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According to a new study, cockroaches can bite with 50 times more force than its body weight or five times the relative force of a human being.
Researchers said that the powerful bite is generated due to a force boost that is created when the cockroacheschew hard materials such as wood.Researchers from Cambridge and three German universities have conducted the study on the cockroaches. They said that the species is very resilient and has predated dinosaurs and can live up to two weeks after being decapitated, yet the bite of that force is astonishing for the small insect.
Lead author Tom Weihmann from the University of Cambridge’s zoology department, said, “Ours is the first study to measure the bite forces of ordinary insects, and we found that the American cockroach, Periplanetaamericana, can generate a bite force around 50 times stronger than its own body weight.”
The researchers strapped the cockroaches to miniature guillotine-like devices in order to determine the bite strength. The insects then chomped down on a sensor, which recorded their jaw-dropping jaw strength.
The study was published in the Plos One scientific journal. The study was part of an effort to catalogue the bite strengths of insects and not just animals.
