Piranha beats T Rex in bite force

Piranha beats T Rex in bite force

WASHINGTON Outsized jaw muscles allow the black piranha to exert bite force equivalent to 30 times its bodyweight, a feat unmatched in the natural world, according to results of a finger-risking study.
Other animals like the great white shark, the hyena and the alligator can deliver more forceful bites, but their crunching power becomes much less impressive when viewed in relation to their overall size and weight, it said.
In fact, relative to their size, piranhas outperform even prehistoric monsters like Tyrannosaurus rex and the whale-chomping megalodon, a massive shark that preceded the great white, said the study.
Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the research saw scientists catch 15 black piranhasinBrazil’sAmazonRiverbasinandrisktheir digitsbyteasingacustomisedforcegaugebetween their serrated jaws.
    Thefish,rangingfromabouteightto15inches in length, “readily performed multiple defensive bites” on the gadget, wrote the team from the United States, Egypt and Brazil.
    The measured bite force of the black piranha, at 320 newton (N), was nearly three times greater than that exerted by an American alligator of comparative size, said the study. One newton is the force required to move a kilogramme of mass at one metre per second squared.
    How does the tiny fish do it? It has jaw muscles of an “extraordinary” size and a highly modified jaw-closing lever, said the team. In fact, the muscle complex makes more than two per cent of the black piranha’s total body mass. AFP