What you need to evaluate that are two things -- the raw strength of the muscles and the geometry of the joint\muscle arrangement.
Think of a lever with the joint as a fulcrum and the muscle (ligament) attachment point and you can see that the same muscle can supply twice the strength if the distance from the ligament to the joint is doubled.
You will need some anatomy diagrams to ascertain these distances for general comparison.
Raw strength would be related to the number of muscle cells in each muscle group and their individual {size\development}. There is only so much pull a muscle cell can generate without tearing it's own cell apart, so the {maximum strength per sq.cm. of cross-section area} a muscle cell can attain is probably fairly constant\similar in different animals -- but a lot of variation in muscle develoment can occur (98 lb weakling versus muscle-bound weightlifters), because muscle "building" does not add cells, just makes the existing ones bigger (see
Muscle Physiology of Strength Training).
A good estimate of the raw strength of a muscle group would be the cross-sectional area, as this would include both the number of cells and the relative development of each cell -- you can have more fibers or have bigger fibers and have the same strength.
You will need some anatomy diagrams to ascertain these areas for general comparison.
Once you have both those sets of numbers I would think that you could compare the strength of different animals with:
{(Muscle Area)x(Joint Distance)}Animal A = Px{(Muscle Area)x(Joint Distance)}Animal BTo solve for "P"
The only caveat is that the muscles measured need to be used for similar functions to compare ability in those functions (ie compare lifting muscles in both animals versus pulling down muscles in one and lifting in another).
Certainly that should give you a starting point.
Enjoy.
{abe}:
If you look at the diagram of the human arm here:
Anatomy of Skeletal Muscle
You can see a big difference between the joint geometries for lifting and pulling down (envisage clawing) in the human arm. I would expect that the bear joint would show a greater separation of the ligament from the joint fulcrum for the tricept muscles in the bears than in the gorilla.
{/abe}
This message has been edited by RAZD, 05*01*2006 06:40 PM
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