Feb. 12, 2013 — Even in the same
animal, not all bites are the same. A new study finds that because the force in
a muscle depends on how much it is stretched, an animal's bite force depends on
the size of what it is biting. The finding has direct implications for ecology
and evolution.
Many animals prefer food -- snails, nuts,
etc. -- that must be cracked and crushed. Scientists have measured the maximum
force of their impressive bites before, but a new study introduces a
significant subtlety: bite force depends not only on the size and strength of
the eater, but also the size of the eatee. That insight has important
implications in the lives of predators and prey.
"Everybody measures bite force as one
value," said Nicholas Gidmark, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department
of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University and lead author of the
new study published Feb. 14, 2013, in Biology Letters. "There's a lot more
nuance to it than that."
The nuance comes from a well-understood
phenomenon of physiology that had never before been measured in terms of a
living animal's bite force: The force a muscle can exert depends on how long
that muscle gets preparing for the chomp.
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