How strong are chimpanzees?

To start with, we will be examining this subject at some length, including applications, research, formal and anecdotal studies, and drunken tales. This being the Internet Age, much research will also be conducted using other people's bogus research and man vs. monkey fantasies.

How strong is an actual chimpanzee? Yeah, they're strong. Before that can be answered, we have to figure out, you know, how the hell do you figure out how strong they are??? They won't do benchpresses, much less a clean and jerk. So let's explore these mysteries before we move onto the advanced topics of simian snowboarding and MMA/Chimp cage matches and even Orangutan/Sumo tug of war.

First, primary scientific research is hard to find. Most citations in the modern press boil down to two references, neither very rigorous: The Straight Dope, and GoogleAnswers. An article was written in 1943 called The Bodily Strength of Chimpanzees and seemed to be pay dirt, until they wanted me to pay $19 just to see the synopsis. Clearly, there was nothing of value there. The only other source I could find was a "study" done in the Bronx Zoo in the 20's, using some kind of contraption like a lat bar to measure how strong the various chimps were.

They can explain:

"In the test, a 165 pound male chimp pulled, with one arm, 847 pounds. And this isn't even necessarily the limit of its strength - it's just when the chimp got bored of pulling. Also - get a load of this - in the same study, a 135 pound female chimp pulled 1,260 pounds. With one arm!"

So there you have it, case closed, because clearly it's all settled. Or not:

'I couldn't find much on the physical limits of the human body (like "how strong does a chimp have to be to pull my arms off?") but there are some similar cases, which we might use for analogy...'

SNOWBOARDING MONKEYS
I couldn't possibly provide a better overall description than (Mr.(?)) Louie's story here: http://www.endlesslope.com/louie.htm.
But the upshot is that monkeys, or, more specifically, apes, can snowboard. I've been saying that for years on some of these more teenage-friendly slopes, but no bother. This is for "real."
Some items of interest from the tale:

• Chimps have "beedy eyes"
• Chimps have an "aversion" to snow
• The ski lift resulted in jumping and "panic hysteria." Yeah, really.
• They invented the first slip-in snowboard boot "if more chimpanzees take up snowboarding"!

They dubbed him "THE XTREME PRIMATE" (Caps and spelling theirs)

ULTIMATE MIXED SPECIES MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTING
Perhaps not shockingly, from a culture that still wonders "Could my dad beat up Bruce Lee?" (answer, by the way, depending on whether Mr. Lee could fight back from beyond the grave), it shouldn't be a surprise the various mouth-breathers wonder not just whether their favorite fighter could take on some random ape, but also what martial arts style would be most appropriate for kicking bonobo ass. Let's explore. Scratch that. Let's sum up:

Orangutan vs Chimp in MMA ***FANTASY*** wonders... well, I think that sums up pretty well what they're wondering. If you had fantasies about noble, intellingent, threatened animals forced to fight for your pleasure, who would rip who to shreads first. Money quote:

"Orangutans would have the size and strength but a chimp is the fighting ape from hell."

There is a great deal of discussion (at link above) about various aspects of chimpanzee and orangutan physiology and what the posters' opinions about their fighting styles might be.  There general feeling is that the winner would then be crushed by the gorilla in the real championship fight, although there is a vocal minority who believed that the winner would have to prove itself against a baboon first. However, I believe that this video shows this theory is weak at best. For those who don't want to bother watching it, a female chimpanzee fights off a male baboon... most of the time she's carrying her baby while she's doing it. (Also, no one gets hurt in the video, but there is a little violence. 

SWIMMING

One of the theories about why apes are so much stronger than humans is that their bones are denser than ours; thereby making them weak (and reluctant) swimmers. In fact, some have wrongly claimed that humans are the only primate that swims. This "fact" can be used as "proof" that humans are not in fact descended from apes. For example: Here. And that's a scientific argument. Others simply argue that just because humans swim doesn't mean that we descended from other swimming creatures. In any case, there is plenty of proof that other primates swim. This video provides anecdotal proof in the form of extremely cute monkeys swimming with Yello's 80's classic "Oh Yeah" inexplicably as the soundtrack.

This post about gorillas swimming needn't be read (I read it for you), but it does contain an interesting tidbit about the scientific method: "As far as I know, no one has ever thrown a gorilla into the water and watched what happened..." 

Speaking of the scientific method, here's someone using the existence of the scientific argument to argue for creationism, or at least that because the "aquatic ape theory" is so blatantly wrong, creationism must be right by some kind of christian transitive property. He actually says "Evolutionism is a cancer on rational thought;" which itself is an argument so ludicrous it makes my brain hurt, but whatever.

Here's a picture of an orangutan swimming. Apparently, they swim all the time; in fact, it seems to be such common knowledge that they swim that the whole thing about humans, primates, and swimming seems silly, since, you know, we don't have to look very hard to find an example. Maybe we're the only primates that like to swim. Heck, I don't like swimming that much. Maybe that's some kind of proof for creationism, too.

TUG OF WAR

Here's a video of an orang doing a tug of war with a sumo. The first time I watched it, I thought it was awesome. Now I think it looks fake. Look at how the sumo dives into the water. But it's still cool and likely an indication of what might happen, if that sort of thing happened outside of reality tv shows.

It's been fun, but I think I'm putting this puppy to bed.