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Animal bite force is a complex science, and whether you measure it in PSI (pounds per square inch), Newtons of force, or pounds, you’ll find a number of conflicting figures. Furthermore, bite force tests are difficult to perform and are a high priority for scientists studying rare animals.
What Animal Has The Strongest Bite Force
If this is true, how do we know which animals in the world have the strongest teeth? Thanks to testing and sophisticated computer modeling by some scientists, we can reliably estimate what an animal’s bite force might be.
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Before we dive into the top ten strongest bite forces in the animal world, we explain how bite forces are measured, why they are important to animals and how we can model them.
Bite force, in simple terms, is the amount of force applied to the teeth when biting. Basically, it refers to how hard the animal can close its mouth and how much effort it has to exert.
Bite force is usually measured in pounds per square inch, or PSI for short. This measurement refers to how many pounds of force are applied per square inch.
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If you are familiar with scuba diving, you will understand that water pressure is expressed in terms of PSI. This is how many pounds of pressure are applied to each square inch of your body. Bite force is measured in a similar way.
The bite force of an animal often depends on its size. Larger animals have stronger teeth. The animals must also have strong enough teeth, a correct skull structure and strong jaw muscles to flex their jaws with such force.
Having a strong bite force in nature is incredibly beneficial. As a predator, if you can apply a lot of pressure when biting your prey, you can kill, incapacitate or fall and capture the prey. It also breaks up bones and allows access to the marrow within them.
The Strongest Animal Bite In The World
For herbivores, strong bite forces help them chew hard foods like bamboo and cut nuts and seeds to fight predators in a pinch.
Most of the animals with the highest bite are predators, and the strength of their jaws helps make them effective hunters.
The easiest way to check bite strength is to use something like a tensor or tooth gauge. You have the animal bite the device and it electronically measures the force applied to it. Scales are similar to electronic scales that people use to check their weight.
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Of course, many powerful animals are not easy to catch and keep, and you cannot ask an animal to bite as hard as possible on a metal plate scale. This would be very difficult to do with, for example, sharks.
One thing that can help determine the strength of a bite is to consider what the animals are capable of. It’s similar to using feats to scale your favorite superheroes, but more precisely.
For example, if you know that an animal can break the femur of an antelope, you can measure the strength to do the same. This gives you an accurate baseline minimum of the animal’s bite force potential.
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Thanks to our deep understanding and research of animal anatomy, we can create computer simulations to calculate bite force. If we understand the relationship between skull size and shape, as well as rough estimates of how much force the jaw muscles can exert, we can make models and simulations to estimate exactly what an animal’s bite force should be.
Honestly, a lot goes into what determines bite strength. The biggest factors include skull shape, bone density, plasticity, jaw muscles, diet, and tooth replacement.
The shape of the skull and jaw is important to calculate the bite force. A narrow jaw causes force over a smaller area. Sloped and angled skulls provide better leverage and better anchoring points for larger jaw muscles.
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If you put a lot of force on any part of your body, your bones need to be strong enough not to break. Many animals can break bones with their jaws, but their bones do not break. There are many reasons for this, but mainly they have very dense jaw and skull bones, as well as attractive angles to show this strength.
Plastic surgery is important for both the skull and the jaw. For a long time it was theorized that the T-rex could break its skull with the force of its bite. Like the T-rex, many animals have flexible joints in their skulls that act as shock absorbers and allow the skull and jaws to bend, preventing force from returning on itself.
Your jaw muscles allow you to open and close your mouth. Although we did not develop very strong jaw muscles, many animals did. Stronger and larger jaw and neck muscles contribute to a stronger bite.
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In the line of evolution, all species adapt and change based on their food sources. Adaptations such as crushing the skull of your prey like a jaguar make hunting safer and more efficient. Being able to chew hard roots and shoot them like gorillas makes more food available than just relying on fruit or soft shoots.
This is not always necessary, but the ability to replace teeth is important for large-biting animals that chew on bones. Species of sharks and crocodiles go through hundreds and thousands of teeth during their life. If you bite as hard as some of these animals, you better have incredibly strong teeth or the ability to replace them quickly.
Keep in mind that animal numbers may vary, and accurate estimates are available for most animals, but estimates are subject to change. We use bite force PSI and base it on overall PSI, ignoring relative body size.
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Bengal tigers typically weigh between 250 and 500 pounds (113.39 kg and 226.79 kg). These big cats are most common in India and China, but they are an endangered species because of their beautiful fur and the use of their bodies in traditional Chinese medicine.
Their Siberian cousins are larger, weighing up to 1,000 pounds (453.59 kg). Tigers are mostly solitary hunters, and their great bite force allows them to quickly bring down their favorite prey: large animals such as deer and wild boar. After biting the predator’s neck, the animal cannot escape and suffocates.
Although they are excellent hunters, coyote packs are scavengers who do not turn up their noses to eat the kills of other predators. They are also locked in endless competition with lions, as both hunt the same prey, occupy the same territories and regularly steal food from each other.
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They have the back of the skull and large jaw muscles to crack open the thick bones of animals and eat the marsh inside. Their ability to use bones as an additional food source is one of the reasons why coyotes do well, even when prey is scarce.
The North American grizzly bear is all powerful. A typical specimen is seven feet (2.13 m) tall and weighs about 800 pounds (362.87 kg). These carnivores eat everything from fruits and nuts to fish and animals as large as moss.
Grizzly bears can chew on bones, small trees, and legend has it that they can chew through iron pots relatively easily.
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Larger than their grizzly cousins, polar bears live in arctic regions and feed mainly on large carnivores. These 1,200-plus pound (544.31 kg) bears are semi-aquatic and are excellent swimmers with their webs.
The enormous bite force of polar bears allows them to cut through the thick skin, fur and fat of their prey in their natural habitat. They feed mainly on seals, whale carcasses and everything else.
Gorillas are covered in muscles, but their particularly thick necks have the power to bite. The largest species of critically endangered primate, despite its incredibly long and fearsome teeth, it is a shy herbivore.
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Gorillas eat plants, but most of their diet consists of roots, bamboo shoots and other solid plant material. Their bite force allows them to digest such food instead of relying on young twigs and berries.
Of all the big cats, jaguars have the strongest bite force. Instead of dragging the prey like other big cats, they attack by holding the skull in their mouth and crushing it. Their teeth and jaws are capable of breaking through the thick skin of a caiman, the shell of a turtle, and crushing the skulls of mammals such as the capybara.
Jaguars are found and typically grow in the rainforests of North and South America
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