Answer: Moss Mites

When we think of strong creatures, it’s certainly easier to think of creatures that exhibit strength on a scale we can see: alligators have incredibly strong jaws, gorillas are very muscular all over, and so on.

But when it comes to real feats of strength, we need to look towards the little guys. In the insect world, for example, the dung beetle is a desert Hercules, able to pull objects with a force 1,141 times its own body weight. If you want an even bigger feat of strength, however, we need to go even smaller. Moss mites are ridiculously strong little creatures and one particular species of moss mite, Archegozetes longisetosus, has been measured to have a pull force of 1,180 times its body weight–edging out the Herculean dung beetle with a narrow margin.

So how would that strength translate to the human body? Well, let’s take Icelandic strongman Hafþór Júlíus “Thor” Björnsson, best known outside of Iceland as “The Mountain” on the popular TV series Game of Thrones. Björnsson is ~240 pounds and, if he had the strength of a moss mite, he would be able to pull an object that weighs 283,200 pounds or, for frame of reference, around three unladen Boeing 737 Next Generation jet planes.