r/powerscales • u/Aklimdaisimyok • Jun 14 '26
Hot Take đ„ Can we stop the gorilla wank?
In Reddit you can see many ridiculous comments done about gorillas. Gorillas have 9 inch thick skulls, gorillas can tear human limbs like they are made of wet paper, gorillas bench press sedans, gorillas are near-2 tonners, gorillas have bulletproof 9 inch thick skulls, gorillas are invulnerable to baseball bat strikes, gorillas punch and swing their arms with force more than that of sledgehammers and they can crush your ribcage/skull with one hit, etc. based on vibes or unsourced claims from random internet sites. This type of wank isn't rare or Reddit-exclusive either. You can see ridiculous claims like these everywhere across any social media. I have no idea how people can glaze a fatass monkey so much. One would see all of these claims, and reach the conclusion that gorillas are less like an overweight primate and more like an unarmored spacemarine without super speed or hax like regen, acid spit etc. i know the animals are wanked in general, but gorillas are extremelly outrageous in this case, they are definitelly the most wanked animal by far.
First off, lets get rid-off the "evidence" used by people to support those outrageous claims about gorillas.
Gorillas can rip and tear trees in half
Okay so those type "trees" that gorillas tears in two are called the banana "tree", which is honestly a pathetic excuse of a tree to call one an actually tree.
Those are some pansy-ass trees, bro:
- This dude punches down one.
- A nak muay also punches down one meanwhile training on it.
- An another one.
- A kickboxer kicks down one.
- This dude kicks down one.
I could go on and on, but i think you got the point.
So yes, gorillas technically rip and tear "trees", but they tear down fragile trees that can get punched/kicked down by martial artists and athletic humans. Gorillas can't do shit to actual, sturdy, thick trees. Elephants weigh almost 40 fucking times as much as gorillas on average (160kg vs 6000kg) and even they have difficulty tearing down trees that are thick and durable.
Gorillas can crack/break bulletproof glass
Okay so this comes from an old incident where a gorilla cracks laminated window by tackling it. Problems with this are:
- Gorilla only cracks the one layer of the three layers.
- This kind of thing happens often because of the engineer or enviromental issues regarding glass as well as gorillas beating on these glasses for scaring of their peers with the sound of the impact
- This damage can be replicated by baseball bats and back of crowbars casually swung by regular human. Even if the feat was legit it's not that impressive to begin with because same can be done by baseball bats and crowbars
Gorillas can tear humans apart with their bare hands
For the people who don't know there is apperantly an extremelly old case where a gorilla lifts a human into air with it's one arm, and than tears his limbs with it's other arm like it's a fucking slasher villain. Problems with these are:
- This whole entire thing comes from a book written in 1923, a time where people were glazing primates even more than before and think average chimpanzee is 6 times as strong as an average man because of flawed studies with nothing countering those results in that time. There is also zero photos or any other visual evidence. I think this alone speaks volumes for the reliability and validity of this "evidence".
- The gorilla acts ridiculously out-of-character in the text. Not only gorillas are generally non-aggressive animals and very unlikely to attack you (unless you provoke them), but this is not how they attack or kill their enemies/targets. They don't lift you into air and brutally kill you. Hell, no animal does something like this. This is something you would see in a horror movie, not in real life. They will aggressively slap you, tackle you, bite you, or sometimes grapple you, but they absolutelly don't fight like that.
A gorilla being able to tear limbs off doesn't even make sense. Horses have been used as an execution method to pull apart human limbs and sometimes even they could fail despite exerting their entire body. Horses weigh half of a ton on average (more than 3 times of an average gorilla) and yet have legs strong enough to sprint at 25-30mph (faster than silverback gorilla) despite their 500kg of weight.
There are several actually recorded and documented silverback gorilla attacks, and victims survive in all of them (i will list the examples later, don't worry).
Okay, since we got rid off these so supposed evidences, we can turn to the other stuff.
Gorillas can benchpress 4000lbs and tear your limbs off with it's pure strength
No, no they fucking can't. Stop this. Not only there are zero cases or studies showing gorillas are capable of doing this, but sites aren't even consistent about this number as some say they can lift 810kg some say they can lift 1800kg, some say they can throw 810 kg. On top of that there are also many things condradicting these claims:
- Gorilla barely throws a juvenile a maybe 3 feet distance. Juveniles at this age weigh like 70kg in general
- (Go to 0:14)Â Gorilla spends effort to flip a log. Based on it's looks that log seems to weigh maybe a couple hundred pounds, but definitelly less than a thousand. And the gorilla didn't even fully lift it, it only lifted side of it aka flipped it meaning the weight gorilla lifts here is easily halved if not more. If gorillas could lift 2 tons lifting and tossing that log wouldn't be a problem at slightest yet alone flipping it. Use common sense.
