Animal Sciences Commons^™

Simple Predictors Of Bite Force In Bats: The Good, The Better, And The Better Still, Patricia W. Freeman, Cliff A. Lemen

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Bite forces of 39 species from six families of New World bats with a variety of diets are quantified with a force meter under field conditions. Using regression approaches we search for a model that is a good morphological predictor of these bite forces. Body mass, an index that ignores differences in skull morphology, has a statistically significant relationship with bite force (R² = 0.76) but is a relatively poor predictor compared with our best model (R² = 0.94). The two best models of the eight we examine are one based on an estimate of strength …