3,700-psi bite, weak-opening jaw: the Nile crocodile’s evolutionary design

The Nile crocodile has the strongest bite ever measured in a living animal (about 3,700 psi), but its opening jaw muscles are minuscule, so the mouth is easy to pin shut. This extreme closing power paired with weak opening muscles is an evolutionary design that favors ambush predation in water and the famous death roll, a strategy honed over roughly 100 million years.