Why Humans Can’t Lift as Much as Ants (And How We Could) | WIRED

Ants have been documented to be able to carry up to twenty times their own body weight. If a human could lift twenty times their body weight that would be about 4,000 pounds. Ant biologist Fred Larabee and paleoanthropologist John Hawks talk about how humans lift heavy weights and why we can't lift as much as ants. John and Fred also look into what it would take for humans to be able to lift as much as ants can.

Fred Larabee is a Fred Larabee is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. To learn more, please visit https://naturalhistory.si.edu/

John Hawks is an expert in paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution. You can find out more on his website here: https://johnhawks.net/. He is also professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Why Humans Can’t Lift as Much as Ants (And How We Could) | WIRED