The strongest bites in the animal kingdom

[brotherbear]

http://www.wearesites.com/Personal/Hyena...ed_faq.php 
 
Q: How hard can a hyena bite, really?
A: Dr. Frank advises me a lot of figures get tossed around, but they usually involve one attempt to measure one individual animal's strength on one occasion. Such figures aren't much use. But a hyena can support its own weight by its jaws -- it can actually hang by its jaws from a larger animal. Hyenas -- Nature's Gangsters shows dramatic proof of this when a hyena hangs onto a full-grown topi antelope by its jaws alone while the topi leaps, lunges and spins in a futile effort to throw off its captor.
However, Wendy Binder of UCLA did do a study on Dr. Frank's hyenas. According to Dr. Frank:

Quote:"Unfortunately, Wendy's thesis presents her data in terms of force (Newtons) rather than pressure (psi). She measured forces as high as 4500 Newtons, but a quick search of the internet did not show me an easy way to convert this to a pressure measure. I assume that would involve dividing the force measure over a surface area; the unit conversation program that I found said that 4500 Newtons is equal to 1011 pound force. Perhaps if this were divided by the surface area of the tooth doing the biting??? I would guess that is less than 1/4 sq. in., so the force might be around 4000 psi???"

That should give you an idea how uncertain such measurements are, even in a laboratory setting. But suffice it to say you wouldn't want to get bitten by a spotted hyena.;-)
These figures may not apply to striped and brown hyenas, and definitely don't apply to aardwolves, whose jaws and teeth are so feeble that they can't even chew meat. Reply