How strong are monkeys anyway?

Sure they're cute in their little monkey suspenders, but chimps are amazingly strong.

And as sadly demonstrated a few weeks ago whe a chimp nearly mauled a woman to death, they can be nasty.

But exactly how strong are they? Figures range from five to eight times stronger than human, a figure which doesn't really make sense when held up to scrutiny. I mean, yeah, sure, they're that much stronger than me, but I sit at a desk all day long and the only thing I ever lift are potato chips.

An interesting article in Slate magazine examines the issue. Yes, they're stronger than the strongest human, but not THAT strong.

A chimp on four legs can easily outrun a world-class human sprinter. But it sounds extreme to suggest that humans are only an eighth as strong as chimpanzees. Consider that a large human can bench-press 250 pounds. If the "five to eight times" figure were true, that would make a large chimpanzee capable of bench-pressing 1 ton. It's just the sort of factoid the zoo staff might tell you to keep you from knocking on the glass.

Photo from Slate.com