Saltwater Crocodile vs Great White Shark

[elosha11]

I can't post on carnivora anymore, thanks to Taipan's childish banning a couple years ago, but I do take some issue with TheRoc's post on this contest. For one thing, he bases a good part of his analysis on large SW crocs preying on smaller bull sharks. Bull sharks are formidable creatures, but they are literally dwarfed by really large salties. The usual predation events shows 15-18 foot salties predating on 5-8 foot bull sharks. Not exactly a fair contest. TheRoc says the bull sharks have been up to 10 feet long but I'm highly skeptical of such claims, which are based on nothing more than someone's eyeballing. It is quite rare for bull sharks to reach 10 feet. The largest is on record at 4 meters, but there have literally only been a handful ever recorded that long. A normal "large" bull shark is about 8 feet long. 9-10 feet is huge. This is what a ten foot, close to world record, bull shark looks like. It is far more massive than any of the bull sharks that have been documented as prey for crocs.



largestfreshwaterfish.com/biggest-bull-shark-caught-on-record/

Indeed, the Roc likes to talk about parity contest. A ten foot Bull shark of this size would likely tear a ten foot croc in half with ease (granted it would be more more robust than a ten foot croc so not really parity).

Really all TheRoc is proving when claiming much smaller bull sharks are "easy" prey for much larger crocs is that much bigger animals can readily kill much smaller animals. The easiest rebuttal to his argument on this point are these pictures:





These pics show two 5 meter crocs eating two 3 meter crocs. Both of these victims are at least the size of the largest bull sharks shown to be killed by large crocs, yet these 3 meter animals appear to be "easily" killed by the larger croc. So much for the bull shark analogy meaning anything...

Next, TheRoc tries to make a parity fight by claiming a 13 foot great white is about as big as 16 foot croc and arguing the croc would win this fight in a location such as 20 foot deep water. First, this shows the difficulty in making a parity fight with these animals. A 16 foot/5 meter foot saltwater croc is a very large, mature male crocodile, really a croc at the peak of its powers. But a 13 foot great white is either an average size young male (still not really close to a maximum size male shark), or a rather small, subadult female. I don't care if the weights "match up" here, the shark is nowhere near its prime as a predator and the crocodile is. A subadult shark will not be as robust or formidable as in its full growth stage. There is really no "fair" parity match here, because the great white is really on another size strata than the croc. So you either handicap the shark on the smaller end or handicap the croc at maximum size.

Next, theRoc makes some rather dubious, although creative, speculations about the animals performance capabilities. His main point is that he thinks the croc is more explosive in short fight-like bursts and can explode out of the water with little build up speed. While he acknowledges that the great white is much faster at peak speed, he believes the croc has a big advantage in short term explosiveness. I'm not really sure why he thinks a croc has significantly greater mobility than a great white. When a great white is really determined to catch a prey for instance, it can demonstrate pretty impressive mobility, turn radius and explosiveness. For instance, watch this great white turning quickly and chasing down an agile seal over the course of over a minute. I personally think this shows both greater mobility and endurance than a croc could likely generate.



Lastly theRoc makes some completely unsubstantiated claims that crocs are stronger than sharks in general, because a larger part of great whites body make up are organs than the croc. Thus, he claims it give crocs more room for muscle mass. No doubt both animals are extremely strong in their own ways. Crocs obviously have more powerful bite force, but the great white sharks bite is larger overall and their teeth do more cutting damage. As far as which animal has greater body strength, this is really a wash and is hard to measure since the animals' constructs are so different. Both animals can generate terrific force by shaking, and - with the croc - by death rolling. But pound for pound/foot for foot, the great white is a significantly more robust creature than the croc, which might suggest greater overall strength.

TheRoc's points are creative and he obviously put some thought behind them. But I certainly don't agree with all of his points.

