Which animal has the most powerful bite?

Which animal has the most powerful bite? No, the answer isn't shark, though sharks would likely be the first choice on many people's lips.

The recent study conducted by Florida State biology professor Greg Erickson and his colleagues showed that Australian saltwater crocodile has the most powerful bite of all animals in our planet.

In numbers, the strength of Australia crocodile's bite has a force value of 3,700 pounds for a 17-foot saltwater crocodile (as well as tooth pressures of 350,000 pounds per square inch). That's the highest bite force ever recorded, convincingly beating a 2,980-pound value for a 13-foot wild American alligator that used to hold the record.

How did researchers measured the bite power? The researchers used 83 adult alligators and crocodiles, strapped them down, placed a bite-force device between their back teeth and then used instruments to recorded the bite force. After that engineering calculation was then used to estimate the force generated simultaneously by the teeth nearest the front of the jaws.

Erickson described this experience: "I have to admit, the first time I placed our meter into the maw of an adult crocodile, I was nervous. It was all over in the blink of an eye. When it struck, it nearly wrested my grip from the handle. The noise of the jaws coming together was like a gunshot. The power of the animal was astounding, and the violence of the event frightening.

The power of this bite, regardless of how powerful it sounds and really is, is still weak compared to the largest extinct crocodile predecessors, gigantic 35- to 40-foot animals, that were able to bit at forces as high as 23,100 pounds. Luckily for us these guys have become extinct:)

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Interesting facts about penguins

Emperor penguins are the largest species of penguins in the world, they can achieve height over 1 meter and weigh more than 35 kg.

Emperor penguins that live in Antarctica form tightly packed huddles and coordinate their movements to give all members of the huddle a chance to warm up in order to survive temperatures below -50 ° C and winds above 180 km/h during the Antarctic winter.

Penguins are amazing divers, and they also posses the ability to dive long after their muscles run out of oxygen. Once Antarctic Emperor penguin dives it may not emerge again for another 20 minutes because of its ability to switch to anaerobic metabolism in some tissues. Emperor Penguins are master divers and the scientists have measured a record dive reaching a depth of 565 m (1,870 ft). They also have excellent underwater vision.

Penguins cannot fly, their wings are in fact flippers but are therefore highly adapted to life in water. When penguin swims this in fact looks very similar to bird's flight in the air.

The scientists have found the evidences that some prehistoric species of penguins were as tall and as heavy as humans. However, these predecessors of today's penguins loved much warmer climate to live in. The New Zealand Giant Penguin weighed around 80 kg and was more than 1,80m tall. These gigantic penguin species vanished by the end of the Paleogene around 25 million years ago.

Scientists still do not fully agree on the exact number of penguin species in our planet because there are uncertainties whether certain penguin species should be considered to be a separate species. There are between 17-20 penguin species.

Penguin's color is their great camouflage that gives predators such as orcas great difficulty in catching them because it is not easy to distinguish a white penguin belly from the reflective water surface.

Penguins can be often spotted tobogganing (sliding on their bellies on snow) because this gives them ability to move quickly without using too much energy.

Not all penguins have black plumage as from time to time penguins are born with brown plumage. These penguins are called Isabelline penguins.

The largest penguin populations can be found at Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, and South Africa.

During a breeding season penguins form monogamous relationships. The incubation duties are shared equally among male and female in all species except the Emperor penguin where male does it all.

Penguins are generally not afraid of the humans because they are accustomed to life in the environment without the land predators.

Penguins also belong to animal species that sometimes form homosexual male couples. The reports from the Zoo in Japan showed that some male penguin couples have build nests together and have used a stone as a substitute for an egg.

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Interesting facts about ligers

Liger is the largest of all known cat species and represents a hybrid cross between the male lion and a female tiger. Ligers do not exist in the wild, only in captivity because tigers have habitats mostly in Asia and lions mostly in Africa and besides that they are mortal enemies in the wild ready to kill one another when confronted.

It is believed that there are only few living ligers around the globe, and the most famous of them all is called Hercules. Hercules comes from the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida.

Hercules' birth was completely accidental, a result of an affair between tigress and one of the lion males at the Institute.

Hercules currently weighs more than 900 pounds, he is 6-feet-tall and 12-feet-long and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest cat in the world. He is also able to eat 100 pounds of food in just one sitting

Ligers can run faster than 50 mph, they like to swim like tigers and are very sociable like lions. Ligers are approximately the same size as the prehistoric American lions.

Ligers can live longer than 20 years, for instance female liger Shasta was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on May 14, 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24.

Ligers are not sterile though their offspring is usually of very delicate health. Male ligers, for instance, have the same levels of testosterone on average as an adult male lion.

There are no black ligers, in some cases ligers can be white, though this is extremely rare.

