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The Homo sapiens we do not aspire to be in the position of honor of being the strongest in the animal kingdom. In this field, as in many others, we have nothing to do. In the year 2020 a Ukrainian, Olesksii Nobikovwon the title of ‘The strongest man in the world’, being able to lift 537.5 kilos of weight with his 135 kilos.
A feat that, the truth, do not envy the elephants, the strongest among mammals, being able to carry one hundred and thirty humans; The eagles do not envy us either, they can lift up to four times their weight and fly with their prey without any problem.
The osos grizzly (Urus americanus), the largest omnivore in North America, are not far behind either, some studies suggest that they are capable of lifting the equivalent of their own weight, that is, about five hundred and fifty kilos of weight.
In any case, all these animals are far from approaching the true champions in this field, since the strongest animals on the planet are insects.
asian weaver ant
Whenever there is talk of animal strength, ants come onto the scene, which are capable of lifting and carrying, on average, twenty times their weight. Let’s do a quick calculation. If an ant weighs approximately 3 mg, three hundred thousand ants weigh one kilogram. All of them, working in unison, would be able to lift 20 kilos. Finally, considering that an elephant weighs about 5,700 kilos, it would take 86 million ants to lift it.
A group of researchers from the University of Cambridge managed to photograph an Asian weaver ant -Oecophylla smaragdina- in full action, lifting a hundred times its weight. This finding would make it possible to considerably reduce the number of ants needed to lift an elephant.
Despite everything, these feats are nothing if we compare them with those that dung beetles are capable of carrying out. For a long time it was thought that the strongest animal on earth was a beetle, the Hercules beetle -Dynates hercules- that can lift up to 850 times its weight.
This insect is barely four centimeters long, it is brownish in color, and its belly is covered with a reddish pubescence. Hercules beetles can be found in Europe, North Africa and in some areas of the Middle East.
However, a scientist from the University of Colorado -Rodger Kram- showed that all this was nothing more than fake news and that ‘only’ this beetle is capable of lifting a hundred times its mass.
sumo champions
In this way, the position of honor of the ‘strongest animal on the planet’ had to be handed over to a cousin of his, the Onthophagus Taurusa dung beetle that is capable of dragging more than a thousand times its body mass. Making a simple parallelism, it would be equivalent to affirming that a human being weighing 70 kilos can lift eighty tons, which is the approximate weight of six buses full of passengers. A feat worthy of being brought to the Marvel comics.
The most curious thing has been the way in which researchers from the University of London reached that conclusion. Apparently, they observed that the mating of these animals usually takes place in tunnels under dung and that if a male surprises a couple mating, he will have to deal with a furious male, since a fierce fight will break out between the two males, in which the unexpected visitor will be pushed with a force more than a thousand times greater than his body mass until he manages to get him out of the tunnel of love.
These animals, popularly known as horned dung beetles, measure an average of eight millimeters, are black or reddish in color and have a slight metallic sheen on their backs.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books.
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