16+ strongest bite force in the animal kingdom (2023)

Jump straight to the top 10 strongest bite force in the world

Bite force, simply put, is the amount of force applied to the teeth during a bite. Essentially, it refers to how hard an animal can close its mouth and how much force it exerts in doing so.

Typically, bite force is measured inpounds per square inch or PSIin brief. This measurement refers to how many pounds of force is applied to one square inch.

If you are familiar with diving, you will understand that water pressure is expressed in PSI terms. It's how many pounds of pressure is exerted on every square inch of your body. Bite forces are measured in the same way.

The bite force of an animal in many cases depends on its size. Larger animals often have stronger bites. It is also imperative that the animals have strong enough teeth, good skull structure and powerful jaw muscles adapted to bend their jaws with such force.

In nature, having a strong bite force is incredibly useful. If a predator can apply massive amounts of pressure when you bite into prey, it can kill, incapacitate, or trap and hold prey. It can also make you crack bones to get to the marrow inside.

For herbivores, stronger bite forces mean they can chew through tough foods like bamboo, crunch through nuts and seeds, and defend themselves against predators in no time.

Many animals with the highest bite forces are taken into accountapex predators, and the strength of their jaws makes them efficient hunters.

The easiest way to test bite force is to use a strain gauge or a bite gauge, for example. You let the animal bite the device, and it electronically measures the force applied to it. The scale is similar to electronic scales that people use to monitor their weight.

Of course, catching and handling many of the strongest animals isn't exactly easy, nor can you just gently ask the animal to bite as hard as it can on a metal shell. It would be incredibly difficult to do this with sharks, for example.

Computer models and rough estimates become useful in determining an animal's bite force.

One thing that helps determine bite force is looking at what animals are capable of. It's kind of like the way you use achievements to scale up your favorite superheroes, but much more accurately.

For example, if you know that an animal can crush an antelope's femur bone, you can measure the force required to do the same. It gives you an accurate baseline minimum of the animal's bite force potential.

Thanks to our deep understanding and study of animal anatomy, we can use computer models to calculate bite force. Understanding the correlation with skull size and shape, as well as rough estimates of how much force jaw muscles can exert, allows us to model and run simulations to make a fairly accurate estimate of what an animal's bite force should be.

Plasticity is important for both the skull and jawbones. It was long theorized that a T-rex could crush its own skull with a bite force as powerful as it could possibly be. Like T-rex, many animals have flexible joints built into their skulls that act as shock absorbers and allow the skull and jaws to flex, preventing that force from rebounding on itself.

Your jaw muscles allow you to open and close your mouth. While we didn't develop super strong jaw muscles, many animals did. Stronger and larger jaw and neck muscles contribute to a stronger bite force.

Along the evolutionary line, all species adapt and change based on their food sources. Modifications like being able to crush your prey's skull like a jaguar make hunting safer and more efficient. Being able to chew hard roots and shoot like gorillas means more food is available than if they relied solely on fruits or soft shoots.

These are examples of animals that naturally develop stronger jaws to match their food sources.

It's not always necessary, but the ability to replace teeth is important for animals with massive bite forces that chew through bone. Sharks andcrocodile speciesgo through hundreds if not thousands of teeth in their lifetime. If you're going to bite as hard as some of these animals, you better have incredibly strong teeth or be able to replace them quickly.

Top 10 strongest bite force in the world

Please note that figures for animals may vary, and while accurate estimates exist for most animals, rankings are subject to change. We use the bite force PSI and rank them by total PSI while ignoring relative body size.

Bengal tigers typically weigh between 250 and 500 pounds (113.39 kg to 226.79 kg). These big cats are the most populous in all of India and China, but they are an endangered species due to their beautiful fur and the use of their bodies in traditional Chinese medicine.

Their Siberian cousins ​​are larger, weighing nearly 1,000 pounds (453.59 kg). Tigers are for the most part solitary hunters and their tremendous bite force allows them to quickly bring down their favorite prey: large animals such as deer and wild boar. Once they bite the prey's throat, the animal cannot escape and suffocates.

While they are great hunters, packs of hyenas are also scavengers that don't turn their noses up at eating the kills of other predators. They are also involved in an endless rivalry with lions, as they both hunt the same prey species, occupy the same territories, and regularly steal food from each other.

They have a curved skull and huge jaw muscles that allow them to burst into thick animal bones to eat the marrow inside. Their ability to use bones as additional food sources is one of the reasons hyenas thrive even when prey becomes scarce.

Everything about the North American grizzly bear is strong. A typical specimen is 2.13 m tall and weighs about 362.87 kg. These omnivorous animals eat everything from fruits and nuts to fish and animals the size of moose.

Grizzly bears can bite through bones, small trees and, according to legend, even cast iron skillets with relative ease.

Larger than their grizzly cousins, polar bears inhabit the Arctic regions and feed mainly on large prey. This 1,200 plus pounds (544.31 kg)theirare semi-aquatic and their webbed feet make them excellent swimmers.

