Biologists have debunked the myth of the superpower chimpanzees
The study of individual muscle fibers of chimpanzees was allowed to refute the view of a much larger force of these monkeys compared to man. Individual fibers can develop only slightly more powerful than the human, but the considerable role is played by the ratio of the different types of muscle proteins. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It is believed that chimps have much greater muscular strength than a man. Previously, various scientists have tried to figure out how things really are, and found only a small difference. In the new study, biologists from the University of Arizona and their colleagues confirmed these findings by studying the individual fibers of the muscles of various body parts of monkeys.
They also studied the structure of muscle fibers of chimpanzees. The major protein part of their structure, myosin, exists mostly in two forms: the myosin heavy chain I and II. The latest variation is reduced faster and develops more power, but gets tired faster than the first.
Scientists have found that, on average, in the human muscle 70% of the fibers is reduced slow and 30% fast, while the chimpanzee, on the contrary, 33% and 66%, respectively.
Biologists have used the program to calculate the total forces on the basis of these data and found that the monkey’s the muscle as a whole can develop a power of approximately 1.35 times more than the human.
The authors also examined the muscle fibers of other mammals, such as mice, Guinea pigs, cats, dogs, horses, lemurs and macaques.
It turned out that the predominance of slow fibers trigger is observed only in humans and slow-moving primates such as the slow Lori. Biologists have expressed the idea that the evolution of human ancestors after the failure from their arboreal way of life went in the direction of greater endurance, and the ability to quickly develop great strength. Another advantage accruing to people fibers is less energy consumption, which potentially frees up resources for other adaptations, for example for a large brain.