How much force can a chimpanzee pull with?

Answer 1

A scientific experiment from the 1920s found that chimps are 4 times as strong as humans. two chimps, a male and female, who had been raised in captivity were asked to single- and double-hand pull a rope attached to a dynamometer. The female did a double-hand pull of a little over 1200 lbs. The male did a single-handed pull of nearly 850 lbs. Several College Football players were asked to do the same. The strongest of the bunch could only single- and double-hand pull just over 200 and 400 lbs, respectively. I would imagine that wild chimps could have pulled even more!

In his book Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees (1997), Prof. Roger Fouts mentions that one of his sign language-capable chimps climbed a tree and would not come down. He tried to use the leash attached to the chimp to muscle him down, but he writes:

"That was my big mistake. Booee [the chimp] reached down, grabbed the lead with one arm, and lifted me clear off the ground--like a weight lifter curling 180 pounds with no discernible effort. I experienced a long moment of complete terror as I swung helplessly in the wind."