I remember this one! I found it years ago when I wrote my undergraduate thesis. I’d love to go through it all again and see the whole list. Look at how many factors in the skull alone affect the feeding and hunting strategies of a predator. This is why I will forever be in love with predator biology and behavior. There’s so many layers and surprises even in the animals we have researched well. Thank you, Professor
I wrote about how large predators have a psychological effect on an ecosystem that may outweigh their physical presence, using jaguars as my example. Jaguars have an unusual preference for hunting carnivores over herbivores when populations allow. I wrote about how this affects the behavior of other animals in the ecosystem. I used your work to highlight how extreme it’s bite force was relative to other Apex predators of similar niches but different prey preferences and compared its preferred method of killing, puncturing the skull, with the more drawn out methods of disemboweling and suffocation used by other cats and canines. I hypothesized that since most large herbivores go into shock more quickly than large carnivores, hunting other carnivores necessitated a faster way of killing. This was of course compounded by the facts that the jaguar’s most common direct competitor and frequent prey items were crocodilians, which can hold their breath for long periods of time and are famously well-armored. I was also able to show that the presence of jaguars had a more significant affect on carnivore behavior than the presence of other large cats did on similar species of animals. Somewhat less solidly demonstrated (I really want to do more research on the topic) was how the change in the behavior of the other predators affected herbivores. I was able to find some notable ripple effects, but I just didn’t have as much data as I would have liked. But the psychological change in the behavior of other predators was very prevalent.
I’ve actually read that paper before and it was very fascinating and insightful to read. Nice video Doc. The cats were the most interesting as they’re my personal favorites and yet they seemed to be something of the Jack of all trades more or less.
@@RealPaleontology Probably the easiest way is to just leave the table up long enough that it's fully visible for a while before the end cards are added.
Can you do it with Short faced bears and Dinocrokuta. Especially dinocrokuta who had a monster skull. And maybe if its possible, can you do it for Hyenadents like megistotherium
Thank you Steve! Interesting analysis as always. From your analysis, it seems, that the marsupials were kind off catching extremes on both sides of the spectrum: they bested as the hardest biter superpredators, and also as the most extreme sabertoothed superpredators with the weakest bites. Do you have plans to explore the Thylacosmilus, weirdest of the weird, with even stranger hypotheses on it's behavior (I mean Janis paper on it's use of the tongue in feeding)?
Ha! I already have responded in a recent book chapter to Christine's interpretation. It may come as no surprise that I disagree. I can send it to you if you wish. But yes I will definitely be doing an episode on Thylacosmilus! I wrote a paper on this awesome beast a few years back. It ain't no scavenger!
very interesting. i watched a vid about the european weasel yesterday. apparently has an extremely high bite force due to two things. the shortness of its jaw and length of its skull, which gives both good leverage and a lot of muscle attachment area. these small predators can kill some relatively massive prey though, like rabbits so it makes sense they need a very hard bite.
@@RealPaleontologyHello Stephen! I was wondering which values are more accurate for the jaguar, 118 or 137BFQ? I was wondering this because as far as I’m aware you published 2 different versions, one in 2005 and one in 2007. And since I saw you mention the 137 value in your video, I was wondering if the older values are more accurate?
@ Hm. I found it a bit weird since the other cats basically had higher BFQs in that same study, I’d expect jaguars to have proportionally higher bite forces due to being more durophageous and in general more adept at biting harder stuff. Any possible reason for the drastic reduction?
Seeing the trend of marsupials having a stronger bite force than placentals i can only imagine how strong was the bite of Proborhyaena probably not as hard as thylacoleo but judging by the size estimations it probably could do some serious damage
@@jadilzoca4971 it would be really interesting to do the numbers on that! And wouldn't be too hard. Pound for pound the marsupial lion would definitely win out. But in absolute terms I think it might be close.
This is a great video! Although I have a question, You said the lion had a maximum bite force of 2,400 Newtons, The highest in the whole sample. I did not see this in the study though, did I miss it or was it not mentioned?
