Cockroaches bite 50 times their body weight

[Still Waters]

Cockroaches are able to turbocharge their jaws so that they can bite with a force 50 times greater than their own body weight.

The insects have a special set of "slow twitch" muscles that build up strength and then provide a huge boost to their bites. The muscles allow them to bite with a force five times stronger than humans, relative to their size.

Engineers hope that they can use the techniques found in cockroaches to build powerful machines and systems of their own, such as small and strong motors that can be used in very small surgical equipment.

http://www.independe...t-a6731416.html

[Eldorado]

It must be cockroaches who taste-test Toblerone bars.

[quasar_kid]

Haha, Eldorado.

[Lucas Cooper Merrin]

Cockroach nipped me when i was defrosting the freezer last year

[freetoroam]

"better understanding behavioural and ecological processes and enabling bio-inspired engineering,"

I am just trying to figure out how the bite force of a cockroach is going to help in developing new engineering solutions for medicine, industry and the environment.

Maybe the researchers need more funding so they can find a way of explaining this amazing and potentially life saving find?!!!

[Athena1979]

They need to know this for "bioengineering"?

[AstralPhae]

No no no no no no and no.

[Goodnite]

The best cockroach is a dead cockroach.

[Sundew]

Here is something more than a match for the cockroach, the Emerald Cockroach Wasp from Malaysia. Turns the roach into a zombie (yes really), walks it along as if on a leach, then lays an egg on it and the larva eats it from the inside until only a shell remains. Pretty gruesome, I saw one on Maui (where they have been introduced) leading a large roach to it's doom.