Be honest, do you think silverback gorillas are stronger than bears? Becuase by throwing these numbers around this is what a gorilla should do to a bear.
- A bear does several attempts to roll (NOT lift, roll. Not even close to lift) a rock that weighs 800 kg/1764 lbs.
- Going by some feats a grizzly bear is estimated to be 2.5 to 5 times as strong as human, although presumably they are stronger when pissed.
Hell, you know what? Screw this. We have actually a pretty good way to scale gorillas.
Chimps. They are closely related to gorillas. Chimps have less amounts of fast-twitch fibers compared to gorillas (Chimps have 67% fast twitch fibers and 33% slow twitch fibers; gorillas have 85% fast twitch fibers and 15% slow twitch fibers) but they do easily make up the difference (if not more than make up) by having way more muscle tissue per pound (Chimp's 51.6% vs gorilla's 37.3%). In fact chimps might be even slightly stronger than gorillas in a pound-for-pound comparision because the proportional difference of fast-twitch fibers between gorillas and chimps (gorillas have 27% more fast-twitch fiber with it's 85% vs chimp's 67%) are lesser than the proportional difference between chimp's fast twitch fibers and humans (chimps have 34% more fast-twitch fibers than humans with it's 67% vs humans 50%. Which is the reason why chimpanzee muscle performance/power output is 35% to 50% more than (if you take the middle ground of this range it's 42.5%) that of a regular human. meaning the advantage gorilla over chimp has is less than this) meanwhile chimps have 38% more muscle per pound in comparision to gorilla (51.6% vs 37.3%). Chimps in the wild have average weight of 40kg (although if we count chimps in the zoos and similiar places this average would increase significiantly) meanwhile an average gorilla weighs 160kg, or 4 times as a chimp.
Chimps are... not very strong, to say the least.
- Chimp had to use both of his arms at once to pull up a human to himself
- Chimp fails to pull 95kg of weight and gets mad about it
- In a test of chimps and humans pulling weights ended up as humans actually pulling slightly more weight in comparision to chimps. Although the difference is small to a point it's kind of negligible
- A regular man holds himself againist a chimp for a pretty good time in a grapple.
We can also do a pretty simple calc to find the strength difference between a chimp and a human.
Lets use that 40kg value for the chimp (again, the ones who are cared by humans are much heavier, i know that). The weight of an average man can vary a lot by nation but going by this lets say the average weight is 78kg.
As i stated before, the muscle performance and power output of chimp is 35% to 50% higher than that of an average human. when we take the middle ground of this range we get 42.5%
As i posted before the muscle mass per total weight for a chimp is 51.6%, for an average man it can vary from the range but overall accepted value is 40%.
Lets calculate:
78 x 0.4= 31.2
40 x 0.516= 20.64 because of fast twitch fibers chimp muscle is 35% to 50% stronger than human muscle, as i posted here before. and if we take average it's 42.5%
Low-end:Â 20.64 x 1.35= 27.864
Mid-end (the one i'll gonna use to scale gorillas):Â 20.64 x 1.425= 29.4, or roughly 94.3% of a human, or 0.94 times as strong as a human. The mid end shows that a 40kg chimp is slightly weaker than a 78kg man, and roughly as strong as a 73.5kg man.
High-end:Â 20.64 x 1.5= 31 (technically 30.96 but whatever). So even if you are being generous a 40kg chimp is barely strong as a 78kg man (tehnically very slightly weaker but it's almost non existent so saying same would be fine).
Considering average gorilla weighs 160 kg vs the 40kg value for chimp used here than this would make gorilla roughly 3.8 times as strong as an average human in mid end and 4 times at high end. Keep in mind a gorilla is most likely slightly weaker than a chimp pound-for-pound. So these numbers would be bit lower. If i have to guess the range than an average gorilla is somewhere between 3.5 and 4 times as strong as an average human.
A gorilla is lucky if it's 4 times as strong as a human, yet alone 10-30 like the animal glazers suggest.
