How Hard Can Crocodiles Bite?

In Greg Erickson's lab at Florida State University, crocodiles and alligators are everywhere. Skeletal snouts and toothy grins adorn window ledges and tables — all donated specimens that are scrutinized by researchers and students alike. Biology professor Erickson and his colleagues have been pondering a particularly painful-sounding question: how hard do alligators and crocodiles bite?

More Than a Decade of Work

The answer is with a force of up to 3,700 pounds in the case of a 17-foot saltwater crocodile, whose tooth pressures are equivalent to a staggering 350,000 pounds per square inch. That's the highest bite force ever recorded — beating a 2,980 pound measurement for a 13-foot wild American alligator measured in Erickson's lab seven years ago. The researchers estimate that the largest-known extinct crocodilians, measuring 35-40 feet long, would have had bite forces as high as 23,100 pounds.

Funded by the National Geographic Society and the FSU College of Arts and Sciences, their study considered the bite force and tooth pressure of every single living species of crocodilian. It took more than a decade to complete this work and required a wily team of croc handlers and statisticians, as well as an army of undergraduate and graduate students.