INFLUENTIAL FEEDING DYNAMICS OF SHARKS AND MATHEMATICAL FORMULAS TO ESTIMATE THE POWER OF BITING BY MORPHOLOGICAL DATA

The mouths of some bony and cartilaginous fishes are located in the anterior part of their bodies, with a slight variation in sharks, which have theirs located in the abdominal part. This variation is evolutionary over time. The force exerted by the jaws of sharks in order to dismember their prey can be examined from two origins. The determined force exerted by teeth and muscles and the force as a result of torque arm through jaw distance. Although sharks apply less force compared to crocodile, their sharp teeth and mouth position provides much stronger effect. Moreover, several species are characterized with heavier upper jaw and this enhances the power. A mouth located in the anterior part of the body would have less force exerted. On the contrary, human jaw is shorter, which applies much more force. This paper relates the prebranchial length and power with preying strength. According to this survey, a couple of predators were considered in terms of their mouth position, as well as different kind of feeding and ecological characteristics. Morphological data on several sharks were extracted and evaluated by MATLAB software to prove the following deductive hypothesis. The more the support distance (prebranchial length) to concentrated force was, the stronger the shark preyed on animals. The amount of torque had significant relationship with the lever distance and concentrated force. Besides, several formulas have been recommended to estimate the bite force and torque based on morphological characteristics.