What is the Strongest Animal?
The term “strongest animal” can be misleading, but most often it refers to how much an animal can lift relative to its own weight. Until recently (2007), it was thought that the Rhinoceros beetle was the world’s strongest animal by this standard, capable of lifting 850 times its own weight. This is comparable to a 150 lb (68 kg) human lifting a 67 ton Abrams tank. Some of the largest Rhinoceros beetles weigh 120 grams, making them capable of carrying about 100 kg (220 lb). This means that a strong Rhinoceros beetle would be capable of carrying a heavy man. But in 2007, Michael Heethoff and Lars Koerner measured the strength of a tropical mite, Archegozetes longisetosus, finding it has a pull force equal to 1150 times its own weight, five times more than expected for an organism of its size (1 mm, 100 µg). As this study was the first to measure microarthropod claw forces, there are probably many other mites who might compete for the title of strongest animal. To put this strength in hum
