Which would you rather get bit by?

[TooManyToys]

None of the above

[BMorrison]

I'll go full force and say give me a shot from a fer de lance, square in the face!

Yeah... that's how I get down!

[nixer]

Morays, however, do inflict a nasty bite, because, although not poisonous, their backward-pointing teeth are covered with bacteria which may infect the wound.

doesnt sound like something i would like to be biten by

the rock could well you know!

the etb would hurt like you wouldnt believe but its not live threatening.

either way im sure i would say some bad words if any happened

[slither9192]

Morays, however, do inflict a nasty bite, because, although not poisonous, their backward-pointing teeth are covered with bacteria which may infect the wound.

doesnt sound like something i would like to be biten by

the rock could well you know!

the etb would hurt like you wouldnt believe but its not live threatening.

either way im sure i would say some bad words if any happened

Backward pointing teeth? On a moray? You have any pics showing this? I have never seen any species of moray with backward pointing teeth. At least not like snakes are.

[mainbutter]

YouTube - Moray Eel eats Thumb

[spix14]

I'm going with the ETB. A moray bite would be just plain nasty with all the bacteria and ripping of the flesh and whatnot...and the sheer muscle power behind a big python's bite would probably mess you up pretty bad. I had a friend that got bitten in the face by a 7 foot red tail and had a black eye the next day. Can you imagine what a 15 foot retic could do? You'd probably need stitches to boot. Yea, the ETB would hurt but the damage wouldn't be nearly as bad.

[Gooseman]

actually, even big pythons have very little jaw strength. The power in snakes comes from the squeezing muscles, not the jaws. The dislocating mechanism makes having powerful jaws nearly impossible, because, if they were to chomp down hard, they'd pop their own jaws out of socket, which would then render the powerful muscles useless without a pivot point. Large pythons rely on recurved teeth to hold on to the prey just long enough for it to wrap it's coils around it. I believe discovery channel had a show on the bite force of wild animals and snakes came dead last. Something rediculously low like 30 psi of bite force. (dont quote me on that number, I just remember it being crazy low).

A moray on the other end, has incredibly stong jaw power, AND neck power. It bites down hard, and then twists and shakes to rip the meat clear from bone, or to shatter invertabrate shells. A large python bite would be dangerous because it would be like being stabbed, but not mangling like a moray bite.

[bondiblue]

I'll take the ETB out of those. At least it couldn't constrict me to death or rip meat from my bones.

[slither9192]

Here's some shots of my snowflake moray. I should have cleaned the glass before taking pics.

[CeraDigital]

I've been bitten by quite a few large species of boids, Emerald Trees, and GTP's. I've also been nipped/bitten by a few of the eels I used to keep when I had saltwater aquariums, including snowflakes, and Ribbons. Honestly the bite that hurt the most, and did the most damage was my largest female afrock. Multiple stitches, deep lacerations, and quite a bit of blood loss in my thigh. I believe Dave Barker was also hospitalized back in his prime for a similar bite with a Retic.

Although snakes do not have an incredibly high bite force, think of the tissue and nerve damage they can do. Especially the larger boids, such as Burmese Pythons, Retics, Barneck Scrubs, and AfRocks. You could wind up with serious nerve damage, bleed to death, lose a limb do to blood loss and tissue damage, or become disabled if such bite happened with an exceptional animal.

I've seen that episode gooseman, and the snakes bite force was done on the Burmese from what I understand, which wouldn't have that large a bite force. They're on the smaller end of the giant scale, and hunt smaller prey which would make sense for weak bite force. African Rocks catch/hunt prey upwards of 200% their body weight or more, and Retics actively hunt animals such as Primates and other large animals. Even so... Bite force wouldn't play too much into damage unless it was an exceptionally large animal such as a very large boid species, crocodilian, etc. The recurved teeth, and other components along with their body strength will do just as much.

As for the unhinging of their jaws...they don't unhinge them. They have elastic ligaments in their jaws that allow them to stretch their jaws to a very wide size/odd angle. They yawn, stretch to realign, and reposition their jaw after consuming meals.