5:00AM Tuesday August 05, 2008
By Greg Ansley
This is one of those bits of trivia that keep you awake at night. The great white shark is now estimated to have the strongest, meanest, bite of any creature on the planet. Its jaws are so powerful, in fact, that researchers have had to dip into pre-history to find something more awesome.
"Pound for pound the great white's bite is not particularly impressive, but the sheer size of the animal means that in absolute terms it tops the scales," University of New South Wales researcher Stephen Wroe wrote in the British Journal of Zoology.
"It must also be remembered that its extremely sharp serrated teeth require relatively little force to drive them through thick skin, fat and muscle."
The species is protected in New Zealand and Australia. Australian researchers used 3D computer modelling to estimate that a 2.4m great white bites with a force equivalent to 1.8 tonnes.
The technique, called finite element analysis and used in the design of motor vehicles and buildings to measure stress and movement, created a digital representation of the shark's head to estimate the power of its jaws.
Researchers found little to match it.
The great white's bite is about three times more powerful than a lion's 560kg, and leaves the 80kg chomp of a human jaw for dead. Only dinosaurs match up. Tyrannosaurus rex had an estimated biting power of 3.1 tonnes. And the great white's infinitely more fearsome predecessor, the huge carcharodon megalodon, killed its prey with biting power estimated at up to 18.2 tonnes. The extinct monster shark weighed in at 100 tonnes and grew up to 16m long. But the great white remains today's most jawsome carnivore.
"Nature has endowed it with more than enough bite force to kill and eat large and potentially dangerous prey," Wroe wrote.
