Strongest Animals in the World: By Total and Relative Strength

Absolute strength vs relative strength

There are two very different ways to rank animal strength. Absolute strength is the total force an animal can produce, and here big animals such as elephants, bears and gorillas lead easily. Relative strength is force compared with body weight, and here the champions are insects and mites.

The reason is a rule of geometry called the square–cube law. The force a muscle can produce depends on its cross-section, which grows with the square of body length, while body weight grows with the cube. Shrink an animal and its weight falls faster than its strength, so a beetle can easily pull hundreds of times its own weight. Scale an ant up to human size and it would lose that advantage, and its thin legs could hardly hold it up.

Strength is also measured in different ways: lifting, pulling, carrying a load while walking, or simply holding on. Many figures that circulate online were never measured at all, so this list notes which are tested and which are estimates.

The strongest animals at a glance

Strongest animals in total strength

African bush elephant

The African bush elephant is the largest and strongest land animal. Fully grown bulls usually stand 3–3.4 m (10–11 ft) at the shoulder and weigh 5.2–6.9 tonnes, and the largest on record weighed an estimated 10.4 tonnes. An elephant’s trunk is a boneless bundle of muscle that is powerful enough to lift up to about 350 kg (770 lb), yet precise enough to crack a peanut shell without breaking the nut inside.

Elephants use this power to strip bark, push over trees to reach leaves and dig for water in dry riverbeds. Asian elephants have been used for centuries to drag heavy logs in forests, which shows their pulling power, but online claims that an elephant can carry 9 tonnes on its back are not based on any measurement.

Brown bear and grizzly

Brown bears, including North American grizzlies, generally weigh 80–600 kg (180–1,320 lb), and the largest wild Kodiak bear on record weighed 751 kg (1,656 lb). The hump on a grizzly’s shoulders is a mass of muscle that powers its long front claws for digging. Grizzlies dig up ground squirrels and roots, roll over large rocks to find insects and marmots, and can drag large carcasses such as elk.

Popular claims about exactly how many kilograms a grizzly can lift are not based on controlled tests, but its digging and pulling power are clearly among the greatest of any land carnivore.

Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest primates. Adult males, called silverbacks, weigh 136–227 kg (300–500 lb), stand 1.4–1.8 m (4 ft 7 in–5 ft 11 in) tall when upright and have an arm span of 2.3–2.6 m (7 ft 7 in–8 ft 6 in). They can snap thick bamboo stems and branches with their hands and are vastly stronger than any person.

However, no scientist has measured a gorilla’s maximum lift or pull, and statements that gorillas are 10 or 20 times stronger than humans are guesses. Read more in How strong is a gorilla?

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzees are often said to be five to eight times stronger than humans, but measurements tell a different story. A 2017 study found that chimpanzee muscle produces about 1.35 times more force and power than the same amount of human muscle, partly because it contains more fast-twitch fibers. Chimpanzees are strong for their size, especially when climbing and pulling, but they are not superhuman. See How strong is a chimpanzee?

The strongest bite of any living animal belongs to the saltwater crocodile, measured at 16,414 newtons (3,690 lbf). For the full ranking, see strongest bite force.

Strongest animals for their size

Horned dung beetle

The bull-headed dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus, is often called the strongest animal on Earth relative to its size. In laboratory tests, males produced a force equal to up to 1,141 times their own body weight. That is like a 70 kg (154 lb) person moving about 80 tonnes.

Males need this strength because they fight inside underground tunnels, where females pack dung into brood balls for their young. Large horned males push and pull rivals out of the tunnel, while smaller hornless males try to sneak in instead of fighting.

Oribatid mite

Oribatid mites, also called moss mites, are tiny arachnids, distant relatives of spiders, that live in soil and leaf litter. In a 2007 study, the 1 mm (0.04 in) mite Archegozetes longisetosus held on with its claws against a force of about 1,180 times its own weight, roughly five times more than expected for an animal of its size. Because this was the first study to measure mite claw strength, other mites could be even stronger.

Rhinoceros and Hercules beetles

Rhinoceros beetles, including the giant Hercules beetle of Central and South America, are famous for strength, and claims of lifting 850 times their own weight are often repeated. Those figures are anecdotal. When a smaller rhinoceros beetle was tested in 1996, it could carry loads of about 100 times its body mass, but at that weight it could barely move; it walked easily with much lighter loads. Learn more in How strong is a Hercules beetle?

Ants

Ants are well-known weightlifters. Leafcutter ants of the Americas are often said to carry leaf pieces up to 50 times their own body weight, although most loads are much lighter. In a 2014 engineering study, the neck joints of Allegheny mound ants withstood pulling forces thousands of times greater than the ants’ own weight before failing. See How strong are ants?

Common exaggerations about animal strength

“An ant the size of a human could lift a car.” Because of the square–cube law, a giant ant’s weight would grow far faster than its muscle strength, and it would struggle to support its own body.

“A gorilla is 20 times stronger than a man.” No study has measured gorilla strength, so any multiplier is a guess.

“Chimpanzees are eight times stronger than people.” Measurements suggest chimpanzee muscle is only about one-third more powerful than human muscle of the same size.

“Rhinoceros beetles lift 850 times their weight.” Tested rhinoceros beetles carried about 100 times their body mass at most, and only just.