Australian Saltwater Crocodiles Are World’s Most Powerful Biters

"ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2012) — In Greg Erickson's lab at Florida State University, crocodiles and alligators rule. Skeletal snouts and toothy grins adorn window ledges and tables -- all donated specimens that are scrutinized by researchers and students alike."

Erickson, a Florida State biology professor, has been wondering of the bite force of crocodilians.

The answer?

A value of 3,700 pounds per square inch for a 17-foot saltwater crocodile (with tooth pressures of 350,000 pounds per square inch). This is the most powerful bite force recorded in history. 

And that's not all. Erickson and his team estimated that the extinct crocodilians (which were 30-40 foot animals), had a bite force as much as 23,100 pounds.

The team reported their remarkable findings to the journal PLoS One.

They were funded by the National Geographic Society and the FSU College of Arts and Sciences. The study has taken over a decade, measuring the bite force of every crocodilian species (gharials, alligators, crocodiles, and the rest).

It was reported that to measure the bite force of all of these specimens, it required an army of undergrad and graduate students, a "wily" team of croc-handlers, and statisticians.

Not only did they manage to collect such challenging data, but they found new ways of measuring bite force.

Over the 11 years that his current study took place in both the United States and Australia, Erickson and his team roped 83 adult alligators and crocodiles, strapped them down, placed a bite-force device between their back teeth and recorded the bite force.  

Dangerous is an understatement here.

Overall, the researchers looked at crocodilians both mundane and exotic, from American alligators to 17-foot Australian saltwater crocodiles and the Indian gharial. Among the world's most successful predatory reptiles, these creatures have been "guardians of the water-land interface for over 85 million years," Erickson said. 

Erickson commented that if you could bench press a pickup truck, you could escape a crocodile's jaws.