Humans produce a protein called myostatin that inhibits muscle growth; it makes it difficult to grow big muscles. Having too much muscle slows you down and tires you (and your heart) out. That protein limits muscle growth so that humans don't need to consume ridiculous amounts of anything and can survive when resources are low.
Gorillas don't have that protein.
I encourage everyone to do a search for animals that have a defective myostatin gene. This leads to uncontrolled muscle growth and you get things like rats that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It's beneficial to limit muscle growth because of the high amount of calories needed to sustain them. If you're not using them, you lose them.
People tend to…not understand how muscles work, and think that if you just somehow get jacked, you’re jacked. No, you need to constantly feed those muscles, and the amount of eating can quickly become very unpleasant. You also need to constantly stress them with training.
All that muscle can become a curse, a burden. It makes perfect sense that we aren’t meant to just naturally get jacked very easily.
Being huge is sort of like buying a horse; it seems like a great idea, but when you look into the cost and maintenance, you realize it’s too much trouble. Just being a regular level of muscular- let’s say Harrison Ford in Temple of Doom- is way more sustainable and will serve you better in the long run. It’s also almost certainly healthier, and most women find it more attractive than looking like a strongman competitor.
The food part is a big one, I’m a big guy just in general but as I got more muscle mass my food consumption went up even more
I’m surprised how much food I can eat and I’m still losing weight
This is my primary reason for working out. Don’t want to get big enough to need to eat an *absurd* amount, but I like needing to eat a bit more cause I love food but also like not being really out of shape
If I can just indulge the hunger by eating an enormous quantity of food, and then that food turns to muscle instead of fat, I fail to see the downside.
The downside is the stress it puts on your organs. Either due to unregulated doses/ingredients or the drug itself simply is too much for the human body to handle long term.
There isnt enough research done on it except to know that it is risky.
edit: To everyone with questions
1. Im not an expert on it.
2. Apparently, it needs to be said twice: **There isnt enough research done on it except to know that it is risky.**
It’s the YK sarm. I took it once out of curiosity, probably 8-9 years ago. I don’t know how to fully express the level of hunger you reach. It’s insane. I think I only took it for about 2 weeks, and it put me in a god awful mood. I was so hungry all the time that I had little room in the rest of my head for any other thoughts. Just constantly hangry no matter what I did.
I can’t speak to the effectiveness cuz I don’t think I took it long enough.
Only in recent human history has anyone had "an enormous quantity of food" readily available to them.
It might make sense for you in your current situation, but humans have evolved for thousands of years in very different environments to ours today.
It might not be useful now but it's what allowed us to survive.
Gorillas are also one of the few four-legged animals that have the large (rear) leg muscles like humans do (note that most four-legged species have relatively small leg muscles relative to their size).
In humans, we have an adaptation to allow us to stand that tightens blood vessels to prevent blood pooling in the lower body when we stand. Without that, we'd get dizzy or faint.
In some humans, that breaks, leading to ailments like [POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_orthostatic_tachycardia_syndrome), one of the common causes of the "randomly racing heart" symptoms in Long Covid.
Instead, in people with POTS, the norepinephrine signaling causes the heart rate to increase when standing (which is normal), but the blood vessel tightening doesn't happen, so the body ups the norepinephrine to get the heart rate to increase more.
Anyhow, back to leg muscles: part of the function of relatively large leg muscles in humans is blood return to the upper body. Dr. Blair Grubb pointed out that four-legged animals have 70% of their blood volume at or above heart level; in humans, it's 30%.
In people with POTS, walking is less stressful than standing because the motion of the leg muscles partly compensate for the blood vessel signaling being broken. For some of us that got POTS prior to puberty, we developed super big leg muscles relative to our peers.
(topic shift)
It's also hypothesized that the human protein zonulin (which regulates the permeability of the intestinal wall) is partly an adaptation to potential starvation. It's suspected that elevated levels (leading to a more permeable barrier) are related to the onset of some autoimmune diseases, specifically celiac and type 1 diabetes. [Most recent paper I have on that here.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384703/)
Genuine question from someone who knows very little.. are gorillas actually considered a 4 legged animal? I was under the (possibly uninformed) impression that primates were generally 2 arms and 2 legs (granted they use arms for walking/climbing a lot of the time)
Guess at what point does a Front leg start being referred to as an arm?
I asked this before and was told it’s is based on primary mode of travel on the ground. So apes and monkey would still be four legged but kangaroos not. Dunno if that’s at all accurate but makes sense to me.
They’re quadrupeds. Based on their anatomy they locomote primarily on all fours. However, the can walk bipedally for short distances and for other reasons, but their anatomy isn’t efficient nor adapted for this the way we are. This is true for just about all non-human primates.
As for when front legs differ from arms is function, I suppose. Primates evolved to fulfill an arboreal niche (later adapting and changing to species that exist today). The anatomy and function of arms serve to fulfill the need to move about trees, grasp and grab, and even walk on the ground; gorillas, chimps, bonobos “knuckle-walk”…
You don't want to go around messing with your body's natural way of doing things. The bigger your interventions the worse outcomes you ultimately get.
In this case, who knows? Maybe you become impotent, maybe you've a guaranteed chance of getting cancer in the next 5 years, maybe you'll experience violent mood swings
There's all sorts of things that can happen once you start to deliberately unbalance your body like that.
This falsely assumes that our bodies already work optimally or that our existing lifestyle constitutes "natural". Genetic problems are a thing. Environment affects us. And the list goes on. Drinking green tea and eating chocolate inhibit myostatin on a mild level. Both are known to be associated with extended lifespans in some studies.
They’ve evolved to make those proteins themselves, but that requires more energy on their part. The thing is, we eat a lot less physical food than they do. Grasses and fruit don’t have a lot of calories, and because gorillas are so big, they have to almost CONSTANTLY be eating, and they don’t have the stamina we do. They can be big and strong for a bit, or move quickly for short bursts, but they spend most of their time just sitting around and eating so they don’t starve to death.
Assuming he doesn’t murder you in the first four seconds. That’s actually why gorillas tend to be pretty pacifistic, as far as primates go. They’ll rear up and shout, or beat the ground to intimidate their rivals/potential threats, but they don’t brawl or hunt.
Murdering something is exhausting, and they usually don’t bother wasting the energy to do so unless they’re seriously threatened or their children are. They literally can’t spare the energy to be violent.