Thank you, glad you liked it. Thank you glad you liked it. Actually, I think I took that figure from another paper I did with Per Christiansen: Bite force and evolutionary adaptations to feeding ecology in carnivores. If you type that title into your browser you should be able to find a free download if you're interested. I also generated predictions for both the African lion and marsupial lion using computer simulation in another paper too.
@RealPaleontology no problem. That's the one I read and it said lions were at lower than tigers on the graph, unless there is something I missed. Oh nice! What's the title of this other paper?
professional and scientific as always, i really hate the “megalodon is still alive!(?)” youtube channels, and yours is exactly the contrast that ive been looking for. cant skip a video for the last few days!
It will be very interesting to know the estimated bite force of the Late Miocene Dinocrocuta gigantea or the bite force of the Middle Eocene Mesonychid Harpagolestes or the bite force of the large Late Eocene Hyainailourine Creodont called Hemipsalodon grandis that is known from Skull and Mandible fossils found in Canada and Oregon and Wyoming. That will be much work but at least there are some mostly complete Skulls and Mandibles recovered of all three genera that are described in the known literature.
Whats up with the jaws of the thylacine? As the thylacine has a high BTQ, but still it has been concluded by some studies (and seemingly by ones you have worked on) that the thylacine was incapable of handling large prey, due to stresses on the skull. So, my question is how these features can coexist on the same animal, and what it means for its diet.
@@NatureEnjoyer523 yeah the thylacine is a curious one. It does have a high bfq. But not for a marsupial carnivore. It's also unusual in being a large hyper carnivore that appears to have specialised in small to medium sized prey. This may have made it particularly vulnerable to extinction.
@@NatureEnjoyer523 pretty hard to be exact here. But it's unlikely that they regularly took prey larger than themselves. And the largest males were probably 30 to 35 kilo, females considerably smaller. On the mainland there was a big variation in size across the continent. Those in western Australia were much smaller.
@@RealPaleontology Huh, interesting. I think its also worthy of note that records from the time said they were monogamous and when found a mate, would hunt and raise the young together.
@@kristopherstepp3250 this can definitely be done. There are published estimates of bite force for a number of dinosaurs. And all you need is this and an estimate of body mass. Then you can just plug it into the equation and off you go. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do but never quite get around to it!
So the historical reports that suggested that thylacines broke the skull of dogs with their bites might have very well been true after all! Also, I am curious as to your thoughts on studies that apparently claim that the thylacine was a "weak biter"?
Technically you cannot make it straight conversion between Newtons of force and psi. That's because psi is a measure of force per unit area. Newton's is just a measure of force. You can't convert that to psi unless you have the area over which it was distributed.
@RealPaleontology thanks for the reply! I guess maybe the closest I can get is if you can confirm that a lion and Tigers maximum bite force is harder than a jaguars? I know jaguars have the hardest bite for their size. Great video by the way
Panda bite force is interesting. I wonder how other herbivores rate. On the big difference made by the shape of the teeth: goats back teeth are razor sharp and for my money, a lot scarier than any cat teeth, but fortunately, when a goat bites in anger, it uses its front teeth, which are quite the opposite (being blunt and unopposed, meaning they effectively just gum the target like a sock puppet, eyes wild with vengeful fury as they attempt to deliver it a prolonged death blow). Only cud thieves and dentists need fear the goat's bite, but by gods, have a care if you do ever need some cud.
Most herbivores do not have particularly strong bites for the size. It depends on their food preference. The panda eats bamboo. That's very hard. A goat bite can definitely hurt. Bradford size it's not a very powerful bite.
Good afternoon from Brazil! Well,,you disd not mentioned the bite force of Homotherium. After all, Homotherium had more ore less bite force than Smilodon? Well, I would like to tell you that I think is not fair include sabertooths on this ranking, because tgey did not used the lower jaw to " bite", they used to slam theyir upper canines only ( despite differently from.Smilodon, Homotherium could bite in a conventional way, something Snilodon could not). Maybe you can make a " slamming upper canines force" championship" onto machairodontids only, tgere are aeceral species to participate: Machairodus, Amphimachairodus, Dinofelis, Megantereon,,Homotheriym, Zenosmilus,.Smilodons,etc. Thata my sugvestion for you. Thank you to pay attention on my answer.
