How strong are gorillas?

How strong are gorillas?

Daniel Simmonds (Zookeeper) gives expert video advice on: How similar are gorillas to humans?; How heavy are gorillas?; How strong are gorillas? and more...

It's an interesting question to ask how strong is a gorilla, and often people want to know. The reality is that actually no one knows how strong a gorilla is, because you can't take a gorilla down to your local gym, or if you did it would be at your own and the other gym members peril. We don't know, but scientists estimate gorillas to be about ten times stronger than a fully grown man. And certainly, some of the things I've seen gorillas do, I'm pretty sure that ten times stronger is going to be a figure which is probably fairly correct. Probably the best way for me to explain why I think that gorillas are so incredibly strong is, for example, when I'm moving things around inside the gorillas enclosure. There might be very large logs which I'm literally unable to move. So I might call a couple of other keepers over, and between the three of us, we will slowly manhandle it, perhaps a few inches across the enclosure. Bobby then will come in and just with one hand will be able to swipe that same log a good few feet without any effort. So gorillas are awesomely strong. But they are very, very gentle animals, so they rarely show their full strength. So I think if an animal like a gorilla was really in a fit of rage, then their strength could be even higher. But, as I say, we dont actually know exactly how strong they could be.