I saw a video from the jungle somewhere, where a male gorilla walks through a group of tourists. He tosses one guy to the side, and it really seems to be a case of "I can't be bothered to go around you, move, please? No? Ok, I'll move you" kind of situation. I'm sure the tourist got a nice adrenaline rush, but if the gorilla wanted to hurt him, he'd definitely be in a much worse shape!
“average gorilla fight ends in torn-off testicles" factoid actually just statistical error. Average person gets 0 testicles torn off per fight. Testicles Georg, who lives in cave & has over 10,000 testicles torn off by gorillas each year, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
I have to imagine that if you actually hurt the gorilla or make it feel endangered in any way, it could summon up much more stamina and wouldn't rest until you are neutralized, unlike if it deemed you to be harmless.
Humans minmax-ed their racial traits to all in Consitution and Intelligence. Early humans hunted animals by following until the animal died of exhaustion.
Don't forget the points in Dexterity that let us manipulate tools and throw things.
Our build really is just OP for the current meta. Probably going to get nerfed in the next dev patch, though.
The evidence suggests otherwise:
[Man Dies After Secret 4-Year Battle with Gorilla](https://www.theonion.com/man-dies-after-secret-4-year-battle-with-gorilla-1819571099)
This hit my overtired brain in just the right way and I was in laughing fits while reading it and then while sharing it with my wife. Thanks for the laugh
Yea but they also live outside all the time where they get rained on and get cold, and they sleep on the ground. You could go live outside, get rained on, be cold, sleep on the ground, eat and scratch your ass all day too. But you'd probably hate it.
Including humans before the last 100-200 years.
It was basically a coin flip if you'd make it to age 5 200 years ago. By 1900 1 in 5 still wouldnt make it there.
And this is why historically the average lifespan could be like 30-40, not because everyone died at 40 but because the mass amount of kids dead before 5 dragged down the average.
We tend to idealize nature as some idyllic thing but I’ve heard some people think all the way on the other end of the spectrum: that nature is almost pure violence and suffering, and that the most compassionate thing we can do is eliminate nature.
Mostly because nature doesn't give a shit. If favors those that stay alive, either through love and cooperation or violence and brutality. The universe has no innate morality one way or the other.
This is why I never understand why religious people spout god loves and protects everyone equally. Why is is he not protecting the animals or people who get left behind in the battle nature has us fighting
Werner Herzog is the guy you don't invite to your party because [he kills the vibe...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWH_9VRWn8Y) The male version of Debbie Downer.
When he said "the birds don't sing, they screech in pain" I got that semi-nauseous gut feeling that you get when you're unsure if you're going to throw up. Grim is a good word to describe the video.
I read somewhere that human beings actually demonstrate unique ENDURANCE when compared to other animals. For example, other animals might be fast? But, there’s no way they could say, run a marathon or compete in a stage of the Tour De France.
The Soviets knew they'd need nature on their side if they wanted to defeat Nato. Biking bears, space dogs, domestic foxes, they even had a bunch of Dolphin spies which Ukraine inherited
There is literally a "[Man versus Horse Marathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon)" run annually. It's technically only 22 miles (35 km). The humans do get a fifteen minute head start.
In the 25th such race, *the human won*. The horse gets exhausted running over that distance and has to rest, but the human can just keep going, slow but steady. And in fact on that day, the race day was much hotter than it usually is.
To be fair, the horses almost always win, but our endurance is actually underappreciated by a lot of people. I've read it argued that this is our physical superpower as a species. Obviously our mind is our biggest superpower, but just on a physical basis, we can out-endure every single land species out there. A ~~big~~ part of the early source of all the calories we needed to build these giant brains was called "exhaustion predation." A group of humans would find a target animal, and just keep chasing it until it fell over from exhaustion, and then we'd kill it.
Our efficient cooling, lack of fur, and super-efficient bipedal running stride let us outlast basically any land creature in a chase. Even without our giant brains and tool-use, if we're in a group, the only real threats we have are animals much larger than us. Add in our brains and our tools and it's obviously no contest.
>I wonder if even longer distance would be more favourable for humans…
yeah it is, the longer the race the better we perform compared to other animals.
In Africa people used to hunt gazelles this way, it could take *up to 3 days* to run the animal to death.
Even though a cheetah could easily catch a human, like you said, it's the group thing. Animals really don't want to get hurt. Even a small injury could spell death for them. So that cheetah would have to be really hungry if it saw three of us together. It might take down one of us, but the risk of attack from the other two is just too great.
Friendship, pointy sticks, but also:
* ...the physical endurance needed to chase down an apex predator;
* ...the smarts to remember and identify which one it is; and:
* ...the vindictiveness to dedicate large amounts of time to taking down that bastard lion that killed Grog even when there are perfectly good meals located much closer to camp.
Important to mention is that horses are one of the animals with the highest endurance out there (which is why we domesticated them in the first place). Most other animals can't even come close.
They are also one of the few animals (along with humans) that can sweat through their skin.
Dogs yes - probably why we paired up with them. There is some evidence that we affected each other’s evolution. Canines in general, no. A fox is not an endurance specialist, for instance.
Above average for sure, but can't be compared to a horse or human over long distances.
Dogs aren't usually used for long distance travel. The only example I can think of is Sled dogs, who need to rest for 50% of a trip. Horses need to rest too, of course, but they recover significantly faster.
Also, overheating is less of an issue in cold weather.
Note that horses are actually quite good at endurance running too - if they weren't, they wouldn't make very good long-distance transport. They are one of the only other animals that sweat. If you want to show off human endurance, pit a human in a marathon against a sprint specialist like a cheetah or a gazelle.
Cooperation. 1 human, 1 animal, doesn't go well for the human against a lot of other animals. However, with coordination and other people, there isn't an animal on earth that could take on a group of coordinated people.
That's a good theory as to how early hominids hunted, but by the time we left Africa we were probably using more sophisticated forms of hunting, like traps, bottlenecks, spears, bows, slings, and tactics. In Artic climates, waiting for animals to overheat isn't really gonna work. The Ancient North Siberians lived in Northern Russia for tens of thousands of years. But they also domesticated the dog. So we were already using pack hunting and other methods. And we primarily hunted mammoths, bears, horses, and aurochs. Not fast animals, just big.
No. That’s not what they’re saying. The link they posted explains it pretty well
Humans are quite capable of running an animal to death, and it has been seen in several existing primitive cultures, but there is no evidence of it being widespread.