Hi. I hope it's a lovely day there in Brazil, beautiful country I've been there a couple of times. I think you should watch the various episodes I have published on various species of sabertooth. I cover most of the points you raise in those. I have episodes on Smilodon, Homotherium, Xenosmilus and Thylacosmilus. I think you'd enjoy these. Have a great day!
Oh, and I did one on a Permian synapsid sabertooth too, and my most recent video discussed saber tooth evolution in general. I think you would really like that.
@ Hi.thank you very much for your answers! Here is a beautiful but very hot day in Brazil.I lived in USA twice (1969-1971 Long Island, and 1998-1999 Clearwater , Florida) and I enjoyed and liked a lot too.Yes, I watched various episodes. and I liked them so much, specially the episode about Homotherium;
@ I would like to tell you I am sn amateur paleontologist that have been studying Paleontology in a self teaching mode , by books and internet research, about 50 years. My passion for Paleonthology begun when i visited the American Museum of Natural History in New YORK, IN 1970; Since then I readed a lot of professional paleontology books, including the whole Piveteau collection, and when I start to have internet at home , in 1998, searched a lot about Paleontology on the internet too. But I had never dig anithing, unfortunetly.I also would like to say that I am a Homomtherium big big fan, I am absolutely fascinated for this species that I consider so special;
@ I will see this episode too, probably is about Inostranscevia, a fascinating mamallike species. I would like to say, I have a controversial and very different hypotjesis about Homotherium and Xenosmilus "bite"; Do you would like that I explain it to you? Finally, I would like to suggest a theme for a new episode:please talk about Xenosmilus. it is fantastic showing the differences between it snd Homotherium, and comparing it with Smilodontini, would be a very interesting episode. Well, have a good evening, bye !And thanks for your patience and attention.
It would've been amazing throwing other bears into the mix, polar bears had low bfq and overall weak bite compared to brown bears due to their diet from what understand eating seals and biting through fatty blubber isn't exactly tough, unlike brown bears that consume lots of roots and carrion, with interspecies fighting giving them formidable bites. Pandas surprisingly like you said had extremely high bfq, making the extinct giant panda having a nightmarish bite, short faced bear had overall strongest bite force of any mammalian carnivore if I remember correctly. Also, Tigers I'm curious about, I suppose they're pretty close to Lions, maybe one species edging over the other slightly I'd say
Hi, I know this with respect to the polar bear in its blood ways. In fact I was the one who made the argument in another paper on a giant short faced African bear. I send you a copy of the paper if you like. To be honest there's not much difference between brown bears and polar bears, but yet the panda bear both like hell........... we did calculate bfq's a wide range of bears. It's a that paper two if you want. Cheers, Steve
I remember this one! I found it years ago when I wrote my undergraduate thesis. I’d love to go through it all again and see the whole list.
Look at how many factors in the skull alone affect the feeding and hunting strategies of a predator. This is why I will forever be in love with predator biology and behavior. There’s so many layers and surprises even in the animals we have researched well. Thank you, Professor
Hey thank you! What was your thesis about?
I wrote about how large predators have a psychological effect on an ecosystem that may outweigh their physical presence, using jaguars as my example. Jaguars have an unusual preference for hunting carnivores over herbivores when populations allow. I wrote about how this affects the behavior of other animals in the ecosystem. I used your work to highlight how extreme it’s bite force was relative to other Apex predators of similar niches but different prey preferences and compared its preferred method of killing, puncturing the skull, with the more drawn out methods of disemboweling and suffocation used by other cats and canines. I hypothesized that since most large herbivores go into shock more quickly than large carnivores, hunting other carnivores necessitated a faster way of killing. This was of course compounded by the facts that the jaguar’s most common direct competitor and frequent prey items were crocodilians, which can hold their breath for long periods of time and are famously well-armored. I was also able to show that the presence of jaguars had a more significant affect on carnivore behavior than the presence of other large cats did on similar species of animals. Somewhat less solidly demonstrated (I really want to do more research on the topic) was how the change in the behavior of the other predators affected herbivores. I was able to find some notable ripple effects, but I just didn’t have as much data as I would have liked. But the psychological change in the behavior of other predators was very prevalent.
