have very little experience with dogs so I was probably wrong 😉 It’s just that, every time I see a Great Dane, I can’t help but think “I would totally beat that dog at armwrestling”. Seriously. When I was a kid, we had a Chow/Shepard mix, maybe eighty pounds after the lean puppy phase and before the scrawny old dog phase. I could grab him around the chest and throw him to the ground without much trouble. Last year, I was wrestling with a friend’s big amiable Great Pyrenees, who weighs not that much more, maybe 120 pounds, and I could not budge that dog. She seemed to think it was funny to watch me try, right before she batted me to the ground with one paw, and I’m a big guy who lifts heavy things up ladders for a living. Jesus, but some of those big dogs are strong. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2014, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/43 "2014-05-31T04:47:41Z")
My ½ St. Bernard & ½ Great Pyrenees at about 110 lbs knows how to use his weight. I am north of 350 and if he don’t wanna, I can’t make him without hurting him. And I won’t hurt him… ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2014, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/44 "2014-05-31T05:10:28Z")
If you’re looking for animals weaker by weight than humans, look for those with lots of fat, since fat doesn’t contribute to strength. Especially marine animals, whose bodies are used to the support of water. I think maybe a walrus? ---
**Author:** ![EdwinAmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5fc32e/32.png) [@EdwinAmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwinAmi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/45 "2014-06-02T03:13:28Z")
Yes, I remember from a TV show they claimed that elephants are weaker than humans for their weight and size. But in general an animals strength-to-weight ratio will lower as it gets bigger, since the mass increases by the cube of the size (i.e. volume), but the strength doesn’t (muscle are larger but we can presume definitely not as much larger as the whole animal is - indeed muscles are “one dimensional” strands, so very crudely we could say the strength increases linearly with size) But larger animals will be stronger on net other than those extreme generalities, there’s too much variation by type of animal and everything else for there to be any meaningful patterns ---
**Author:** ![EdwinAmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5fc32e/32.png) [@EdwinAmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwinAmi)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2014, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016/46 "2014-06-02T03:15:53Z")
knifing a leopard? I remember a story about a 70+ year old Masai man who was attacked by a hyena (or maybe his cows were - he was in the middle of doing the cattle herding thing) and to survive he reached into the animals mouth and ripped its tongue out! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-humans-the-weakest-animals-pound-for-pound/689016.md?page=2)