Ligers are distinct from the similar hybrids tiglons (female lion + male tiger) which tend to be about as large a female tiger.

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Why are sharks in big trouble these days?

Sharks are among the world's most famous animals and are certainly the sea’s most feared creatures. However, by the current looks of it sharks should be the ones feeling fear because they are obviously in big trouble as there is an ongoing decline of shark populations worldwide.

Sharks play extremely important role in marine food chain as the top predators. This means that if their population continues to shrink the entire balance of the marine food chain will be put under great jeopardy and with sharks gone many marine ecosystems will become irreversibly altered because sharks maintain the balance and health of our seas and oceans.

The overfishing of sharks is the main reason behind their rapid decline in population. The more and more shark species are being added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's list of threatened species with some of them being at the very brink of the extinction. The additional problem is that sharks reproduce very slowly so even relatively small amounts of fishing can have big negative effect on local populations.

The recent estimates say that fishing kills around 100 million sharks every year mostly because sharks are common seafood in many places around the globe. The world still hasn't established some international organization to monitor and manage shark fisheries so we still don't know reliable records of global shark catches.

The majority of researchers believe that sharks could still be saved with the adequate protection by for instance establishing more marine protected areas and with more marine ecotourism.

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Were dinosaurs cold-blooded or warm-blooded animals?

The scientific community still argues on issue whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded animals and now the latest research coming from the Australian scientists at the University of Adelaide has added further stir to this debate.

Professor Roger Seymour from the University of Adelaide believes that the answer to this issue may lie in fossil dinosaur bones.

Professor Seymour's main idea was to make the parallel between the humans and the dinosaurs. Human thigh bones have tiny holes - called "nutrient foramen" - on the shaft that supply blood to living bone cells inside. The scientists discovered that the size of these holes is related to the maximum rate that a person can be active during aerobic exercise and based on this Professor Seymour evaluated the activity levels of dinosaurs.

Cold-blooded creatures are less active, kind of sluggish, while warm-blooded creatures show increased level of activity.

By making this analogy between the nutrient foramens Seymour discovered that dinosaurs were in fact even more active than the mammals and this is the result which certainly wasn't expected.

This latest research therefore gives more credential to the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and highly active creatures and will certainly open the door for even more lively discussions on this topic.

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What is the number of animals living in our planet?

Up to now, the scientists have identified 1.4 million animal species that live on our planet. There are probably several millions more that are waiting to be discovered but on the other hand many animal species will forever remain a mystery because they will go extinct before we had the chance to discover them.

Discovering and identifying new animal species requires large funds, in fact according to the recent study by Brazilian scientists world would have to provide fund of $263 billion in order to discover and identify every animal on our planet.

This amount of money is really huge but scientists believe that this would in the end turn out to be a very small price to pay because this would give scientists a precious information about the creatures that enable such essentials as agriculture, fisheries, a possibility for new drugs to treat incurable diseases, and possibility for new energy sources.

What scientists are really saying here is that the world's economy primarily depends on biodiversity, and that by identifying all animal species on our planet we would be able to learn much more about it. The better knowledge about biodiversity would make preservation of natural resources much easier but many people still fail to see how important biodiversity really is.

Many animals are going extinct because of climate change and other major environmental issues, which makes documenting biodiversity of our planet even more important, and really a matter of urgency. This is because we need to know the role of these species in matters such as crop pollination, clean air, and other aspects that enable human well-being.

Scientists are currently identifying around 16,000 new animal species per year which is definitely not fast enough. As Brazilian researcher Antonio Marques ironically put it: "We are losing species by extinction faster than we are describing new species".

Money is not the only reason why scientists are relatively slowly identifying new animal species. The other reason is a global shortage of quality taxonomists.

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Invasive species are not always bad for ecosystems

Invasive species have more often than not negative impact on native ecosystems, and can in extreme cases even lead to extinction of native species. This is because invasive species in most cases compete with native species for food an other resources, and this often results in negative environmental effects.

But as said in the title of the post not all invasive species are bad for native ecosystems, and this was showed by the team of scientists who introduced invasive species of plants which resulted in positive environmental effects.

Tomás Carlo, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, and Jason Gleditsch, a graduate student in the Department of Biology, have sectioned off an area of central Pennsylvania known as the Happy Valley region, where honeysuckle, a non-native invasive fruiting plant, grows in abundance. Afterwards they assessed the abundance of bird species and fruiting plants, including honeysuckle, within the area. The conclusion was that the honeysuckle and bird communities had formed a relationship known as mutualism, where two species interact by benefiting mutually from each other's existence. In this case, honeysuckle provided birds with the food in the fall while birds benefit honeysuckle by dispersing the plant's seeds across a wider geographical area.