[Supercommunist]

Lastly theRoc makes some completely unsubstantiated claims that crocs are stronger than sharks in general, because a larger part of great whites body make up are organs than the croc. Thus, he claims it give crocs more room for muscle mass. No doubt both animals are extremely strong in their own ways. Crocs obviously have more powerful bite force, but the great white sharks bite is larger overall and their teeth do more cutting damage. As far as which animal has greater body strength, this is really a wash and is hard to measure since the animals' constructs are so different. Both animals can generate terrific force by shaking, and - with the croc - by death rolling. But pound for pound/foot for foot, the great white is a significantly more robust creature than the croc, which might suggest greater overall strength.

37:46

The people conducting the dissection remark that the crocodiles comparatively small organs enables them to pack more muscles in their body than most animals. It should be noted that they never made any similar comment on any other animal they have dissected, which included a great white shark. It makes sense that a large species crocodile, alligator, or caiman would stronger than a similar sized shark as they have to drag large prey animals into the water while a shark just takes a chunk out its prey and waits for it to bleed out.

[Grey]

I think elosha was referring to the overall muscle mass of the body. And he's right, the typical shark is composed at 85 % of muscles. I don't think any croc is that muscled in proportion.

Anyone (animal enthusiast) knows that crocs bite stronger than sharks but that's not a factor of muscle mass. Great white jaws are heavily muscled, the reason for the lower bite force is rather in the loose attachment of the jaws to the skull.

In short, bite wise a croc is more powerful than any shark at same size, in overall muscle mass that's another story.

TheROC sometimes makes interesting posts but he always has been reptile versed and indeed a number of his claims are doddy.

For example his claim that crocs are more explosive than even a mako is dubious for the good reasons that crocs actually often use their tail against the bottom to perform jumps out of the water.

For sure their tail is highly powerful but that doesn't make them more explosive than endothermic lamnids. Makos apparently don't need much distance to perform jumps 6-7 m above the surface. I doubt any croc would be able to do that even with enough depth and acceleration.

He also forgets that crocs are quickly tired. While harpooned, shots sharks are known to have lasted hours before being caught.

[Ceratodromeus]

i do not know the overall muscle percentage of crocodiles, but i did want to say this, as grey has something on it -- the reason crocodiles are able to jump out of the water -- adults and young animals -- is because their tails are very powerful; heavily muscled in their own right. edit: i see your edit, disregard the last sentence.

i would absolutely say that they do not need to be along the bottom of a river to achieve these jumps. To illustrate this, here are some videos that demonstrate my point nicely, as we can tell the water is deep and we can see the immense hip movement of the crocodile propelling the animal upwards.



Here is an excerpt from the book Biology and Evolution of Crocodylians
 (By Gordon Grigg and David Kirshner)on the matter




link to book

He also forgets that crocs are quickly tired.
It took an hour and a half for Batambuze and his friends, fighting and retreating, exchanging attacks with the enraged animal, before the crocodile was finally dead.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31001996

This is largely debatable; see this posted by supercomunist in the durability thread

It took an hour and a half for Batambuze and his friends, fighting and retreating, exchanging attacks with the enraged animal, before the crocodile was finally dead.

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31001996

[Grey]

Yup, but I doubt it's all that relevant in a theoretical fight with a large white shark.

There is another problem, we have a lot of footages of the crocs intraspecific fights and agression while interactions and fights between white sharks have never been observed or only by glimpses so that our understanding of how one is agressive and brutal against another large sized opponent would be biased. But yeah I concur that crocs have a very powerful tail.

[Grey]

Regarding stamina in sharks, a 1910 account about a whale shark.

Captain Charles Thompson off Miami
harpooned this 38-foot-long whale shark that
reportedly took about 39 hours, five harpoons
and more than 100 bullets to subdue

[creature386]

Mar 7, 2016 11:27:59 GMT 5 elosha11 said:

Next, TheRoc tries to make a parity fight by claiming a 13 foot great white is about as big as 16 foot croc and arguing the croc would win this fight in a location such as 20 foot deep water. First, this shows the difficulty in making a parity fight with these animals. A 16 foot/5 meter foot saltwater croc is a very large, mature male crocodile, really a croc at the peak of its powers. But a 13 foot great white is either an average size young male (still not really close to a maximum size male shark), or a rather small, subadult female. I don't care if the weights "match up" here, the shark is nowhere near its prime as a predator and the crocodile is. A subadult shark will not be as robust or formidable as in its full growth stage. There is really no "fair" parity match here, because the great white is really on another size strata than the croc. So you either handicap the shark on the smaller end or handicap the croc at maximum size.

