Untitled

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 21, 23 November 1907, Page 29

Sir Samuel Baker, in his book on wild beasts, says that the power of the jaws of the crocodile is terrific. Once he hail the metal of a large hook, the thickness of the ordinary telegraph wire, completely bent together, the barbed point being pressed tightly against the shank and rendered useless. This compression was caused by the snap of the crocodile’s jaws when seizing a live duck which he had used as a bait, the hook being fastened beneath one wing. On another occasion he found a fish weighing seventy pounds bitten clean through as if divided by a knife. This, again, was the work of the snapping jaws of a crocodile. A Frenchman, Paul Bert, once made experiments on the strength of a crocodile's jaws by moans of a dyno-momotor. He found that a crocodile weighing 12 pounds exerted a foree of .'IOS pounds in closing his jaws. The lion has an enormous jaw power. An African traveller once pushed the butt-end of his gun into <i

lion's mouth, and the pressure of the jaws cracked it ns though it had been struck by a steam hammer.