How Do We Stack Up Against Animalkind?

If you’re like me, you often think about our connections with the animal world, where and what we evolved from, and how it all ties in. I’m often caught daydreaming about our early ancestors and what they looked like, acted like, sounded like, and more.

One thing in the dental world that isn’t often discussed is bite force. And while it’s not paramount to know everyone’s average bite force, it’s an interesting topic to discuss with friends at the very least. Sitting around and guestimating the bite force of different animals has entertained me here and there.

Anyway, you’ve heard that biting a finger off is as easy as biting a carrot in half, right? It’s not true, first off. But it does beg the question: What can the human teeth actually bite off?

So, if you had to guess what the average bite strength of an adult human was, what would you place your number around? Would you guess 10 pounds of pressure per square inch? 50? 120 pounds?

Try 200. That seems like an awful lot of force, doesn’t it? That’s like an adult American male sitting on a single spot that is 1 inch wide and 1 inch long. That’s the force that your jaw can create.

What gets really interesting, however, is when you start looking into the bite force of other animals. How do you think we compare? You’re probably not off in thinking that we have one of the weaker bite forces out of the animal kingdom. If you thought we were one of the best, think again.

For land animals, you’d probably be making good guesses if you said lions or tigers (1000 PSI) had some of the most powerful bites. And surely some of you guessed that grizzly or polar bears (~1200 PSI) was the winner.

But if you consider it a “land” animal, well, the Nile crocodile wins by a long shot with a 5000 PSI bite force. For reference, that’s 25 times stronger than an average human’s bite force. This comes as no surprise considering they’re some of the most dangerous and fearsome predators in the world.

Now, great white sharks are estimated to have an even stronger bite force than Nile crocodiles, but there has never been a true test to measure the “strongest” bite force ever on a great white. Theoretically, though, they’re probably our undisputed winners in the animal kingdom.