Does a ten-to-twelve-foot-long crocodile or alligator have enough “chomping strength” to pulp a human skull?
(I’m pretty sure that the monster-size crocodilians – the twenty-plus footers – could do this, but I’m thinking more average size croc, here.)
Not urgent – just wondering, is all!
(I wonder about pretty strange things, I’m afraid…)
yes
Yes, according to Wikipedia…
“These jaws can bite down with immense force, by far the strongest bite of any animal. The pressure of the crocodile’s bite is more than 5,000 pounds per square inch (30,000 kPa), compared to just 335 pounds per square inch (2,300 kPa) for a rottweiler, 400 pounds per square inch (2,800 kPa) for a large great white shark, 800 pounds per square inch (6,000 kPa) to 1,000 pounds per square inch (7,000 kPa) for a hyena, or 2,000 pounds per square inch (10,000 kPa) for a large alligator.”
I wonder why they developed such a bite. Were they preying on Duckbill Dinosaur? 
There’s a video of a guy putting on a show by sticking his head in a large croc’s mouth. The croc chomped down on his head - but it didn’t squish. He survived - with puncture wounds in his head.
It was probably a 10’ croc. Let me see if I can get more details on that one.
It’s crummy quality, but here’s teh video
Warning! It’s a video of a
Crocodile biting a guy’s head!
No blood or guts or anything.
I’d say the croc is about 10’ long.
That’s not to sat that the croc couldn’t have crushed the guys head if it wanted to… just that in this case it didn’t.
And after the first bite, which wasn’t really on the croc’s terms, there were two large men using all their strength and a boat oar to keep his mouth from closing the rest of the way.
The activity in the video suggests that the croc probably doesn’t get very good captive care. He may be drugged, unhealthy and weak to begin with. But without any interference he probably would have crushed his skull after a few more moments, or torn his head off by thrashing around.
How else would they get to the chewy center?
I would think it would be much easier to crush a skull than to crush, say, a thighbone to get to the marrow, and all kinds of animals can do that.
Yes, that is the video that I was thinking of when I first started this topic! The “no squishy” made me wonder about the capabilities of that size croc (it wasn’t a gigantic one).
That crocodile also had the guys head at the front of his mouth. Maybe after a couple of minutes, he’d adjust his bite to the back of his jaw, gaining mechanical advantage and then crushing his head like a grape.
The strength of the bite is probably to hold onto prey they seize at the edge of the water and drag in. They have to hold onto prey the size of a wildebeest while it struggles frantically so they can drown it.
A 12 foot crocodile is a fairly small croc but makes the equivalent of a good sized alligator. Either of them at that size can kill people at will. As noted, their biting force is incredible but they have very little strength to open their mouth so a skilled person can wrestle one of that size and win as long as they force its mouth closed and keep the front legs at a safe distance.
Not to take away from the croc’s prowess, but the actual force involved may be more important. How many square inches was the force applied over in that cite?
Note that A 100 pound woman stomping down on a spike heel creates an incredibly high pounds-per-square-inch. (if the heel is 1/4-inch square, that’s 1600 lbs/insq.)
Still, IIRC the Mythbusters just measured a straightforward closing force and it was pretty awesome.
This citedescribes a study done using a dynamometer that measured raw biting strength at the front of the mouth to be about 308 psi. They accounted for the same issue mentioned by **Darryl Lict, **that the force at the back of the mouth would be significantly higher than the front. (but practicalities of the lab environment didn’t allow testing at that point of the jaw). The estimated a raw biting-strength at the back of the mouth to be approximately 5 times higher than at the front, or about 1540 psi.
They also note the force at a small point like one of the teeth that extends longer than the others and carries the main force of the bite to be somewhere around 400 atmospheres, or almost 6000 psi.
Better keep a good eye on that tail too. They can deliver quite a wallop with their tail.
I think the problem Uncle Fred is getting at is that psi or any other pressure reading isn’t very useful in determining whether a skull can be crushed. It will only tell you if it can be punctured.
Being stabbed with a needle has a higher psi rating than being stepped on by an elephant… but I think we’d all prefer the needle. The needle is certainly not going to crush your skull.
If the needle had the diameter of a crocodile’s tooth and there were 4 of them on opposing sides of my skull Im not sure if I would even care whether it was actually piercing damage or crushing damage that was breaking my skull into pieces at that point.
I understand the difference though, that’s why I cited a study that accounted for both the raw-biting power, and the much higher psi at the points where the individual teeth come into contact due to small surface area. So the almost 6000 psi would be in effect while the 4 protruding teeth pierced the skull, then the remaining 1500 psi would still be active, and working against a skull with 4 very large holes in it.
I feel compelled to link to this Cracked article which lists Gustave, the killer croc of Burundi, as the world’s most prolific serial killer. He’s more than 60 years old, more than 20 feet long, weighs about a ton, and may have killed around 300 people. Okay, technically, every time someone goes missing they probably just attribute it to Gustave, but there are enough eyewitness accounts and other evidence to conclude that he is, in the words of the article, “a living, breathing, scream-eating dinosaur that is so sick of his own immortality that he passes the time by destroying life whenever he sees it.”
This big fella named Brutus made a surprise appearance a few days ago alongside a tourist boat in the Adelaide river. He looks like he could eat the entire boat if he wanted to. I don’t think he has the record of kills that Gustave is alleged to hold, but I wouldn’t want to test his biting power either.
Gustave has a bullet hole in his face which doesn’t seem to slow him down. Brutus is apparently missing his right arm from an earlier disagreement with a shark.