Why Humans Can’t Lift as Much as Ants (And How We Could) | WIRED

Ants have been documented to be able to carry up to twenty times their own body weight. If a human could lift twenty times their body weight that would be about 4,000 pounds. Ant biologist Fred Larabee and paleoanthropologist John Hawks talk about how humans lift heavy weights and why we can't lift as much as ants. John and Fred also look into what it would take for humans to be able to lift as much as ants can.




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[ShortHax]

It’s because we say “we got this”, when we definitely haven’t got it

[alinursayat]

In a nutshell: Muscle size is not proportional to the weight it can lift.

[AlbertaGeek]

I'll save everyone 12 minutes: because the square-cube law.

[theorytime]

It's because a wise man once said: " THEY JUST BUILT DIFFERENT " .

[drej]

So the apex of carrying things is "be like beautiful Squidward"?

[DavidCherrie]

This doesn’t explain why we can’t lift so much times our body weight. You left out the fact that the physics doesn’t scale up the same way.

The larger something gets, the strength increase by the square but the mass increases by the cube. Square-Cube Law… It’s the same reason why an ant can fall 1000 times it’s height yet still survive.

[MastaRikta]

This is an informative video but doesn't adequately address, or properly answer, it's own premise. Simply put, humans being apparently weaker than ants has little to do with their physiology, anatomy, musculature, or any of that. It's simple the square cube law. When something doubles in size, its surface area is squared but its volume cubes. We assume on an intuitive level that it would scale linearly, in which case, a human-sized ant would be bald to pick up a car. In fact, they'd barely be able to hold themselves up, because their volume, and thus their mass and gravity's effects on their mass, has increased exponentially compared to their surface area. No doubt, ants possess remarkable anatomical adaptations. But if you were to somehow make a human the size of an ant, they'd surely be able to pick up as much, if not more, than ants. This is a fantasy of course, since a creature resembling an ant-sized human would have to built completely different, on the molecular level, to function at that size. But the point remains, ants are pretty strong compared to other insects, but not compared to humans. Saying ants are better at lifting and carrying things is like saying dolphins are better at jumping. Indeed they are, but it's apples to oranges since they're operating in completely different domains than humans operate.

[alihn]

To save you some time, it's because of the square cube law:

When something gets larger, the strength multipies by the square, while the size multiplies by the cube. For example, if a 1ft×1ft box had strength and was living. If it was sized up 300%, it would be 9 times (300% multiplied by 300%) as strong, but 27 times (300% multiplied by 300% multiplied by 300%) as large.

[-vz]

Short answer : We can't

Long answer : We can't do that, ants are immortal

[trungnghiapham]

I get it now, to lift heavy things, human must evolve into gigachad, thanks darwin!

[eldenbingchilling]

Ok now I need to become a big brain chad so I can lift tons

[tropicbliss]

Thank goodness there are no giant dragonflies now. That is scary.

[vignesh]

So we have to become handsome squidward to lift like ants, fair enough

[Tharathgar]

I would have preferred to see the changes to make humans lift larger weights with their arms not the mouth.

[Ratchet]

Why design who can carry that much with its jaws like an ant and not one that lifts with its arms or on its head?

[FaultyStar]

Me who lifted a leaf 21x the ant's body weight: I've beat the system.

[Violet-tzjj]

Interesting! Can we also talk about how good the editing is for this video??? 10/10. The style was so charming and engaging, can I learn everything that way??? This is what I will point to as an excellent example of educational video content.

[psophilsalva]

You may say that the stronger human is gigachad but he is megamind in reality

[BhanuPChauhan]

Somewhere sometime aliens are studying humans in the same way.

[harizaka]

Flashbacks to the cursed humanoid cheetah thing