A little boy who had just moved into our neighborhood approached. He introduced himself and asked if he could pet Tate. When he extended and raised his hand to pet our pup, Tate opened his mouth wide and the boy stepped back in surprise (and fear) noticing his very large pearly whites. With that, he said "did you know that German Shepherds exert 285 pounds of pressure in a bite?" Other than being speechless, it left us curious, so we “Google'd” a shepherd’s bite pressure. The following article came from Dr. Brady Barr of National Geographic in 2005 .
Dr. Barr measured bite forces of many different creatures. Domestic dogs were included in the test. Here are the results of all of the animals tested:
Humans: 120 pounds of bite pressure
Domestic dogs: 320 LBS of pressure on avg. A German Shepherd Dog, American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT), and Rottweiler were tested using a bite sleeve equipped with a specialized computer instrument. The APBT had the least amount of pressure of the 3 dogs tested.
Wild dogs: 310 lbs
Lions: 600 lbs
White sharks: 600 lbs
Hyenas: 1000 lbs
Snapping turtles: 1000 lbs
Crocodiles: 2500 lbs
Nat. Geo actually did a follow-up on this first special, “The Big Bite II-Dangerous Encounters”. Using the same techniques, Dr. Barr tested some other animals, including a Hyacinth Macaw(parrot), a Tasmanian Devil, a Savannah monitor lizard, a Nurse shark and a large Alpha male wolf.
The wolf’s bite was a bit over 400 pounds p.s.i, making it the strongest biter of the canids, but the two-pound Macaw nearly equaled that 100+ pound wolf, with a bite force of 375 p.s.i, and it did not appear to be doing anything more than just playing around with the bite meter instrument, as it was a tame bird!
In the first bite-force special, the APBT (which DID appear to be biting that sleeve for all it was worth, a good “full-mouth” bite)managed only 127 p.s.i, just seven pounds more than the HUMAN tested!
In the second special, Dr. Barr was convinced that the young crocodile he’d tested was not performing up to snuff in its bite, since all the crocodilians he’d tested had all been freshly-caught specimens, which were exhausted after a struggle. He tested the device again on a 18-foot wild male Nile croc, in the wild, unrestrained, that was brumating in a den on an African river bank to escape the daytime heat, by actually crawling down the burrow himself! That animal managed, with a single bite, to exert a pressure of over SIX THOUSAND pounds per square inch, making it the most powerful bite of any animal, ever recorded.
Our encounters with the public have left us even more curious about the anatomy, ancestors, behaviors and potential of all dogs. As for our neighbor, he and Tate are now the best of friends and seek each other out.