How a Great White Shark Strikes | Shark Attack Files

In Muscle Bay, South Africa, Allison Towner and Enrico Janari investigate if speed is what makes a great white's jaws so deadly. Other investigators have seen how a bull shark's bite works. Now, getting a bite impression might help them solve the mystery of how a great white combines bite force with thrust.

"The shark just came out of the water, vertical, open mouth, almost like saying, 'Look at me, oh majestic animal, I am!' This is definitely the biggest shot that we've had so far, guys. He gave a big bite and he's still playing around with it for a good two minutes, so we should have got some very nice bite imprint."

They've got their results and they're revealing, "Wow, wow! It didn't just bite; it launched out of the water with its mouth! We couldn't have asked for better teeth impressions! Look at this, this is gold! The deepest bite impressions are most likely from the initial strike. We've got huge amounts of teeth marks there—these being the top teeth of the shark's jaw. And then, on the reverse side here, we can see the lower jaw perfectly. This shark has all of her teeth in place."

"We can only move our bottom jaws for eating; a great white can move both top and bottom! But for a shark capable of decapitating a seal in one bite, the damage to the decoy is surprisingly minimal. Maybe they don't have as much high back forces. Other species could be that the speed alone and the impact of the force of the hit is more powerful than the actual bite force."

"Um, so there's lots of complexity to tease apart. White sharks combine bite force and thrust to attack their prey. Their teeth are long, sometimes close to seven inches. With that many daggers, this shark may not need as much bite force as a bull shark. While the bull shark's teeth act like a buzz saw, a white shark's functions like a guillotine."

"Great white sharks have 24 teeth on the top and 26 on the bottom. You can liken it to a whole series of steak knives in a fish's mouth. The top teeth are the cutters; they are highly serrated and they are basically the teeth that saw into the flesh of their prey. The bottom teeth are very different; they're much more narrow but equally as serrated. So, as the bottom teeth pin and hold the prey, the top teeth cut through the flesh. And those mechanics together make the bite so powerful and so effective."