This study just proves that nature is in the condition of constant change, and that eliminating non-native species isn't always the right solution to protect native ecosystems, in most cases yes, but not in all cases. This is because humans have already changed many ecosystems beyond the recognition point so many native species are already rare, and some have already gone extinct.

Observation and comprehensive studying is the key for conservation, and scientists should consider all possible options, not just sticking with one, no matter how right this option might appear. As this study proved, invasive species shouldn't be always treated as threat to native animals because in some cases invasive species can form positive connection with native species which benefits given ecosystem.

We have been taught many times that generalization isn't exactly the best scientific method, and invasive species are clear evidence of this.

The results of this study will soon be published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

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Who is smarter? Dogs or cats?

Dogs and cats are our most favorite pets, and sometimes you get the feeling they can understand every single word you say to them. This of course isn't true though compared to some other animals dogs and cats are real Einsteins. But who is smarter? Dog or cat?

If we are to believe the latest study coming from the Oxford University's Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology the dogs are the ones that are smarter because they have bigger brains relative to body size as compared to cats.

Up until recently, the widely accepted theory was that the growth rate of the brain relative to body size followed a general trend across all groups of mammals. According to this theory there wouldn't be any difference compared to dogs and cats, in terms of intelligence.

The new theory is different, and according to this new theory dogs have larger brains than cats do. Why is that? The scientists believe that the main reason for this is the fact that dogs are highly social species while on the other hand cats are solitary animals.

According to scientists the social species need to think more compared to solitary animals, and this is the reason why social species have larger brains. Social animals need larger brains because cooperation and coordination needed for group living is much more challenging compared to solitary life.

What this study shows is that the social component plays extremely important role in evolution. Socializing isn't the easiest thing in human world let alone in animal world, and some animals needed to develop larger brains in order to enhance their social skills.

The scientists used available data of the measurements of brain size and body size of each group of living mammals and compared them with similar data for the fossilized remains of mammals of the same lineage. They examined the growth rates of the brain size relative to body size to see if there were any changes in the proportions over time. The growth rates of each mammal group were compared with other mammal groups to see what patterns emerged.

It's no wonder Tom finds it so hard to catch Jerry:)

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50 amazing facts about animals

1. Elephants are excellent swimmers but they cannot trot, jump, or gallop.

2. Elephants have an exceptional sense of hearing. This is because their hearing receptors are not located only in their ears, but also in trunks that are sensitive to vibrations, and even more significantly feet, which have special receptors for low frequency sound.

3. 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread large land mammal after humans.

4. Lions are the only members of the cat family where males and females look distinctly different.

5. During a mating bout, a lion couple may copulate 20 to 40 times a day for several days.

6. The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.

7. Tiger paws are powerful enough to smash the skulls of domestic cattle, and break the backs of sloth bears.

8. There are more than 20,000 ants species living on our planet.

9. Ant queen can live up to 30 years, significantly longer than the ant workers who live up to 3 years.

10. Army ants can consume up to 100,000 prey animals each day.

11. Polar bears can breed with brown bears, and the result of this breeding are fertile grizzly–polar bear hybrids.

12. Fat polar bears rarely attack humans (it takes serious provocation to get them going), but hungry polar bears have extremely unpredictable behavior and there were some cases when hungry polar bear killed and sometimes even ate human.

13. The giraffe needs less food than typical grazing animals because the foliage it eats has more concentrated nutrition and it has a more efficient digestive system compared to other grazing animals.

14. Giraffe, in average, sleeps less than 2 hours per day.

15. The DNA of gorillas is between 95 and 99% the same as ours.

16. Almost all gorillas have the same blood type (B).

17. Cheetah is the fastest land animal. Adult cheetah can reach speeds between 112 and 120 km/h (70 and 75 mph).

18. Cheetah can purr but not roar like lions and tigers can.

19. The cheetah kills its prey by tripping it during the chase, then biting it on the underside of the throat to suffocate it.

20. Some dolphin species have up to 250 teeth.

21. Mosquitoes transmit disease to more than 700 million people annually in Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico and much of Asia with millions of resulting deaths. At least 2 million people annually die of these diseases.

22. There are many scientists who believe that eradicating mosquitoes would not have serious consequences for any ecosystem.

23. All bee species are non-aggressive if undisturbed and many cannot sting at all.

24. There are over over 100,000 wasp species in the world.

25. Hamsters are nearsighted and colorblind but they do have an acute sense of smell and can hear extremely well.

26. Rats are edible by humans, for instance rat meat makes up half the locally produced meat consumed in Ghana,.

27. Mice have poor eyesight but an excellent sense of hearing and smell.

28. Scientists estimate that the largest dinosaurs may have weighed 80,000 to 100,000 kilograms.

29. The smallest dinosaurs known were about the size of a chicken, if not smaller.

30. At this moment there are around 1500 named dinosaur species.

31. Flies consume only liquid food because they have no teeth or any other organ that would allow them to eat solid food.