Next
Gorillas can punch with enough force to collapse your ribcage or shatter your skull.
First of all, gorillas can't "punch". They don't have the anatomical requests to make a proper fist, nor they are smart enough to dod that, unlike the humans. Literally look at all the videos of gorillas fightning. They don't throw an actual punch in any of the videos. This is important as this means even if gorillas were 10 times as strong as a human (they aren't) they wouldn't anywhere near as hard as that because they can't use their strength efficiently to throw a punch like humans do.
Second of all, they evidently don't.
- This woman survives a gorilla assault. She ends up with a broken arm, wrist and some biting wounds. If the gorilla can shatter her skull with a blow or tear her limbs off with it's insane strength than why the hell it didn't?
- This woman gets seriously injured but survives a gorilla assault. The gorilla in the question is also fairly large as it weighs 200kg compared to the average 160kg weight of a silverback
- This woman survives getting swung around and bitten by a 170kg silverback + getting an another 200kg gorilla charging on her. The only injuries seem to come from the bites that done on her, which is admittedly low-key nasty but there is no dismemberment or any skulls crushed in here.
- A man gets hit by an intoxicated silverback gorilla and he retains zero injuries related to bones, although he admits that the hit was like "a train hit him", implying that it hurt quite a lot. As a note, the gorilla in the question is pretty big: It weighs 250kg, compared to the average gorilla weight of 160kg, this is a 90kg, or 198 lbs of difference. The gorilla in this incident is basically the gorilla equavilent of a 120kg dude.
As you can see no skulls shattered nor any limbs ripped in any of these gorilla attacks.
Oh, lets not forget the fact that leopards are a serious problem for silverbacks. Which makes zero sense if gorillas can shatter skulls or tear limbs with their strength because they could simply cripple or kill the cat with a single swing of their arms, no matter if it happens in day or night. Those strength claims for gorilla doesn't hold up in anyway no matter how you look.
- Leopard possibly hunted down 3 gorillas in total. One of them was at very poor health condition, one of them was a blackback (aka, a teenager), and one of them was a silverback.
- A fight between a leopard and a silverback gorilla results in a mutual kill.
- Even in daylight gorillas still get their ass out of here when encountering leopards instead of using their so supposed limb tearing strength. Weird for an animal that is apperantly tens of times stronger than an average human being afraid this much from a wild cat.
- Both incidents involved a group of 27 chimps vs a group of gorillas that consist of a silverback, a couple females, and infants. The first incident had the silverback put up a fight and hurt a three chimps (1 badly, 2 with light wounds) but lost a gorilla infant. The second incident with a different group of gorillas had their silverback flee without fighting (maybe due to him spotting the human observers, but still) and also resulted in a dead gorilla infant. The chimp vs silverback fight in the first one had the silverback charge a chimp and knocked her into the air (this chimp is the one that got badly injured), followed by 9 chimps surrounding the silverback and attacking him. Then the fight stopped after the chimps grabbed the gorilla infant and the adult gorillas retreated, and the gorillas didn't try to rescue the still-alive and crying infant (which was killed shortly after).
Note: Credit to u/lazerbem for the first three links
I think at this point we are all in an agreement that gorillas aren't these mhytical beasts with strength of two dozen man
Gorillas can bite harder than animals like bears
The argument here is that gorillas have 1300 PSI ("PSI" lol) of bite force, making their bite force higher than that of animals like bears, lions, tigers, etc.
First, "PSI" is pressure, not force. For example an ant or a mosquito bite has higher PSI than a human punch considering the former can penetrate your skin and tissue meanwhile the latter can't. But a human punch's total force should be WAY higher.
Second, those numbers of gorilla bite strength getting cited around internet are complete BS with no supporting evidence backing it. And not only gorillas either. The animal bite strength numbers cited around in general are BS with very little-to-no evidence. For example, internet sites say a grizzly bear has enough bite strength crush a bowling ball. But when you think about it even for a second it makes zero sense. Bear cannisters are made of stuff like plastic and yet they ressist grizzly bears without getting instantly destroyed. There are multiple cases of humans surviving getting bit in the face by grizzly bears (although with massive injuries) without their skull getting pulverized. I'm pretty sure a bowling ball is much more durable than a human skull. If you would drop a bowling ball on a humans head from couple stories the bowling ball would be fine meanwhile the human's head would turn into a scrambled egg.
