THE INDEPENDENT (Gainesville, Florida) 04 September 03 UF mascot bites hardest (Kristen Kridel)
UF couldn’t ask for a mightier mascot than the alligator.
The American alligator bites harder than any other member of the animal kingdom studied so far, said Kent Vliet, a UF zoologist who has been studying alligator bites for two years.
Vliet, who has been studying at St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park, said the forcefulness that an animal can muster depends on its size.
“We can record the maximum strength that an alligator can generate,” he said.
Vliet said his interest in alligator bite force stems from broad ecological questions. The zoologist wanted to know how alligators break through the strong shells of turtles to consume them.
While a hatchling only can bite down with the force of 20 to 25 pounds, the largest alligator tested had the strength of 2,960 pounds, Vliet said. He estimated that alligator would have been 13 feet 8 inches long if part of its tail was not missing.
Alligators often move turtles to the back of their mouths when they are feeding on them, Vliet said in a release. They squeeze the turtles until they “pop” the shell or give up.
“You’ll occasionally see them with a turtle, and they’ll work on it for a long time, like 15 to 20 minutes,” he said. “They’ll eventually either crush the thing or spit it out.”
To measure the force of the alligators’ bites, Vliet and two colleagues developed “bite bars,” which come in small, medium or large.
The metal bars have electronic strain gauges that digitally record the force of the bite.
Once they get the alligators’ mouths open, they stick the bars in the back of their jaws and wait for the alligator to chomp down, Vliet said.
“The hardest part of the work was getting the bite bar back from them because they’d hold onto it for 20 minutes, and it is delicate equipment,” Vliet said in the release. “We didn’t really want them walking off with it.”
UF mascot bites hardest