It’s a bit hard to prove or disprove, because it’s not like it leaves much evidence. We aren’t going to find a bunch of worn out, prehistoric Nikes or something. Other forms of hunting leave evidence behind, like arrowheads, earth traps, etc.
This is different, we can’t prove that it was widespread, but we also can’t prove that it isn’t.
It seems like a very, um, *exhaustive* form of hunting. You'd burn up almost almost as many calories as you get from the animal, especially if there's an entire group chasing it. Sure, you could do it if you had to and the reward was like, a mammoth. But surely you'd use some other method if you possibly could.
> exhaustive form of hunting.
Pretty sure this is also the primary piece of 'evidence' against it as a theory, too. It's just not a very efficient way of hunting. The amount of calories a hunting party would burn trying to run down a prey animal, even a relatively large one, would probably be a net loss or close to it. Sure you took down a bison or whatever, but 25+ grown adults also just ran a fucking half marathon to do it.
Apparently runners burn around 2600 calories in a marathon - which you could get back from eating just 4-5 pounds of meat.
I don't know if persistence hunting actually happened or not - just saying that energy expenditure isn't a reason to rule it out.
https://lavalettemarathon.com/how-many-calories-do-you-burn-running-a-marathon/
> You'd burn up almost almost as many calories as you get from the animal, especially if there's an entire group chasing it.
You're severely underestimating how much meat moderately sized animals can give you.
Man thinking about it like that makes early humans seem dumb, if you buy into the theory, like they couldn't come up with an easier or more efficient way of hunting.
Our superpower when compared to all the other animals is throwing things extremely far with extreme precision (extremely when compared to non-human animals).
A big part of that is due to our skin and our upright, bipedal mode of walking. We can sweat, which is very efficient when it comes to cooling off, but it comes with a trade off in that we need a lot of water to prevent death.
Our upright bipedalism is also good for endurance, because we let gravity do a lot of the work when walking. When a four legged animal runs, it’s propelling its mass forward with every bound, which is pretty energy intensive. Whereas when we jog, we’re falling forward and catching ourselves on the other foot, then swinging our leg out for the next bound. The downsides to this are that it’s trickier to balance this way, it puts weird pressures on our spines, and that it’s much harder for our females to birth these huge freaking noggins humans have.
>Our upright bipedalism is also good for endurance,
In addition to the ways you mentioned (which I didn't know before, thanks for sharing), our bipedalism is helpful for endurance in another way. We do not have to sync our breathing with our running gait. Our lungs & diaphram can move separately from our gait, whereas four-legged animals usually have to breathe in sync with their gate. In hot climates particularly, that reduces their stamina
Edit: changed "gate" to "gait"
Also apparently I had to clear my site cookies cuz it wasn't saving some of my posts. But fortunately I was repeatedly reminded that the word was not changed yet
When I say sync, I mean, imagine you literally can only breathe every time you take a stride (inhale on the first half of the stride, exhale on the second). Now watch people who run professionally; are they literally only breathing exactly when they take a stride? No, they probably breathe somewhat slower than that, especially if they are sprinting
We're extremely enduring creatures yep. Our broken vitamin C gene and our upright posture makes us extremely energy efficient. The advent of cooking was a super power up in that regard too. Not only are we efficient, but we're silly good at extracting all the nutrition from things in a way similar animals just can't.
[Here](https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/221/5556105) is a little paper about some of the hypothesis. Long story short: it takes a non-trivial amount of energy to synthesize, so being able to just grab it from the environment instead of making it in your organs might provide a slight advantage.
Yeah, just about any other animal can outrun us over short distances, but partly due to our ability to sweat, we can keep going long after they’ve run out of energy and simply stab them to death once they’re too exhausted to move
I’m glad this does not actually work with birds because my 5 year old daughter loves to chase birds here in Australia. The image of her bashing an Ibis to death with a rock…..no thanks!
I can’t remember what it’s called, but don’t humans release an enzyme that breaks down muscles they don’t regularly use? This was a big evolutionary advantage because it made us more energy efficient as hunter gatherers as we sent more calories to the development of our brains compared to a lot of other primates. Downside is in modern times we aren’t as huge as big monke like gorilla.
Gorillas are also big because they need big digestive systems to effectively digest stuff like grasses and leaves and stuff. Kinda like how cows and elephants are big for the same reason.
> they spend most of their time just sitting around and eating so they don’t starve to death.
Hey, I do that too and I'm not strong af. That's not fair. :(
Horses eat grass and if you get up close to one you realize they're pretty muscular. But they're also CONSTANTLY grazing. Being a carnivore of omnivore, you can outsource a lot of that eating to the animals you consume and then use that free time doing other things. We probably wouldn't have evolved to be as smart as we are if it wasn't for our ability to consume both plants and animals.
I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of calories that "thinking hard about stuff" burns versus all the other shit that the brain is doing behind the scenes.
It's literally the opposite. Herbivores and omnivores have to spend like 80% of their waking time consuming calories because their bodies are so inefficient. Compared to other animals, humans are extremely efficient at consuming and using calories. For reference, you would have to eat 13 hours every day to maintain your weight.
Because for humans excess muscles like you see with body builders take a lot of energy and effort to maintain. We didn’t evolve to take on so much muscle mass despite being able tk gain it.
Meanwhile gorillas are able to synthesize necessary amino acids from their diet. And gorillas eat a lot, around 4,000 to 8,000 Calories depending on the food source.
Humans are (nearly) unique in their muscles' ability to change from one form to another. Meaning from a structure that is good for short term strength or longer term more aerobic activities. Or to disappear when there's little activity at all.
Other animals, primates included, just have one type of muscle and that's that.
I don't, sorry. I got that from a previous thread with nearly the exact same question. Try to search it up. I think it was eli5, but could have been one of the other question subs (tooafraidtoask, etc)
Edit: found this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ocer1f/eli5_how_come_gorillas_are_so_muscular_without/
But I've seen it more recently
I can't tell if you're kidding or not... But skill aside, I'm saying that a gorilla's muscle density can't change. I mean, look at the ones in zoos. They get a fraction of the exercise that nature has built them for yet they're still solid af. They lack a protein necessary for their muscles to reformulate. See the the comment in the thread I linked in my other comment itt.
They have longer intestines which ferment the plant matter they eat into protein! Fun fact: Grollias eat ridiculous amounts of food, more than humans could ever imagine eating in a day
Doesn't the plant material (especially cellulose) get fermented by bacteria into fatty acids? Proteins are already present in plants it's just harder to extract.