32. Fly has lifespan of only few days.

33. One hornet can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defense, which can be highly dangerous to humans.

34. Hyenas have very powerful digestive system with highly acidic fluids which makes them capable of eating and digesting their entire prey, including skin, teeth, horns and bones.

35. Tasmanian devil can eat up to 40% of their body weight in just 30 minutes.

36. Blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed on Earth, at 35 m (115 ft) in length and weighing incredible 150 tonnes.

37. Whales are mammals so they need to sleep but their sleeping differs from other mammals, it is believed that only one hemisphere of the whale's brain sleeps at a time, so they rest but are never completely asleep.

38. Some whale species have lifespan longer than 100 years.

39. Killer whales or orcas are highly social animals with sophisticated hunting techniques as they usually hunt in groups similar to wolf packs.

40. Wolfs have an excellent stamina, and can run in continuation for more than 20 minutes. Their maximum speed is around 40 miles per hour.

41. Fox can be domesticated, the best example to this was the Russian Silver Fox that was domesticated after nearly 50 years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia.

42. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, which they use for scanning the area for possible predators.

43. Rabbits are extremely reproductive, in just one season a single female rabbit can produce as many as 800 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

44. The smallest snake in the world has length of only 4 inches while the longest can be more than 10 meters long.

45. Snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces so they must swallow prey whole.

46. The inland taipan is by far the most venomous snake on Earth, a single bite from this snake has enough poison to kill more than one hundred adult humans.

47. Crocodiles are among the oldest animals on our planet, it is believed that they have been on our planet for more than 200 millions years, for comparison dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.

48. Crocodiles have by far the strongest bite of all animals, around 15 times more powerful than great white shark.

49. Sharks may have up to 3000 teeth at one time. Their teeth are not able to chew food, but only to tear it into mouth-sized pieces, and are replaceable.

50. When penguin mother loses a chick, she sometimes attempts to "steal" another mother's chick but this is rarely successful because not only does the real mother defend her chick but also because other females in vicinity assist the defending mother in keeping her chick.

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Interesting science facts - Animals

Polar bear is the world's largest carnivore found on land. Polar bears are excellent swimmers but also very good runners with speed up to 25 miles per hour.

Lion is only the second largest living cat. The largest living cat is tiger. Lions are the only members of the cat family that show clear distinction between males and females.

Turtles date long long back, with the earliest known turtles date from 215 million years ago, even before snakes and lizards. Turtles usually take many years to reach breeding age, and in many cases breed every few years rather than annually.

The Giant Panda can usually live to be 25-30 years old in captivity. Pandas usually spend their lives roaming and feeding in the bamboo forests where each adult has a defined territory and females are not tolerant of other females in their range.

The largest living penguins species is the Emperor Penguin with adults averaging about 1.1 m. Penguins usually don't fear humans. Scientists believe this is because their habitats are without any land predators.

Cheetah is the fastest land animal that can reach the speed between 112 and 120 km/h (70 and 75 mph). Cheetah acceleration abilities are also amazing 0 to 110 km/h (68 mph) in three seconds. This is better acceleration than in average supercar.

Elephants are the largest land animals. Elephants are spending in average 16 hours a day collecting plant food. Adult elephant can consume incredible 140–270 kg (300–600 lb) of food a day (mostly grass and leaves).

Rhino's horn is made of keratin, the same type of protein that makes up hair and fingernails. Their average life span is somewhere about 60 years.

Ostrich lives in nomadic groups which up to 50 birds. Ostrich has ability to run at speeds of about 74 km/h (46 mph).

Whales entered the water about 50 million years ago. Whales are mammals that breathe air into lungs, they are warm-blooded, and feed their young milk.

Horses were domesticated some 4500 BC. Today there are over 300 breeds of horses in the world today, developed for many different uses.

Estimations say that there are somewhere around 1.3 billion cattle in the world today.

Dogs were domesticated some 15,000 years ago. Today there are more than 400 million dogs in the world.

Cats are extremely skilled predators that has a hunt span of over 1,000 species for food.

There are about 3,500 species of mosquitoes in the world.

Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the Earth. There are over million described species of insects in the world.

There are around 10,000 living species of birds. Birds evolved from dinosaurs during the Jurassic period.

Sharks can lose 30,000 teeth in a lifetime. Most sharks have lifespan of 20 to 30 years.

There are about 14000 species of ants. Ants do not sleep. Ants live in highly organized colonies.

Bats make all kinds of sounds to communicate with others. Larger bats can give a nasty bite that can cause serious injuries.

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