If someone were to ask you to name the strongest animal in the world, what would you say?
Elephant? Gorilla? Something else?
Personally, I’d go with gorilla.
But don’t worry, we’re about to give you the answer.
It’s not grizzly bears, even though they can throw a 700-pound Dumpster around “like a beachball.”
And it’s not a silverback gorilla, even though their arms are able to lift 1,763 pounds of dead weight.
That’s because the African bush elephant can carry up to 19,800 pounds using just their trunks.
This is more even than the blue whale, which is the largest animal to have ever lived. The giant cetacean can exert “only” around 13,900 pounds of force.
The bush elephant’s trunk contains more than 40,000 muscles and tendons.
Fun fact, though: the elephant can only move about 1.5x its own body weight, but certain insects can pull more than 1000x what it weighs.
The taurus scarab, leaf cutter ants, and rhinoceros beetles are all total heavyweights in this sense.
Humans are hanging in there with the biggest brain-to-body ratio, which is why we’re not out there getting thrown around like beach balls.
Most of the time.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.