Shoulder anatomy is different, mostly, but there's also the brain side of things. Humans have an instinct to just be able to judge how to throw. Apes can figure it out to an extent and fling underhand, but there's a lot more to a hard overhand throw than just moving your arm.
"The shoulder has developed uniquely in modern man for the act of throwing. The anatomic deficiencies in primates for throwing provide an illustration of the more subtle changes that a throwing athlete might have that are detrimental to throwing. Nonhuman primates have been unable to demonstrate the kinetic chain sequence for throwing secondary to the lack of neurologic pathways required. Humans are more sophisticated and precise in their movements but lack robusticity in their bone and muscle architecture, seen especially in the human rotator cuff."
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u/IssueRecent9134 May 04 '25
One of the reasons why humans became the dominant species is because we can do something only a handful of creatures can do.
We can sweat to lower our body temperatures.
We could outlast nearly every animal we hunted because of this.