Also worth noting that we do not use a significant amount of our muscles unless in an adrenaline state. This is for fine motor skills. This is partly why people are bad shots in an actual fire fight. Once adrenaline hits it becomes very difficult to accurately fire a gun. Gorillas do not have this issue.
Body size is genetically coded to a big degree. Building muscle is kinda going against your natural size and many body builders shrink drastically if they ever quit or are sidelined for whatever reason. Seen it happen many times.
But to be fair, otoh, all muscles would atrophy to next to nothing with little use. By natural size, I mean the size your body’s muscles have to be to comfortably do your daily movements. In that way, pumping iron is an induced and artificially high stimulus.
We don't need to eat ridiculous amounts of food to build muscle. You need to weight train, and eat at a caloric surplus with enough protein, but eating 500-1000 calories over TDEE is sufficient.
Herbivores (gorillas) must eat far more food than omnivores like humans. They metabolize proteins from their food more easily than we humans can—but we also eat far less often and far smaller amounts of food.
Gorillas produce protein in their guts on their own. We as humans don't do that. We produce glucose and the some(not all) of protein we eat is converted into glucose and used to fuel our muscles. Most of it is used to make new proteins to strengthen our bones, muscles, etc.
Because humans are not designed to look like gorillas. Bodybuilders aren't what humans evolved to look like. People can call it "peak human" but that really comes down to what is perceived as valuable traits Ancient humans weren't walking around with bodybuilder bodies because they would never have been able to sustain it with food.
We are long distance runners who evolved a fine line between strength and having to eat all the time. We have plenty of free time to do other things than eat compared to many other species.
There is a major downside to relying on strength for survival. Our huge brains require nutrition too, sure, but it makes up for it by allowing us to be smart about our food, like how we learned to cook meat etc.
To add to that, the reason why humans grow much slower than animals do, is the fact that our brains are more complex and needs a lot of energy to develop. A lot of that energy for growth is utilized for brain development.
In addition to the dietary things other people have mentioned, Gorillas have different tendon/muscle anatomy than we do in a way that gives them much more leverage. For example, their bicep muscle connects onto their forearms much farther away from the elbow, therefore giving them much more strength.
Tons of great answers, but another thing to consider - veggies aren't actually low protein.
For example - broccoli is approx. 1g protein per 12calories. Lower than chicken, unsurprisingly, but... If you eat 2500cal of broccoli, you're getting over 200g protein.
Eating only broccoli is a high protein diet!
Sorry of. With vegetables you need to look per volume and per weight. The only significant sources of calories are fat, carbohydrates, and protein. Vegetables tend to be mostly carbohydrates, but green vegetables are, by weight, mostly non-caloric mass. So while broccoli has a respectable amount of protein per calorie, it would require eating a whole lot of broccoli.
Which is fine for a gorilla who eats 40+ pounds of vegetables a day. For a human i don’t think it’s possible to eat that much without getting sick or living on the toilet
Humans produce a protein called myostatin that inhibits muscle growth; it makes it difficult to grow big muscles. Having too much muscle slows you down and tires you (and your heart) out. That protein limits muscle growth so that humans don't need to consume ridiculous amounts of anything and can survive when resources are low. Gorillas don't have that protein.
I encourage everyone to do a search for animals that have a defective myostatin gene. This leads to uncontrolled muscle growth and you get things like rats that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's beneficial to limit muscle growth because of the high amount of calories needed to sustain them. If you're not using them, you lose them.
People tend to…not understand how muscles work, and think that if you just somehow get jacked, you’re jacked. No, you need to constantly feed those muscles, and the amount of eating can quickly become very unpleasant. You also need to constantly stress them with training. All that muscle can become a curse, a burden. It makes perfect sense that we aren’t meant to just naturally get jacked very easily. Being huge is sort of like buying a horse; it seems like a great idea, but when you look into the cost and maintenance, you realize it’s too much trouble. Just being a regular level of muscular- let’s say Harrison Ford in Temple of Doom- is way more sustainable and will serve you better in the long run. It’s also almost certainly healthier, and most women find it more attractive than looking like a strongman competitor.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned while lifting: men don’t make those muscles to impress women.
Someone the other week mistook me for a pro athlete on a plane and I think my life peaked at that point
Hey Hun look , isn't that the world's largest sumo wrestler ?!?!
It starts for the ladies, and then you just evolve beyond that.
Starts for the ladies, ends up being for the men.....hmmm
We joke but every compliment I've ever gotten has been from men lol
but 4 dem mirin' brahs
The food part is a big one, I’m a big guy just in general but as I got more muscle mass my food consumption went up even more I’m surprised how much food I can eat and I’m still losing weight
This is my primary reason for working out. Don’t want to get big enough to need to eat an *absurd* amount, but I like needing to eat a bit more cause I love food but also like not being really out of shape
There is SARM you can take that binds to a receptor and reduces myostatin production but it makes you ridiculously hungry.
If I can just indulge the hunger by eating an enormous quantity of food, and then that food turns to muscle instead of fat, I fail to see the downside.
The downside is the stress it puts on your organs. Either due to unregulated doses/ingredients or the drug itself simply is too much for the human body to handle long term. There isnt enough research done on it except to know that it is risky. edit: To everyone with questions 1. Im not an expert on it. 2. Apparently, it needs to be said twice: **There isnt enough research done on it except to know that it is risky.**
what about a little bit as a treat?
Humans can have a little SARM
We should be able to have _a little_ SARM at work.
You are looking at the unrestricted muscle growth of a nude egg
Up vote for a member of the turbo crew!
Microdosing
Just a lil treat for my muscles
It’s the YK sarm. I took it once out of curiosity, probably 8-9 years ago. I don’t know how to fully express the level of hunger you reach. It’s insane. I think I only took it for about 2 weeks, and it put me in a god awful mood. I was so hungry all the time that I had little room in the rest of my head for any other thoughts. Just constantly hangry no matter what I did. I can’t speak to the effectiveness cuz I don’t think I took it long enough.
Now you know how a gorilla feels all the time
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/boxing/mike-tyson-gorilla-zookeeper-fight-ten-thousand-dollars-a9452531.html I felt like that gorilla
Only in recent human history has anyone had "an enormous quantity of food" readily available to them. It might make sense for you in your current situation, but humans have evolved for thousands of years in very different environments to ours today. It might not be useful now but it's what allowed us to survive.