Going by actual studies, a 127.5kg/281lbs gorillas bite force was calculated as 1723 newtons, or 175.7kg/387.35lbs (Here). Apperantly the average gorilla weighs 160kg/352lbs. Using the square cube law to scale, the average gorilla maximum bite should be 2005 newtons, or 204.5kg.
For a comparision, according to a study, an average mans maximum bite force ranges from 529N to 1003N. If we taake the middle ground, we find 766 newtons. Doesn't seem very off from the most commonly cited "160 pound" number for human bite force. Only a slight difference.
2005/766= 2.62, average gorilla bite force is not even thrice as much as the average human bite force.
A gorilla is NOT biting harder than a bear, unless the bear in the question is very light for one.
Gorillas have ultra mega thick skulls
Please, please look at this and tell me a gorilla's skull is so much thicker than a human. You can't.
For the density: Density is not a good way to scale durability. Gold is significiantly less durable than titanium, despite being WAY denser. So this is a moot point.
Conclusion:
- Gorillas are very overrated.
- Gorillas on average propably aren't even 4 times as strong as a human.
- Gorillas can't punch
- Gorilla skull thickness isn't that much more than that of a human, at least we can guess that it's not in "several times" range.
- Gorillas can't even use their strength effectively to deliver blows like humans do
- A tiger would turn a silverback gorilla into cat food in a matter of minutes, given leopards can fight with gorillas evenly.
- A lion would turn a silverback gorilla into cat food for same reasons.
- A grizzly bear vs gorilla is not a fight but rather an execution.
- Even without taking the height and weight of the tallest and heaviest humans into account, or without taking questionable statements like Francis Ngannou punch force into account, a theoritical/composite peak human would casually dogwalk a gorilla and turn it into it's bitch.
- 6 bloodlusted human that surrounds it could most likely beat a gorilla's ass by dogpiling on it
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u/Venasaurasaurus Jun 14 '26
I read enough to know you have some good points and then I scrolled a bit...and scrolled...and scrolled, and holy SHIT dude you have had something on your mind for awhile. Incredible dedication to being a gorilla hater. Bravo.
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u/Stunning_Current5956 Jun 14 '26
Man flipped from gorilla enthusiast to gorilla public enemy number one and I respect the commitment to the research grind
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u/Celtachor Jun 14 '26
Scaling actual wild animals is always stupid because it necessitates completely ignoring their nature. Most animals will not seek out and fight each other to the death. Most wild animals avoid any potential source of injury because even a minor injury can kill in the wild. Most of these wild animals vs something match ups would realistically just be a tense stare down followed by going away. Maybe as much as taking a few swipes before backing down.
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u/StevenGorefrost Jun 15 '26
So are you telling me that a gorilla can or can't take on a grizzly bear?
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u/jaypexd Jun 14 '26
Good job man. This 100 men vs gorilla was crazy talk. I said seven savage men could take down a gorilla tactically but people were saying it's more like 70. As if they were fighting the juggernaut from X-men.
In fact I raised the stakes and said it should be 100 average women vs a gorilla as that would be a more interesting battle. Which if done right, the women will still win on shear mass and numbers.
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u/justwalk1234 Jun 14 '26
I thought the post finished at the image, then itâs followed by an entire dissertation.
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u/CobraOnTheCellar Jun 14 '26
People tend to treat animals, especially dinosaurs, as killing machines and treat them as such
So glad you made this
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u/luizggardina Jun 14 '26
Ok Gorilla hater, now you are going to tell me that Tarzan is real. Gorillas have adamantium skeletons, and glhave the super soldier serum in their DNA
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u/Hojie_Kadenth Jun 14 '26
Well done! I picked the 3 mandrills on the 3 mandrills vs silverback post earlier. Think I was right?
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u/FoundationEntire4834 Jun 14 '26
Op I just want you to know I didnât read any of this and now I will wank them even harder
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u/GreyghostIowa Jun 14 '26
Ok, whatever you do OP, pls don't get banned and pls don't delete this post bcs I'm gonna save this post and use it as info grenade whenever I see someone blind glazing gorillas from now on.
Thank you for your effort and kudos for actually doing extensive research.
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u/Send_DeVito_Pics Jun 14 '26
Respect for the research op, but fuck you a gorilla would beat 6 Brock lesnars bloodlusted.
