Steve Leonard
vet and wildlife TV presenter
Well, this is a toughie. Obviously, we can look at the animal that can lift the heaviest weight and this would probably be the elephant. Asian elephants have been recorded as lifting three hundred kilograms with their trunks, which is a good start. But if you wrap a leather rope around logs and get an elephant to bite onto the rope it can lift as much as five hundred kilograms, which is half the weight of a small car. This may seem like a lot but compared to the weight of the elephant it’s only a small fraction. It’s like me picking up nine bags of sugar, which I can easily do with one hand.
So maybe we should look at muscle power compared to body weight. The strongest people in the world can only lift weights twice their own weight. This is pretty impressive but nothing compared to some other animals. Male gorillas are very strong and can lift ten times their own weight, making them five times stronger than a human! But the truly strongest animals on earth for their size are the bugs. Leafcutter ants can lift pieces of leaves fifty times their own body weight. This is like me lifting a female Asian elephant into the air!
However, it gets better. A dung beetle can lift something 1,141 times its own weight, which is like me lifting six double-decker buses! Some microscopic creatures may be even stronger but getting them to lift stuff is very difficult.