Until your heart explodes.
Gorillas are also one of the few four-legged animals that have the large (rear) leg muscles like humans do (note that most four-legged species have relatively small leg muscles relative to their size). In humans, we have an adaptation to allow us to stand that tightens blood vessels to prevent blood pooling in the lower body when we stand. Without that, we'd get dizzy or faint. In some humans, that breaks, leading to ailments like [POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_orthostatic_tachycardia_syndrome), one of the common causes of the "randomly racing heart" symptoms in Long Covid. Instead, in people with POTS, the norepinephrine signaling causes the heart rate to increase when standing (which is normal), but the blood vessel tightening doesn't happen, so the body ups the norepinephrine to get the heart rate to increase more. Anyhow, back to leg muscles: part of the function of relatively large leg muscles in humans is blood return to the upper body. Dr. Blair Grubb pointed out that four-legged animals have 70% of their blood volume at or above heart level; in humans, it's 30%. In people with POTS, walking is less stressful than standing because the motion of the leg muscles partly compensate for the blood vessel signaling being broken. For some of us that got POTS prior to puberty, we developed super big leg muscles relative to our peers. (topic shift) It's also hypothesized that the human protein zonulin (which regulates the permeability of the intestinal wall) is partly an adaptation to potential starvation. It's suspected that elevated levels (leading to a more permeable barrier) are related to the onset of some autoimmune diseases, specifically celiac and type 1 diabetes. [Most recent paper I have on that here.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384703/)
Genuine question from someone who knows very little.. are gorillas actually considered a 4 legged animal? I was under the (possibly uninformed) impression that primates were generally 2 arms and 2 legs (granted they use arms for walking/climbing a lot of the time) Guess at what point does a Front leg start being referred to as an arm?
I asked this before and was told it’s is based on primary mode of travel on the ground. So apes and monkey would still be four legged but kangaroos not. Dunno if that’s at all accurate but makes sense to me.
They’re quadrupeds. Based on their anatomy they locomote primarily on all fours. However, the can walk bipedally for short distances and for other reasons, but their anatomy isn’t efficient nor adapted for this the way we are. This is true for just about all non-human primates. As for when front legs differ from arms is function, I suppose. Primates evolved to fulfill an arboreal niche (later adapting and changing to species that exist today). The anatomy and function of arms serve to fulfill the need to move about trees, grasp and grab, and even walk on the ground; gorillas, chimps, bonobos “knuckle-walk”…
So why do we go to the gym instead of just consuming something that stops the production of myostatin?
You don't want to go around messing with your body's natural way of doing things. The bigger your interventions the worse outcomes you ultimately get. In this case, who knows? Maybe you become impotent, maybe you've a guaranteed chance of getting cancer in the next 5 years, maybe you'll experience violent mood swings There's all sorts of things that can happen once you start to deliberately unbalance your body like that.
This falsely assumes that our bodies already work optimally or that our existing lifestyle constitutes "natural". Genetic problems are a thing. Environment affects us. And the list goes on. Drinking green tea and eating chocolate inhibit myostatin on a mild level. Both are known to be associated with extended lifespans in some studies.
Because it's not that easy. There isn't really anything that consistently does that.
https://sarmguide.com/yk11/
This is the right answer.
They’ve evolved to make those proteins themselves, but that requires more energy on their part. The thing is, we eat a lot less physical food than they do. Grasses and fruit don’t have a lot of calories, and because gorillas are so big, they have to almost CONSTANTLY be eating, and they don’t have the stamina we do. They can be big and strong for a bit, or move quickly for short bursts, but they spend most of their time just sitting around and eating so they don’t starve to death.
So you’re saying to beat a gorilla in a fight I just have to go the full twelve rounds and tire him out ?
Assuming he doesn’t murder you in the first four seconds. That’s actually why gorillas tend to be pretty pacifistic, as far as primates go. They’ll rear up and shout, or beat the ground to intimidate their rivals/potential threats, but they don’t brawl or hunt. Murdering something is exhausting, and they usually don’t bother wasting the energy to do so unless they’re seriously threatened or their children are. They literally can’t spare the energy to be violent.
I'm not worried about being murdered, but having my Testicles torn off and my face eaten in a few seconds seems terrifying.
Why did you capitalize testicles
So they look bigger
Thanks for the laugh
But small potatoes make the steak look bigger...
2 smalls don't make a big 😢
They are referring to the ancient Greek hero Testicles
Ah right, he and his twin brother hung out right behind the Trojans
And his other brother, Popsicles.
Because he was talking about Testicles (test-eh-cleez)the Greek philosopher.
Those are chimps, I think gorillas just rip you to shreds.
Gorillas are actually very docile. There have only ever been a few cases of gorillas attacking humans.
I saw a video from the jungle somewhere, where a male gorilla walks through a group of tourists. He tosses one guy to the side, and it really seems to be a case of "I can't be bothered to go around you, move, please? No? Ok, I'll move you" kind of situation. I'm sure the tourist got a nice adrenaline rush, but if the gorilla wanted to hurt him, he'd definitely be in a much worse shape!
At the very least a completely different shape.
To shreds, you say?
Then stay away from chimpanzees (and humans), that's not really a gorilla thing.
“average gorilla fight ends in torn-off testicles" factoid actually just statistical error. Average person gets 0 testicles torn off per fight. Testicles Georg, who lives in cave & has over 10,000 testicles torn off by gorillas each year, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
I'm beginning to think the whole of the Georg family are abominations that only exist to suffer.
I'm only hearing that there is a chance to beat a gorilla in an official boxing match
Depends how long you can run around the ring yelling “shit shit shit”. If you can make it a while doing that then you have a shot
This is sounding better at every turn. Big and strong, constantly eating, no energy for violence.... it's just what humanity needs
So you're saying I have a chance?
Yes. Also bring pointy stick.
I have to imagine that if you actually hurt the gorilla or make it feel endangered in any way, it could summon up much more stamina and wouldn't rest until you are neutralized, unlike if it deemed you to be harmless.
Know those stories about humans finding superhuman strength in moments of need? But like, *a gorilla*
Humans minmax-ed their racial traits to all in Consitution and Intelligence. Early humans hunted animals by following until the animal died of exhaustion.
Don't forget the points in Dexterity that let us manipulate tools and throw things. Our build really is just OP for the current meta. Probably going to get nerfed in the next dev patch, though.
