Bear Anatomy

[brotherbear]

(11-22-2016, 11:45 PM)Polar Wrote: Just as I expected, Agriotherium's bite force is approximately 14.4 times its own weight, but even with this chart, I still have trouble believing that a polar bear has a lower bite than a brown bear at parity.

Consider that these bears might not be trying their fullest potential, as with many other bite force charts.

https://synapsida.blogspot.com/2010/11/p...-bite.html  
 
Some recent stress analyses using the sort of computer models normally used in engineering design have shown that while the jaw muscles of polar bears are just as strong as those of normal bears, the skull itself is less able to take up the strain of a powerful bite. Granted, that's assuming the computer models are right, but even so, it does seem a bit odd. Similarly, while they do have less premolar teeth than many other bears (a feature they share with cats, for example), the teeth overall seem somewhat weaker than one would expect for a purely carnivorous animal.

One reason may be what the polar bears are eating. Their diet consists almost entirely of seals, which, unlike the antelopes eaten by lions, have a lot of soft blubber. If their food is less tough than the meat favoured by other hypercarnivores, they don't need such strong jaws, and the evolutionary change required to adapt to that diet may be less than it first appears. It may also help that, while animals like leopards and wolves regularly take down prey  larger than themselves, polar bears obviously don't. Seals just don't get that big!
There is, however, a clear downside to this rapid evolution and specialization. Reply