@francisweller839 awesome that's really interesting!
@francisweller839 did you publish this
Happy birthday for tomorrow steve!
Hey thanks for that
On point as always. Well done
Thank you! Cheers!
I’ve actually read that paper before and it was very fascinating and insightful to read. Nice video Doc.
The cats were the most interesting as they’re my personal favorites and yet they seemed to be something of the Jack of all trades more or less.
Hey thanks!
Great video Steve, very easy to listen to and super informative, happy birthday aswell!!
A thanks for that Bonnie, you have a great day too!
Great video Steve….. keep-em coming
@@richardtruckner2203 thank you Richard. And I will keep them coming
Bite Club remains one of the most relevant and cited papers written in the field of feeding biomechanics. Bravo Professor Wroe 💀🤓
Aw shucks, thanks Dr Rex..... But what can I say, it is a pretty highly cited bit of work!
I'd love to read the paper myself! Nice video Doc.
Thanks, here's the link. Let me know if it doesn't work I can always email it to you. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2004.2986
I'd love to see the results for the 150 species! Also the table is covered up by the end cards.
@@surgeonsergio6839 no worries I'll need an email address. I'll see if I can figure a way to sort that table at the end!
@@RealPaleontology Probably the easiest way is to just leave the table up long enough that it's fully visible for a while before the end cards are added.
I love this!
Hey thanks heaps!
Great show! Very interesting about the marsupials!
@@ericdubert5983 thank you very much. If I think I might do the 'marsupial’ sabertooth next,
Can you do it with Short faced bears and Dinocrokuta. Especially dinocrokuta who had a monster skull. And maybe if its possible, can you do it for Hyenadents like megistotherium
@@timexyemerald6290 yes I do intend to do each of these taxa, although it may take a while to get to them all
Thank you Steve! Interesting analysis as always. From your analysis, it seems, that the marsupials were kind off catching extremes on both sides of the spectrum: they bested as the hardest biter superpredators, and also as the most extreme sabertoothed superpredators with the weakest bites. Do you have plans to explore the Thylacosmilus, weirdest of the weird, with even stranger hypotheses on it's behavior (I mean Janis paper on it's use of the tongue in feeding)?
Ha! I already have responded in a recent book chapter to Christine's interpretation. It may come as no surprise that I disagree. I can send it to you if you wish. But yes I will definitely be doing an episode on Thylacosmilus! I wrote a paper on this awesome beast a few years back. It ain't no scavenger!
@@RealPaleontology I wish to see also a video about Thylacosmilus (and maybe about its closest relatives)! Great work.
@@julianbayona3866 you're you're in luck. Thylacosmilus is coming up shortly.
very interesting. i watched a vid about the european weasel yesterday. apparently has an extremely high bite force due to two things. the shortness of its jaw and length of its skull, which gives both good leverage and a lot of muscle attachment area. these small predators can kill some relatively massive prey though, like rabbits so it makes sense they need a very hard bite.
@@andy-the-gardener yes that's basically what it comes down to, muscle and leverage.
I can confirm that the European weasel has a bite force quotient of 154, which is high indeed!
@@RealPaleontologyHello Stephen! I was wondering which values are more accurate for the jaguar, 118 or 137BFQ? I was wondering this because as far as I’m aware you published 2 different versions, one in 2005 and one in 2007. And since I saw you mention the 137 value in your video, I was wondering if the older values are more accurate?
@@jaguarthekingofsouthameric7427 just off the top of my head 118 sounds right. It's will above average but not extreme
@ Hm. I found it a bit weird since the other cats basically had higher BFQs in that same study, I’d expect jaguars to have proportionally higher bite forces due to being more durophageous and in general more adept at biting harder stuff. Any possible reason for the drastic reduction?
Seeing the trend of marsupials having a stronger bite force than placentals i can only imagine how strong was the bite of Proborhyaena probably not as hard as thylacoleo but judging by the size estimations it probably could do some serious damage
@@jadilzoca4971 it would be really interesting to do the numbers on that! And wouldn't be too hard. Pound for pound the marsupial lion would definitely win out. But in absolute terms I think it might be close.
