The saltwater crocodile has the strongest bite ever measured

Over more than a decade, palaeobiologist Gregory Erickson of Florida State University and his colleagues did something most people would avoid: they slid a padded bite-force gauge between the jaws of living crocodilians and let them clamp down — every species, again and again.

The winner was the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), the largest living crocodilian. A 17-foot individual bit down with 3,700 pounds per square inch — about 16,460 newtons — the highest bite force ever directly measured in any living animal, published in PLoS ONE in 2012.

That dwarfs a lion or hyena and even rivals estimates for Tyrannosaurus rex. The team found bite force scales tightly with body size, which means the biggest extinct crocs may have bitten harder still. Oddly, the muscles that open a crocodile’s jaws are so weak a person can hold them shut by hand — the power is all in the closing.