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This question is similar to my previous question, but requires different math.

Scenario

I have a bipedal creature around 1200 pounds (~540 kg), and I wanted it to lift around 2 short tons (~1814 kg), preferably over its head, and throw the weight about 20 feet (~6 meters) on Earth. I was wondering if this was possible, and if so, what kind of body plan it would have.

If it cannot throw the weight 20 feet, try and get as close as possible to this mark. The weight is an average car.

Another way to answer this is to come up with various solutions using biology to launch the car from the creature about 20 feet.

UDATE: I was unsure if I should have edited the previous question or not, so I asked about it on the meta here. The answer which was provided to me made me decide to ask another question.

OneSurvivor
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    make it 20 ft tall havit lift it over its head then fall over. that's about it throwing something heavier than you are any distance is near impossible for a large animal. – John Nov 02 '17 at 20:31
  • @John That's one way of doing it, I suppose. Not exactly all that hard now is it? – OneSurvivor Nov 02 '17 at 20:35
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    What exactly counts as "throw"? Could the creature perhaps use some sort of exothermic chemical reaction within the body to launch the 2 tons? – AngelPray Nov 02 '17 at 20:47
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    @AngelPray I was thinking a physical throw, like how you would throw a rock. But an exothermic reaction would be interesting. – OneSurvivor Nov 02 '17 at 20:51
  • @dot_Sp0T Please don't remove unit conversions when editing. I dare say "pounds" and "short tons" are barely ever used outside of the US and maybe UK, whereas kg is a unit that is used worldwide -- and in this case, the masses involved matter a great deal. (It would be somewhat less important if the units were identical for both, which in this case they aren't.) Including the conversion to kg in the title of the question therefore makes the question, even via just the title, much more accessible to an international audience. – user Nov 02 '17 at 21:22
  • @MichaelKjörling unit conversions were & are still available in the question itself. only removed them from the title to make it easier to read. – dot_Sp0T Nov 02 '17 at 21:23
  • @dot Indeed unit conversions are and were available in the question text, but for someone not familiar with US customary units, it's much easier to tell at a glance that the relationship between 540 kg and 1814 kg is about 3.3x, as compared to drawing the same conclusion from "1200 pounds" and "2 short tons". I won't pretend to speak for anyone else, but at least I have no idea how many pounds there are to a short ton, but I know plenty well how many kg there are to a kg. Including both in the title thus increases the chances that someone can tell at a glance whether they likely can answer. – user Nov 02 '17 at 21:26
  • @MichaelKjörling well it was ton originally, but with the unit conversions it was clear that the OP meant US tons, better known to the international world as short tons. Best course of action would probably be getting rid of the numbers in the title altogether and remove them with something like What mechanism would a creature the size of a cow allow to lift and throw a small car - but that's a major change I'm not comfortable doing without anyone confirming me :) – dot_Sp0T Nov 02 '17 at 21:30
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    This is remarkably similar to your other question. In fact, so similar that I'm tempted to cut/paste my answer and just spend 2 minutes updating the numbers. Why did you feel the need to create a new question? I'm tempted to mark this as a duplicate, but I'm holding off until I better understand why you felt two questions were needed. – Cort Ammon Nov 03 '17 at 00:15
  • @CortAmmon Absent input from the OP, I'm voting this to be a duplicate. Doubling the creature's mass and the distance of the thrown object is insufficient to make one math-based question different from another. – Frostfyre Nov 03 '17 at 12:19
  • @Frostfyre Nope. Different weights and distances. – OneSurvivor Nov 03 '17 at 16:21
  • @CortAmmon It would change the answers, and edits which invalidates original answers are generally frowned upon. – OneSurvivor Nov 03 '17 at 16:22
  • But the math is the same, so you can simply adjust the numbers and apply the same formula. There is nothing fundamentally different between these two questions. – Frostfyre Nov 03 '17 at 18:45
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    @Frostfyre Good point. I think I'll close this question. – OneSurvivor Nov 03 '17 at 18:48

2 Answers2

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A 56kg man can clean lift 171kg above his head (world record). But a 105kg man can only clean lift 246kg (world record). If we are generous and assume further modest increases in lifting power it is not inconceivable that 10 strong light men might just be able to lift 2 tons above their head. Could they then throw it? No way.

It would seem that larger bodies are proportionately less effective in weight lifting as 10 56kg men can lift considerably more than 5 roughly double the weight 105kg men. So I suggest that the creature needs to have multiple heavily muscular arms or tentacles.

It would also need massive legs perhaps 4 elephant like legs would be better. Although if you must perhaps 2 would do.

This still leaves massive problems in how all these limbs could be effectively marshalled into an effective weight lifting creature but it’s a start. Perhaps if the muscles were much better than human muscle it might even be able to throw it, although how far would depend on how much fudge factor over the strength of muscles you would be willing to allow.

dot_Sp0T
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Slarty
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For comparison: An adult elephant weights about 4500kg to 6000kg. It can lift about 300kg and carry up to 500kg.

Now you want to ask if a creature like a cow (female adult cow weights about 720kg) can throw something which has about triple of its own weight for 6 meters? I mean...come on.

The only creatures able to carry so heavy things compared to their own weight are ants (can carry things 10-50 times heavier than their own weight). And you can't simply scale an ant to human-size or even larger.

Another point of view: Let's assume you build a creature just containing muscles. A muscle can give an energy output of about $30J/kg$. You want to lift $1800kg$ for about $1m$ at a gravitational acceleration of $9.81m/s^2$ or about $10m/s^2$. This will require an energy of $E = m*g*h = 1800*1*10 = 18000J$. This would require a pure mass of muscles of about $18000/30 = 600kg$. So in order to lift this mass 1m over ground, you need $600kg$ of pure muscle! You don't have taken into account the weight of other important 'parts' like: skeleton, important organs, blood and other fluids, etc.

Further, this $30J/kg$ are optimal conditions for a single contraction of such a muscle-creature! You may be able to lift it, but certainly not throw it anywhere. You also would need to think how a creature would be able to store and access this amount of energy if it really wants to throw something.

Source of the $30J/kg$: Equine Locomotion - E-Book By Willem Back, Hilary M. Clayton found in google-books, p.18.

Edit: This book gives more valuable information like the peak force various muscles can achieve, etc. If you seriously want to calculate such examples, there are all equations needed.

Ashoka23
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  • To be fair here, an elephant is not really built for lifting strength. It has evolved to use its weight as a survival method. Its size and weight allow for resilience, stomping, and battering (using inertia). That's not the same as e.g. the average simian, who has evolved specifically to lift himself by his arms and therefore will be comparatively more able to lift things with his arms. – Flater Nov 03 '17 at 15:09