Does anyone know the pounds of pressure psi wrought by the jaws of Lycaon Pictus.

[Pictus]

I'm trying to discover the pressure of an African Wild Dog's bite, (Lycaon Pictus.) Someone else mentioned that National Geographic described it as 317 lbs. I used to trust this channel, and still do � but ever since 'Predators at War' hit the screen and stated that 'Wild Dogs were descendants of the oldest domestic dogs' I've taken to exploring Lycaon Pictus with a bit more caution.
I stumbled across a website that researched canine bite-forces through the 'dry-skull' method. It is rumored that Canis Lupus (the Gray Wolf) reaches 1,500 lbs of pressure psi. I'm not sure what this site measured in � it categorized the wolf's bite-force, not pounds of pressure, and listed it as 593 N. As mentioned, I haven't any idea what the N stands for. I thought it might be Newtons, but the online converter I have didn't transfer Newtons to Pounds. In any case, Lycaon Pictus rated in at 428. If this is accurate, I'm estimating that Wild Dog's would bite around 400 lbs of pressure less than the above Gray Wolf. (It's a rough trial-and-error guess.) I'm pretty sure the site I found was precise in its investigations, but I want to make certain. The search engines I am attempting to use either spit back links scribed in a foreign language, or data less informative than the domain through which I obtained the previous info. Any help would be appreciated.

[jake-the-peg]

This all sounds a bit mixed up

You have to be careful what you're measuring.

Force is not the same as pressure

1Newton is the force exerted by the earths gravity on 1Kg so

1Kg=1x9.8m/s^2= 9.8 Newtons = 2.2Lbs on the ground

This would mean that your 593 Newtons is the equivilent of 133lbs force.

and 428 Newtons is 96lbs of force

However Pressure is the force over an area so you need to know the bite area of the teeth - when you say 400lbs of pressure that's mixing force and pressure and I don't know if you mean 400 pounds per square inch or a bite force of 400 pounds.

This means that your Lycaon Pictus could have a higher bite pressure than Canis Lupus despite having a lesser bite force if that bite is concentrated on a smaller area.

(I presume you're looking at the Stephen Wroe paper? )

Sorry I can't help on the bite areas

[Clanad]

This is from a discussion relating to Hyenas, however it does give, albeit a murky, reference for converting Newton's (N) to psi...

However, Wendy Binder of UCLA did do a study on Dr. Frank's hyenas. According to Dr. Frank:

"Unfortunately, Wendy's thesis presents her data in terms of force (Newtons) rather than pressure (psi). She measured forces as high as 4500 Newtons, but a quick search of the internet did not show me an easy way to convert this to a pressure measure. I assume that would involve dividing the force measure over a surface area; the unit conversation program that I found said that 4500 Newtons is equal to 1011 pound force. Perhaps if this were divided by the surface area of the tooth doing the biting??? I would guess that is less than 1/4 sq. in., so the force might be around 4000 psi???"
That should give you an idea how uncertain such measurements are, even in a laboratory setting. But suffice it to say you wouldn't want to get bitten by a spotted hyena. Another site confirmed 1500 lbs PSI for wolf...

[Clanad]

jake, we've got to stop meeting like this... there were no posts when I started...

[jake-the-peg]

Interesting, because mine was the only answer for some time today, I guess either you were a while answering or maybe AB has a number of servers that take a while to replicate posts.

[Pictus]

I understand that force is not the same as pressure - I was posting the wolf's 1,500 psi for those who didn't know of it yet, merly to inform, not to establish an equation. When I said 'four hundred pounds of pressure less' it was based on a curious estimation, stuck between bemusement and the hungry grope for an answer. It was nothing definite. I'm so terrible with math, once you get past basic algebra I balk - to complicate things, I've never dealt with Newtons before, but even I know better than to confuse one thing with another, simply because I haven't the experience, let alone knowledge to convert with (in my opinion) trustworthy results.
I read the Hyena info a while back - fell across it when putting together a paper on Crocuta crocuta, and I had referred to it again for this dilemma, but I grasped no answer from it. Thank you for your input though Clanad - I really didn't think this question would recieve an answer, let alone two.
As for you Jake, you are correct, I am using the Wroe paper - but I have no idea what they want for (N). Is it Newtons, Dekanewtons, Exanewtons, Whatchamacallitnewtons? I assume it's just...Newtons, but if you find different, please let me know. I am only able to read the html version of the pdf file. For some reason, while I may view the written information, the pictures refuse to display properly. One is obviously a graph, but I can't make out anything in regards to its input. If you know what the (N) stands for - if it is something other than just Newtons, please don't hold back.
The question is still open - if anyone has obtained through their own research, books, films etc... the pouds of pressure psi exerted by Lycaon Pictus's bite, post away.

Thank you both, Clanad and Jake, for your answers. ^^ They were very informative.