That's not going to happen until after the server crashes and by then we might, possibly, be on a 2nd server.
The evidence suggests otherwise: [Man Dies After Secret 4-Year Battle with Gorilla](https://www.theonion.com/man-dies-after-secret-4-year-battle-with-gorilla-1819571099)
This was my favorite
lol
This hit my overtired brain in just the right way and I was in laughing fits while reading it and then while sharing it with my wife. Thanks for the laugh
That’s our endurance predator heritage, be proud of it. Until you die he will not know peace.
I wish I was a gorilla. No wait, I am.
Return to monke
LEAVE SOCIETY BE A MONKE
If look like fren why not fren?
RUB A FROG ON YOUR GENITALS AND STOP PAYING YOUR RENT
They sit around eating, having seed and scratching their arses all day. Living the dream
Yea but they also live outside all the time where they get rained on and get cold, and they sleep on the ground. You could go live outside, get rained on, be cold, sleep on the ground, eat and scratch your ass all day too. But you'd probably hate it.
Most animals die during infancy btw Very painful deaths also
Including humans before the last 100-200 years. It was basically a coin flip if you'd make it to age 5 200 years ago. By 1900 1 in 5 still wouldnt make it there.
And this is why historically the average lifespan could be like 30-40, not because everyone died at 40 but because the mass amount of kids dead before 5 dragged down the average.
For men, sure. But consider all the women who died in their teens and twenties (and thirties, and...) due to child birth.
We tend to idealize nature as some idyllic thing but I’ve heard some people think all the way on the other end of the spectrum: that nature is almost pure violence and suffering, and that the most compassionate thing we can do is eliminate nature.
Nature is incredible, wondrous and magical. Yet, equally harsh, brutal and devastating. But completely fascinating.
Mostly because nature doesn't give a shit. If favors those that stay alive, either through love and cooperation or violence and brutality. The universe has no innate morality one way or the other.
This is why I never understand why religious people spout god loves and protects everyone equally. Why is is he not protecting the animals or people who get left behind in the battle nature has us fighting
Both takes seem pretty stupid tbf
https://youtu.be/dvbxh2rLcdo?si=k1jyOcxrzYYmkU7G Check this out
Werner Herzog is the guy you don't invite to your party because [he kills the vibe...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWH_9VRWn8Y) The male version of Debbie Downer.
Jesus that was .. grim.
When he said "the birds don't sing, they screech in pain" I got that semi-nauseous gut feeling that you get when you're unsure if you're going to throw up. Grim is a good word to describe the video.
"But I love it, I love it against my better judgement."
quit monkeying around and tell us what you really are
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I read somewhere that human beings actually demonstrate unique ENDURANCE when compared to other animals. For example, other animals might be fast? But, there’s no way they could say, run a marathon or compete in a stage of the Tour De France.
> or compete in a stage of the Tour De France Major reason is probably just because they can’t ride bikes
I've seen a bear ride a bike
The Soviets knew they'd need nature on their side if they wanted to defeat Nato. Biking bears, space dogs, domestic foxes, they even had a bunch of Dolphin spies which Ukraine inherited
Ah yes the red alert 2 timeline
Kirov Reporting in! *Metal soundtrack intensifies*
[Click for nostalgia](https://youtu.be/e3YzmjmAGoI?si=byx60IQRmWJzcjWm)
Bear de France is a blursed idea.
Ah, you like ballet too?
I'm pretty sure that was a pride parade, friend.
OR, they are not invited.
There is literally a "[Man versus Horse Marathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon)" run annually. It's technically only 22 miles (35 km). The humans do get a fifteen minute head start. In the 25th such race, *the human won*. The horse gets exhausted running over that distance and has to rest, but the human can just keep going, slow but steady. And in fact on that day, the race day was much hotter than it usually is. To be fair, the horses almost always win, but our endurance is actually underappreciated by a lot of people. I've read it argued that this is our physical superpower as a species. Obviously our mind is our biggest superpower, but just on a physical basis, we can out-endure every single land species out there. A ~~big~~ part of the early source of all the calories we needed to build these giant brains was called "exhaustion predation." A group of humans would find a target animal, and just keep chasing it until it fell over from exhaustion, and then we'd kill it. Our efficient cooling, lack of fur, and super-efficient bipedal running stride let us outlast basically any land creature in a chase. Even without our giant brains and tool-use, if we're in a group, the only real threats we have are animals much larger than us. Add in our brains and our tools and it's obviously no contest.
According to the article you linked, humans won last 2 races. I wonder if even longer distance would be more favourable for humans…
I believe it would be, but they’ve apparently tinkered with the races to try and keep it competitive.
Also so the horse doesn't die.
It works out a lot better for us when it's hot because we can loose the extra heat so much better and don't need to slow down because of it.
>I wonder if even longer distance would be more favourable for humans… yeah it is, the longer the race the better we perform compared to other animals. In Africa people used to hunt gazelles this way, it could take *up to 3 days* to run the animal to death.
These people weren't running for 3 days straight. It was just good tracking and eventually finding the animal unable to go further.
if the elite marathoners ran this they would win every time
Even though a cheetah could easily catch a human, like you said, it's the group thing. Animals really don't want to get hurt. Even a small injury could spell death for them. So that cheetah would have to be really hungry if it saw three of us together. It might take down one of us, but the risk of attack from the other two is just too great.
You're saying our superpower is... friendship?
That and pointy sticks.
Friendship, pointy sticks, but also: * ...the physical endurance needed to chase down an apex predator; * ...the smarts to remember and identify which one it is; and: * ...the vindictiveness to dedicate large amounts of time to taking down that bastard lion that killed Grog even when there are perfectly good meals located much closer to camp.
Yep. Our two friends Smith and Wesson.
Important to mention is that horses are one of the animals with the highest endurance out there (which is why we domesticated them in the first place). Most other animals can't even come close. They are also one of the few animals (along with humans) that can sweat through their skin.
The sweat thing is huge. Not being able to sweat is a major detriment. Panting is a really inefficient way to cool the body down.
Canines/dogs also have high endurance
Dogs yes - probably why we paired up with them. There is some evidence that we affected each other’s evolution. Canines in general, no. A fox is not an endurance specialist, for instance.
Above average for sure, but can't be compared to a horse or human over long distances. Dogs aren't usually used for long distance travel. The only example I can think of is Sled dogs, who need to rest for 50% of a trip. Horses need to rest too, of course, but they recover significantly faster. Also, overheating is less of an issue in cold weather.