This is a great video! Although I have a question, You said the lion had a maximum bite force of 2,400 Newtons, The highest in the whole sample.
I did not see this in the study though, did I miss it or was it not mentioned?
Thank you, glad you liked it. Thank you glad you liked it. Actually, I think I took that figure from another paper I did with Per Christiansen: Bite force and evolutionary adaptations to feeding ecology in carnivores. If you type that title into your browser you should be able to find a free download if you're interested. I also generated predictions for both the African lion and marsupial lion using computer simulation in another paper too.
@RealPaleontology no problem. That's the one I read and it said lions were at lower than tigers on the graph, unless there is something I missed.
Oh nice! What's the title of this other paper?
professional and scientific as always, i really hate the “megalodon is still alive!(?)” youtube channels, and yours is exactly the contrast that ive been looking for. cant skip a video for the last few days!
Very pleased to be of service! I'll keep them coming
not sure how i enede up here but now i know about biteforces in animals
Great, I guess the experience could not have been too bad, we would have watched it!
It will be very interesting to know the estimated bite force of the Late Miocene Dinocrocuta gigantea or the bite force of the Middle Eocene Mesonychid Harpagolestes or the bite force of the large Late Eocene Hyainailourine Creodont called Hemipsalodon grandis that is known from Skull and Mandible fossils found in Canada and Oregon and Wyoming. That will be much work but at least there are some mostly complete Skulls and Mandibles recovered of all three genera that are described in the known literature.
I agree. And certainly provided there are pretty well preserved skulls it's really not that hard to do
Whats up with the jaws of the thylacine? As the thylacine has a high BTQ, but still it has been concluded by some studies (and seemingly by ones you have worked on) that the thylacine was incapable of handling large prey, due to stresses on the skull. So, my question is how these features can coexist on the same animal, and what it means for its diet.
@@NatureEnjoyer523 yeah the thylacine is a curious one. It does have a high bfq. But not for a marsupial carnivore. It's also unusual in being a large hyper carnivore that appears to have specialised in small to medium sized prey. This may have made it particularly vulnerable to extinction.
@@RealPaleontology How big are we exactly talking?
@@NatureEnjoyer523 pretty hard to be exact here. But it's unlikely that they regularly took prey larger than themselves. And the largest males were probably 30 to 35 kilo, females considerably smaller. On the mainland there was a big variation in size across the continent. Those in western Australia were much smaller.
@@RealPaleontology Huh, interesting. I think its also worthy of note that records from the time said they were monogamous and when found a mate, would hunt and raise the young together.
I wonder if you could do the BFQ on dinosaurs.
@@kristopherstepp3250 this can definitely be done. There are published estimates of bite force for a number of dinosaurs. And all you need is this and an estimate of body mass. Then you can just plug it into the equation and off you go. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do but never quite get around to it!
@@kristopherstepp3250 one thing I can tell you for sure is that T-Rex would be right up there and if I had to place a bet I'd say it's the winner
So the historical reports that suggested that thylacines broke the skull of dogs with their bites might have very well been true after all!
Also, I am curious as to your thoughts on studies that apparently claim that the thylacine was a "weak biter"?
@@eliletts8149 it certainly had the Bike force to do the job!
Does anyone happen to know the lion bite force in PSI ? I've always had a hard time finding accurate feline bite force data converted to PSI
Technically you cannot make it straight conversion between Newtons of force and psi. That's because psi is a measure of force per unit area. Newton's is just a measure of force. You can't convert that to psi unless you have the area over which it was distributed.
@RealPaleontology thanks for the reply! I guess maybe the closest I can get is if you can confirm that a lion and Tigers maximum bite force is harder than a jaguars? I know jaguars have the hardest bite for their size. Great video by the way
Absolutely, both lions and tigers will out bite a Jaguar, provided that there is significantly bigger.
@@RealPaleontology thank you for the great info!
no problem
Panda bite force is interesting. I wonder how other herbivores rate.