According to what stomatopod (or was it you? I don't quite remember) said, a female great white reaches maturity at a length of about 4.5 m. Now, given that there is always some kind of "Bell Curve" in populations (some are naturally smaller, larger, slower, faster, weaker, stronger etc. than other members of their species), it is very well possible to find a 4 m shark that is already mature (in this case, maybe even the bulk developed faster so that it has the "adult shape" at a smaller length). Or it is possible to take an adult male.

[elosha11]

Mar 7, 2016 19:52:01 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Mar 7, 2016 11:27:59 GMT 5 elosha11 said:

Next, TheRoc tries to make a parity fight by claiming a 13 foot great white is about as big as 16 foot croc and arguing the croc would win this fight in a location such as 20 foot deep water. First, this shows the difficulty in making a parity fight with these animals. A 16 foot/5 meter foot saltwater croc is a very large, mature male crocodile, really a croc at the peak of its powers. But a 13 foot great white is either an average size young male (still not really close to a maximum size male shark), or a rather small, subadult female. I don't care if the weights "match up" here, the shark is nowhere near its prime as a predator and the crocodile is. A subadult shark will not be as robust or formidable as in its full growth stage. There is really no "fair" parity match here, because the great white is really on another size strata than the croc. So you either handicap the shark on the smaller end or handicap the croc at maximum size.

According to what stomatopod (or was it you? I don't quite remember) said, a female great white reaches maturity at a length of about 4.5 m. Now, given that there is always some kind of "Bell Curve" in populations (some are naturally smaller, larger, slower, faster, weaker, stronger etc. than other members of their species), it is very well possible to find a 4 m shark that is already mature (in this case, maybe even the bulk developed faster so that it has the "adult shape" at a smaller length). Or it is possible to take an adult male.

It's possible to find a sexually mature female great white at 13 feet but they still aren't as massive, even pound for pound as a 5-6 meter shark, i.e. the really big ones. Whereas I think a 16 foot male salt water croc is much closer to being a fully developed animal. 16 foot is a very large saltwater croc. A 13 foot great white is not a very large shark, it's closer to average. It's obviously a closer call with a male great white shark, but then we are pitting the smaller sex on the one hand against the larger sex on the other.

[creature386]

Isn't the latter (small vs large sex) done quite commonly to achieve parity matchups? At least there are some threads on carnivora where one animal has the smaller sex explicitly mentioned in the title.

[Supercommunist]

I think elosha was referring to the overall muscle mass of the body. And he's right, the typical shark is composed at 85 % of muscles. I don't think any croc is that muscled in proportion.

Really skeptical of that figure. There is no way a sharks cartilaginous skeletal and organs constitute only 15% of a shark's mass. I believe a shark's liver can account up to 25% of a shark's weight alone.


32:05

[spartan]

I favor the shark here, but I also really doubt that figure. The liver alone already weighs 15-25%, the skeleton also 6-8%. I don't know of any animal with such a high percentage of muscle mass, not even close.

[Grey]

www.elasmo-research.org/education/white_shark/muscles_jaw.htm

Something on the order of 85% of a 'typical' shark's body weight is muscle, compared with about 35 to 45% for humans.

[spartan]

The same site gives the 15-35% figure for the liver. The skin, skeleton and other internal organs should also weigh a bit. 85% seems highly unlikely to me.

[malikc6]

Other than the weight and sizes of these animals, I think this fight depends whether its an open area or a shallow area. I favor the Shark in open sea because its maneuverability would go way up, and it's adept at killing prey in that environment. A shallow area on the other hand, I'd back up the crocodile.

In the end, it really depends on who bites first. I doubt that either could survive a full force bite onto one another.

[jhg]

The shark outmaneuvers and overpowers the crocodile.