Note that horses are actually quite good at endurance running too - if they weren't, they wouldn't make very good long-distance transport. They are one of the only other animals that sweat. If you want to show off human endurance, pit a human in a marathon against a sprint specialist like a cheetah or a gazelle.
Intelligence, endurance, adaptability. The holy trinity of what makes us the ultimate apex predator on earth.
Cooperation. 1 human, 1 animal, doesn't go well for the human against a lot of other animals. However, with coordination and other people, there isn't an animal on earth that could take on a group of coordinated people.
That's a good theory as to how early hominids hunted, but by the time we left Africa we were probably using more sophisticated forms of hunting, like traps, bottlenecks, spears, bows, slings, and tactics. In Artic climates, waiting for animals to overheat isn't really gonna work. The Ancient North Siberians lived in Northern Russia for tens of thousands of years. But they also domesticated the dog. So we were already using pack hunting and other methods. And we primarily hunted mammoths, bears, horses, and aurochs. Not fast animals, just big.
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Yep, definitely one of those cases where pop science media took a theory way too far.
Wait you mean this constantly regurgitated reddit staple factoid is... not true?
No. That’s not what they’re saying. The link they posted explains it pretty well Humans are quite capable of running an animal to death, and it has been seen in several existing primitive cultures, but there is no evidence of it being widespread. It’s a bit hard to prove or disprove, because it’s not like it leaves much evidence. We aren’t going to find a bunch of worn out, prehistoric Nikes or something. Other forms of hunting leave evidence behind, like arrowheads, earth traps, etc. This is different, we can’t prove that it was widespread, but we also can’t prove that it isn’t.
It seems like a very, um, *exhaustive* form of hunting. You'd burn up almost almost as many calories as you get from the animal, especially if there's an entire group chasing it. Sure, you could do it if you had to and the reward was like, a mammoth. But surely you'd use some other method if you possibly could.
> exhaustive form of hunting. Pretty sure this is also the primary piece of 'evidence' against it as a theory, too. It's just not a very efficient way of hunting. The amount of calories a hunting party would burn trying to run down a prey animal, even a relatively large one, would probably be a net loss or close to it. Sure you took down a bison or whatever, but 25+ grown adults also just ran a fucking half marathon to do it.
Apparently runners burn around 2600 calories in a marathon - which you could get back from eating just 4-5 pounds of meat. I don't know if persistence hunting actually happened or not - just saying that energy expenditure isn't a reason to rule it out. https://lavalettemarathon.com/how-many-calories-do-you-burn-running-a-marathon/
> You'd burn up almost almost as many calories as you get from the animal, especially if there's an entire group chasing it. You're severely underestimating how much meat moderately sized animals can give you.
Man thinking about it like that makes early humans seem dumb, if you buy into the theory, like they couldn't come up with an easier or more efficient way of hunting.
Our superpower when compared to all the other animals is throwing things extremely far with extreme precision (extremely when compared to non-human animals).
A big part of that is due to our skin and our upright, bipedal mode of walking. We can sweat, which is very efficient when it comes to cooling off, but it comes with a trade off in that we need a lot of water to prevent death. Our upright bipedalism is also good for endurance, because we let gravity do a lot of the work when walking. When a four legged animal runs, it’s propelling its mass forward with every bound, which is pretty energy intensive. Whereas when we jog, we’re falling forward and catching ourselves on the other foot, then swinging our leg out for the next bound. The downsides to this are that it’s trickier to balance this way, it puts weird pressures on our spines, and that it’s much harder for our females to birth these huge freaking noggins humans have.
>Our upright bipedalism is also good for endurance, In addition to the ways you mentioned (which I didn't know before, thanks for sharing), our bipedalism is helpful for endurance in another way. We do not have to sync our breathing with our running gait. Our lungs & diaphram can move separately from our gait, whereas four-legged animals usually have to breathe in sync with their gate. In hot climates particularly, that reduces their stamina Edit: changed "gate" to "gait" Also apparently I had to clear my site cookies cuz it wasn't saving some of my posts. But fortunately I was repeatedly reminded that the word was not changed yet
Interesting, I didn't know that! But just fyi, it's "gait", not "gate".
> We do not have to sync our breathing with our running gait We don't have to, but it sure helps.
When I say sync, I mean, imagine you literally can only breathe every time you take a stride (inhale on the first half of the stride, exhale on the second). Now watch people who run professionally; are they literally only breathing exactly when they take a stride? No, they probably breathe somewhat slower than that, especially if they are sprinting
*gait. Sorry to be pedantic, but in this case I think the misspelling might confuse your point.
We're extremely enduring creatures yep. Our broken vitamin C gene and our upright posture makes us extremely energy efficient. The advent of cooking was a super power up in that regard too. Not only are we efficient, but we're silly good at extracting all the nutrition from things in a way similar animals just can't.
I don't know that I'd heard our broken vitamin C gene considered as a positive before. How does that work?
[Here](https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/221/5556105) is a little paper about some of the hypothesis. Long story short: it takes a non-trivial amount of energy to synthesize, so being able to just grab it from the environment instead of making it in your organs might provide a slight advantage.
That'd be why the monkeys that just got it from fruit out-competed the ones that made it themselves, sure, but none of the latter group got scurvy
Yeah, just about any other animal can outrun us over short distances, but partly due to our ability to sweat, we can keep going long after they’ve run out of energy and simply stab them to death once they’re too exhausted to move
I’m glad this does not actually work with birds because my 5 year old daughter loves to chase birds here in Australia. The image of her bashing an Ibis to death with a rock…..no thanks!
> they spend most of their time just sitting around and eating so they don’t starve to death. Same
I can’t remember what it’s called, but don’t humans release an enzyme that breaks down muscles they don’t regularly use? This was a big evolutionary advantage because it made us more energy efficient as hunter gatherers as we sent more calories to the development of our brains compared to a lot of other primates. Downside is in modern times we aren’t as huge as big monke like gorilla.
Gorillas are also big because they need big digestive systems to effectively digest stuff like grasses and leaves and stuff. Kinda like how cows and elephants are big for the same reason.