On the big difference made by the shape of the teeth: goats back teeth are razor sharp and for my money, a lot scarier than any cat teeth, but fortunately, when a goat bites in anger, it uses its front teeth, which are quite the opposite (being blunt and unopposed, meaning they effectively just gum the target like a sock puppet, eyes wild with vengeful fury as they attempt to deliver it a prolonged death blow).
Only cud thieves and dentists need fear the goat's bite, but by gods, have a care if you do ever need some cud.
Most herbivores do not have particularly strong bites for the size. It depends on their food preference. The panda eats bamboo. That's very hard. A goat bite can definitely hurt. Bradford size it's not a very powerful bite.
Good afternoon from Brazil! Well,,you disd not mentioned the bite force of Homotherium. After all, Homotherium had more ore less bite force than Smilodon?
Well, I would like to tell you that I think is not fair include sabertooths on this ranking, because tgey did not used the lower jaw to
" bite", they used to slam theyir upper canines only ( despite differently from.Smilodon, Homotherium could bite in a conventional way, something Snilodon could not). Maybe you can make
a " slamming upper canines force" championship" onto machairodontids only, tgere are aeceral species to participate: Machairodus, Amphimachairodus, Dinofelis, Megantereon,,Homotheriym, Zenosmilus,.Smilodons,etc. Thata my sugvestion for you.
Thank you to pay attention on my answer.
Hi. I hope it's a lovely day there in Brazil, beautiful country I've been there a couple of times. I think you should watch the various episodes I have published on various species of sabertooth. I cover most of the points you raise in those. I have episodes on Smilodon, Homotherium, Xenosmilus and Thylacosmilus. I think you'd enjoy these. Have a great day!
Oh, and I did one on a Permian synapsid sabertooth too, and my most recent video discussed saber tooth evolution in general. I think you would really like that.
@ Hi.thank you very much for your answers! Here is a beautiful but very hot day in Brazil.I lived in USA twice (1969-1971 Long Island, and 1998-1999 Clearwater , Florida) and I enjoyed and liked a lot too.Yes, I watched various episodes. and I liked them so much, specially the episode about Homotherium;
@ I would like to tell you I am sn amateur paleontologist that have been studying Paleontology in a self teaching mode , by books and internet research, about 50 years. My passion for Paleonthology begun when i visited the American Museum of Natural History in New YORK, IN 1970; Since then I readed a lot of professional paleontology books, including the whole Piveteau collection, and when I start to have internet at home , in 1998, searched a lot about Paleontology on the internet too. But I had never dig anithing, unfortunetly.I also would like to say that I am a Homomtherium big big fan, I am absolutely fascinated for this species that I consider so special;
@ I will see this episode too, probably is about Inostranscevia, a fascinating mamallike species. I would like to say, I have a controversial and very different hypotjesis about Homotherium and Xenosmilus "bite"; Do you would like that I explain it to you? Finally, I would like to suggest a theme for a new episode:please talk about Xenosmilus. it is fantastic showing the differences between it snd Homotherium, and comparing it with Smilodontini, would be a very interesting episode. Well, have a good evening, bye !And thanks for your patience and attention.
It would've been amazing throwing other bears into the mix, polar bears had low bfq and overall weak bite compared to brown bears due to their diet from what understand eating seals and biting through fatty blubber isn't exactly tough, unlike brown bears that consume lots of roots and carrion, with interspecies fighting giving them formidable bites. Pandas surprisingly like you said had extremely high bfq, making the extinct giant panda having a nightmarish bite, short faced bear had overall strongest bite force of any mammalian carnivore if I remember correctly. Also, Tigers I'm curious about, I suppose they're pretty close to Lions, maybe one species edging over the other slightly I'd say
Hi, I know this with respect to the polar bear in its blood ways. In fact I was the one who made the argument in another paper on a giant short faced African bear. I send you a copy of the paper if you like. To be honest there's not much difference between brown bears and polar bears, but yet the panda bear both like hell........... we did calculate bfq's a wide range of bears. It's a that paper two if you want. Cheers, Steve
And yeah, lions and tigers are basically the same in terms of anatomy. It's just that they have very different coats!
@@RealPaleontology I'd love to read the paper 🙌🙌
crocs
Crocs are great, I will get to them!