Meet The Tasmanian Devil — The Animal With The Most Powerful Bite On Earth

InnovationScienceMeet The Tasmanian Devil — The Animal With The Most Powerful Bite On EarthByScott Travers,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world.Follow AuthorJun 08, 2026, 08:30am EDTThe Tasmanian devil is far from being the biggest predator on Earth, but its astonishing bite force places it in a league of its own.gettyIf you know the Tasmanian devil at all, chances are you know it through a cartoon. The animal has been immortalized for generations as a spinning, snarling tornado of chaos that barrels through the landscape with little regard for physics or common sense. Of course, the real version of the animal is considerably less frantic. But in one respect, the cartoon did get one thing right: they’re incredibly powerful.Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) don’t look like record-holders. Even as the largest living carnivorous marsupial, they only stand at around 30 centimeters tall at the shoulder, and they typically weigh between 6 and 12 kilograms (13 to 26 pounds) — about the size of a small dog. But atop that stocky frame is one of the most formidable sets of jaws in the animal kingdom.Scientists have found that the Tasmanian devil possesses the highest bite force relative to body size ever measured in a living mammalian carnivore — recognized by Guinness World Records. In other words, pound for pound, its bite is stronger than that of lions, tigers, wolves, bears and hyenas.The obvious question is why. Why would a relatively small animal evolve a bite capable of pulverizing bone? And what exactly does the devil do with all that power? The answers reveal a species shaped by an unusual evolutionary history and one of nature’s most efficient scavengers.The Study That Crowned The Tasmanian DevilComparing the bite strength of different animals has been a historically difficult task in academia. We know, for instance, that a lion will naturally bit...