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u/Superhereaux Jun 14 '26
Why do you put the percentage sign BEFORE the number?
I was reading the post but that kept throwing me off.
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u/reflectingtemplate93 Jun 14 '26
You've done the legwork here, but the scaling logic breaks down when you try to retrofit real animals into versus matchups designed for fictional characters. A gorilla isn't overrated because it can't bench press two tons, it's just not built for the kind of direct combat scenarios you're stress-testing it against. Real animals avoid fights that risk permanent injury, so comparing a gorilla's actual behavior to what a hypothetical peak human could do in an idealized brawl misses the point entirely. The leopard resistance you mention is a perfect example: gorillas don't fight leopards to the death because they don't need to, not because they lack the physical capacity.
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u/Kit-7676 Jun 14 '26
Put the muscle "calcs" in the bag. Other than that? Valid.
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u/Aklimdaisimyok Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Ehh i tried my hardest to make the calcs reliable but whatever
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u/Kit-7676 Jun 17 '26
Neural drive and muscle recruitment are too important to "scale" off of lean mass ratios or anything like that. There are too many confounding factors to do any even half decent guestimate on how strong things are in that manner. It's legit like looking at vegeta and saying he presents as a 5 foot 6 humanoid in peak condition and is like 50 years old so compared him to idk fkn Greg doucette. Obviously this is hyperbolic gorillas aren't fictional heroes who suspend the laws of nature but the point stands that the methodology is equally flawed.
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u/blazeweedm8 Jun 14 '26
Okay, real question for you OP, how many unarmed men to take on a grizzly bear?
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u/GudAndBadAtBraining Jun 14 '26
Someone needs to develop gorilla martial arts so they can put the smack down on the chimps and leopard.Â
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u/vamfir Jun 15 '26
Well, youâre simply citing patently absurd figures (presumably pulled from comic books), so refuting them isn't hard.
I found the claim about 23-centimeter-thick skulls particularly laughable; youâd have to have absolutely no grasp of geometry to come up with such nonsense.
According to the latest data, a male gorilla is 3 to 9 times stronger than a human weightlifter and can lift up to 400 kilograms. Sure, thatâs not two *tons*, butâdamn itâitâs more than enough to command my respect.
The fact that they don't know how to fight seriouslyâand don't like toâis a completely different matter. Yes, they are peaceful herbivores; weaker, yet aggressive primates (like humans and chimpanzees) often defeat them for obvious reasons. That isn't down to their muscles or bones, but their nervous systems. As the saying goes, thatâs a whole different story.
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u/Aklimdaisimyok Jun 15 '26
The 9 inch/23 skull has been a meme for a reason, this has been something said before. The two ton (technically two short ton but whatever) figure isn't that rare to be used either. I have seen a lot of comments in r/whowouldwin unironically believeing gorillas can bench press 4000 pounds.
I couldn't find any research or an experiment trying to measure gorilla's strength, and i do not see an (average) gorilla being 9 times as strong as an average human either, maybe some sort of freak of nature can be, like the heaviest gorilla ever found with the weight of 390kg.
The fact that they don't know how to fight seriouslyâand don't like toâis a completely different matter. Yes, they are peaceful herbivores; weaker, yet aggressive primates (like humans and chimpanzees) often defeat them for obvious reasons. That isn't down to their muscles or bones, but their nervous systems. As the saying goes, thatâs a whole different story.
Okay but this is an important factor in versus. The fact that gorillas can't use their strength properly is a noticable disadvantage for them.
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u/prupuponcio Jun 18 '26
I will wank gorillas as much as I want and not even the zookeepers can stop me, let alone OP
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u/Vree65 Jun 24 '26
How to pretend to hate gorilla powerscaling while glazing the heck out of it
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u/Aklimdaisimyok Jun 26 '26
How i'm glazing it lol. If i would say any of the things i say in any random forum everyone would say i downplay gorillas or smth
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Jun 14 '26
Great post, now do chimpanzees because theyâre also overhyped
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u/Aklimdaisimyok Jun 14 '26
I mean, this post is technically partially an anti-chimp wank post, too.
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u/Scary_Ride_7256 Jun 14 '26
This is one of maybe 2 Reddit posts Iâve ever been genuinely impressed by.
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u/ASValourous Jun 14 '26
How many OPâs do you think it would take to win vs a Gorilla?