Considering Men are generally much stronger than women, potentially on a lb-for-lb level, is this something observed in other mammals or exclusively in humans? A lot of people love to point out this when defending the existence of gender-separated sports leagues, that a well-trained high school professional athlete could destroy a female professional athlete. I personally haven’t looked into this matter to say that it’s true, so I’m a bit skeptical, but if it is…
Like is the observed strength gap between a lion and a lioness, a female vs male elephant, or a doe & a stag much smaller than the strength gap between a man & a woman?
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Gorillas. Tigers. Hogs.
On the opposite, check out certain species of angler fish.
Not very
Humans are a bit less dimorphic than average for large mammals.
Just to provide some stats:
In terms of body mass, men tend to be something like 12-16% heavier than women.
Male lions tend to be 50% heavier.
Male elephants tend to be 80% heavier.
Male white tailed deer tend to be about 50% heavier
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It varies.
6”6 260lbs male with a 5”4 petite female. That’s a very strong sexual dimorphism.
But not every couple is like that. So it varies
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It would be much more accurate to frame it as women are weaker than men. As humans in general are very weak in terms of lb-for-lb level, as humans rely on weaponry for damage. And have protein be much more scarce than calories, so are less likely to afford good muscles biomechanically.
Saying men are stronger than women implies men are built to be strong. That is not true. The body doesn’t go out of its way to maximise strength in men.
You should look at how small genetic changes can have significant effects on behavior.
In the case of a majority of mammals, domestic humans are on the low end of sexual dimorphism.
The overlap of traits between the sexes is far larger than the regions that are unique.
All mammals are sexually dimorphic. Humans are somewhat high in dimorphism but we are hardly the most extreme case in mammals.
Our evolutionary ancestors lost most of their sexual dimorphism, and had to gain new sexually dimorphic traits. So we are less sexually dimorphic than most animals, even less than most primates, size and feature wise, but still dimorphic.
Some amount of the levels of difference we see are social and biological stacked on top of each other. Woman may have a lower upper body strength potential on average, but they are also discouraged from perusing activists which would increase upper body strength. Same body hair, and facial hair, more woman have more of both than is commonly seen for social reasons, but still overall less than men even without that. So it’s mixed. And changes with the culture. Some highlight real things that are different on average and others make up nonsense standards, bound feat vs bustle. Etc.
So we are dimorphic but it’s hard to pin down exactly how dimorphic.