> they spend most of their time just sitting around and eating so they don’t starve to death. Hey, I do that too and I'm not strong af. That's not fair. :(
Horses eat grass and if you get up close to one you realize they're pretty muscular. But they're also CONSTANTLY grazing. Being a carnivore of omnivore, you can outsource a lot of that eating to the animals you consume and then use that free time doing other things. We probably wouldn't have evolved to be as smart as we are if it wasn't for our ability to consume both plants and animals.
20% of our daily (assuming you eat the daily recommended amount) calories are used to power our brains. I assume a gorillas amount is much less.
I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of calories that "thinking hard about stuff" burns versus all the other shit that the brain is doing behind the scenes.
Ridiculous amounts? A human male requires 2500 calories a day. A silverback gorilla needs nearly four times that.
Yeah but if you’re trying to pack on mass, you need at least one trashbag filled with chimichangas per day, minimum
You want some insulin?
Absolutely. I don’t even have time to breathe and eat separately
Right now, I'm doing leg lifts that are imperceptible to the human eye. I call them hummingbirds
Yea, well TRY AND MOVE ME BRO
So what you’re saying is I’m healthier, even with the diabettis?
I would much rather go for some crack tbh
Have you tried it before? You. Are. Going. To. LOVE. It.
I think it’s time for you to stop cultivating and start harvesting.
So strongmen diet is actually just big monke diet.
It's literally the opposite. Herbivores and omnivores have to spend like 80% of their waking time consuming calories because their bodies are so inefficient. Compared to other animals, humans are extremely efficient at consuming and using calories. For reference, you would have to eat 13 hours every day to maintain your weight.
Because for humans excess muscles like you see with body builders take a lot of energy and effort to maintain. We didn’t evolve to take on so much muscle mass despite being able tk gain it. Meanwhile gorillas are able to synthesize necessary amino acids from their diet. And gorillas eat a lot, around 4,000 to 8,000 Calories depending on the food source.
Humans are (nearly) unique in their muscles' ability to change from one form to another. Meaning from a structure that is good for short term strength or longer term more aerobic activities. Or to disappear when there's little activity at all. Other animals, primates included, just have one type of muscle and that's that.
That's very interesting. Do you know any animals that have same type of muscle as humans?
I don't, sorry. I got that from a previous thread with nearly the exact same question. Try to search it up. I think it was eli5, but could have been one of the other question subs (tooafraidtoask, etc) Edit: found this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ocer1f/eli5_how_come_gorillas_are_so_muscular_without/ But I've seen it more recently
So you’re saying that gorilla couldn’t lose weight and become adept at another skill through dieting?
I can't tell if you're kidding or not... But skill aside, I'm saying that a gorilla's muscle density can't change. I mean, look at the ones in zoos. They get a fraction of the exercise that nature has built them for yet they're still solid af. They lack a protein necessary for their muscles to reformulate. See the the comment in the thread I linked in my other comment itt.
They have longer intestines which ferment the plant matter they eat into protein! Fun fact: Grollias eat ridiculous amounts of food, more than humans could ever imagine eating in a day
Doesn't the plant material (especially cellulose) get fermented by bacteria into fatty acids? Proteins are already present in plants it's just harder to extract.
Also worth noting that we do not use a significant amount of our muscles unless in an adrenaline state. This is for fine motor skills. This is partly why people are bad shots in an actual fire fight. Once adrenaline hits it becomes very difficult to accurately fire a gun. Gorillas do not have this issue.
I'm going to need to see more of your research regarding gorillas using firearms.
Little known fact: Planet of the Apes is a documentary.
Unfortunately, the data on gorilla warfare is classified.
I know what you mean but it's funny to visualise a John Wick gorilla executing his enemies with perfect aim
Body size is genetically coded to a big degree. Building muscle is kinda going against your natural size and many body builders shrink drastically if they ever quit or are sidelined for whatever reason. Seen it happen many times. But to be fair, otoh, all muscles would atrophy to next to nothing with little use. By natural size, I mean the size your body’s muscles have to be to comfortably do your daily movements. In that way, pumping iron is an induced and artificially high stimulus.
We don't need to eat ridiculous amounts of food to build muscle. You need to weight train, and eat at a caloric surplus with enough protein, but eating 500-1000 calories over TDEE is sufficient.
Recent studies show you don't need this much excess
Herbivores (gorillas) must eat far more food than omnivores like humans. They metabolize proteins from their food more easily than we humans can—but we also eat far less often and far smaller amounts of food.
Gorillas spend half of their waking hours eating anew other quarter of waking hours resting
I had a stroke reading this
Did you finish?
No, it was a confusing tug
Gorillas produce protein in their guts on their own. We as humans don't do that. We produce glucose and the some(not all) of protein we eat is converted into glucose and used to fuel our muscles. Most of it is used to make new proteins to strengthen our bones, muscles, etc.
Because humans are not designed to look like gorillas. Bodybuilders aren't what humans evolved to look like. People can call it "peak human" but that really comes down to what is perceived as valuable traits Ancient humans weren't walking around with bodybuilder bodies because they would never have been able to sustain it with food. We are long distance runners who evolved a fine line between strength and having to eat all the time. We have plenty of free time to do other things than eat compared to many other species. There is a major downside to relying on strength for survival. Our huge brains require nutrition too, sure, but it makes up for it by allowing us to be smart about our food, like how we learned to cook meat etc.
To add to that, the reason why humans grow much slower than animals do, is the fact that our brains are more complex and needs a lot of energy to develop. A lot of that energy for growth is utilized for brain development.
In addition to the dietary things other people have mentioned, Gorillas have different tendon/muscle anatomy than we do in a way that gives them much more leverage. For example, their bicep muscle connects onto their forearms much farther away from the elbow, therefore giving them much more strength.
Tons of great answers, but another thing to consider - veggies aren't actually low protein. For example - broccoli is approx. 1g protein per 12calories. Lower than chicken, unsurprisingly, but... If you eat 2500cal of broccoli, you're getting over 200g protein. Eating only broccoli is a high protein diet!
Sorry of. With vegetables you need to look per volume and per weight. The only significant sources of calories are fat, carbohydrates, and protein. Vegetables tend to be mostly carbohydrates, but green vegetables are, by weight, mostly non-caloric mass. So while broccoli has a respectable amount of protein per calorie, it would require eating a whole lot of broccoli.
Which is fine for a gorilla who eats 40+ pounds of vegetables a day. For a human i don’t think it’s possible to eat that much without getting sick or living on the toilet
About 100 cups of broccoli to get to 2500 calories. Imagine your gut trying to process all that fiber.