Polar bears' enormous bite force allows them to get through the thick skin, feathers and blubber of the prey they encounter in their natural habitat. They usually feed onseals, whale carcasses and anything else they can run out of.

Gorillas are covered in muscle, but their particularly thick necks power their bite force. The critically endangered, largest primate species is quite a shy herbivore, despite their incredibly long and intimidating fangs. Check out this article to knowhow strong is a gorilla!

Gorillas eat plants, but much of their diet consists of roots, bamboo shoots and other tough plant material. Their bite force allows them to grind up and consume this type of food, rather than relying on young shoots and fruits.

Of all the big cats, jaguars have the strongest bite force. Instead of dragging down their prey like other big cats, they attack by grabbing and crushing the skull of their prey in their mouths. Their teeth and jaws are capable of biting through the thick skin of caimans and turtles and crushing the skulls of mammals such as capybaras.

Jaguars are found in North and South American rainforests and typically grow to be 5' to 6' tall (1.52m to 1.82m), have a 0.91m tail and weigh about 113.39kg . .

Of all living mammals, hippos have the strongest bite. They use their massive fangs and incisors to fend off potential predators from their young and fight each other. Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa and are responsible for more human deaths each year than any other animal.

Hippo aggression isn't just directed at humans. Although they share the same body of water, they dislike crocodiles and a hippopotamus has been documented to bite a 12-foot crocodile in half.

Alligators are the largest reptile in North America and have an equally large bite force. They can snap their jaws shut incredibly fast, crushing or biting their prey in half. The strength of their jaws comes from the incredibly strong jaw muscles that close the mouth.

Funnily enough, the muscles that open their mouths are ridiculously weak in comparison, and you can keep their mouths closed using just your hands. Alligators mostly feed on fish, wading birds, turtles and small mammals.

The great white comes second on the list simply because its bite force is modeled and not tested. aStudy from 2008used X-rays and computer models to determine what a great white shark's bite force would be. It found that a 21-foot (6.40 m) white shark could exert a bite force of about 4,000 psi, making it the strongest bite force of any living animal.

Great white sharks are found around the world in areas such as the northeastern United States, the Pacific Ocean, Australia, and South Africa. They are apex predators, fearful only of larger white sharks and killer whales.

Of all the animals tested, the saltwater crocodile had the highest bite force. The highest reading on the tests was from a 17-foot (5.18 m) saltie that exerted more than 3,700 PSI. You can find out more about the National Geographic surveyhere.

Saltwater crocodiles often reach over twenty feet (6.09 m) in length and weigh over 2,000 pounds (907.18 kg). The largest populations of saltwater crocodiles are found in India, Australia and Southeast Asia.

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• Hippopotamus (1,800 psi)
• Jaguar (1,500 psi)
• Gorilla (1,300 psi)
• Polar Bear (1200 psi)
• Spotted Hyena (1100 psi)

• Saltwater crocodile (3,700 psi)
• Alligator (3,000-ish psi)
• American Alligator (2,150 psi)
• Bijtschildpad (1,000+ dogs)
• Komodo Reserve (500-600 psi)

• Humbolt squid (theoretical, 6,000 psi)
• Great White Shark (4,000 psi)
• Mako Shark (3,000 psi)
• Bull Shark (478 psi)
• Tiger Shark (300 psi)

On average, people canforce between 120 and 160 psiwith their jaws. In simple pounds of force, we can exert up to 270 pounds (122.47 kg). In general, men can exert a higher bite force than women. Usually, our bite force is determined by how well our teeth are aligned, how strong our teeth are, our diet, and several other factors.

Compared to most of the animal kingdom, our bite force is incredibly weak. Despite this, it is quite efficient and powerful compared to the structure of our skulls and muscles.

One of the reasons people don't have higher bite forces is our diet. Some timebetween 1.8 million years ago and 400,000 years ago, we started to cook our food. This not only made food easier to digest, but also much easier to chew, break apart and swallow.

Of course we have also developed the use of tools. We used rocks to crack open nuts and pounded hard roots and plants to make them easier to eat. That removed the need for our jaws to smash through these food sources.

As a result, we simply didn't need to be able to bite as hard as other animals that have to shred and shred prey or chew tough plants and shells.

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You may be wondering, if these animals are extinct, how can we have any idea of ​​their bite force? The same kind of computer modeling and anatomical knowledge that we use today to determine the bite force of animals such as great white sharks can be applied to dinosaurs.

We can generally look at fossils and determine where muscles were anchored on their skeletons by extrapolating data from currently living animals in the same line of evolution. Taking this into account with data on skull structure, bone and tooth density, and muscle size, we can get a reasonable estimate of the bite force of an extinct animal.

Megalodon is an extinct shark species that grew to be between 12 and 18 meters long. The shark probably weighed more than thirty tons and fed mainly on whales and other extinct huge marine mammals. Most data on megalodon is an extrapolation based on their teeth, and since white sharks are close relatives, these estimates are likely accurate.

Megalodon is estimated to have a bite force of between 20,000 and 40,000 psi, depending on how large an individual had grown.