(ANSWERED) If a character/animal's teeth has a weaker bite and is more dulled than average people, how would it be an above average ability?

[H3110l12345I20]

^^^

I just realized the limits of our unwritten rule for our abilities. I get below average abilities like small size gaining some form of an advantage over regular people. Excuse any of my bias towards abilities, but if we're following the rule that something has to be a superpower above reg people in anyway, what advantage would such a bite have against regular people?

Like I get that a bite would be sharp by surface area, but the thing I'm confused about is going by the rule's logic, humans also have low surface area that can bite into stronger animals.

 

[Flashlight237]

Good question. It's complicated. The way I see it, breaking the skin is about the bare minimum needed to visibly injure someone. Using physics concepts alone, breaking the skin needs 100 psi of pressure. Thing is punches, which can go for hundreds of psi with professional boxers, don't break the skin. I think the difference is punches are attacks that causes energy/momentum to disperse, unlike bites which are a concentrated force with the possibility of being continuous (as gila monsters can attest).

This isn't going into things like the design of the teeth. The incisors of rodents, for examples, are absolute powerhouses that can damage just about any material. Beavers are known to cut through wood with their incisors, and with rats, you would basically need steel of all things to keep rats from chewing through (as they can chew through aluminum and even iron). Aside from that, cookie-cutter sharks have bites that are known to cause damage to submarines. Tasmanian devils can even tear through metal cages, although I think that has less to do with their teeth and more to do with the fact that their bite is the strongest pound-for-pound. On the other end of the spectrum, crocodile teeth are more intended to grapple prey, which is why they need to resort to the death roll, and shark teeth are serrated for the sake of tearing through flesh.

As for how a bite can have an advantage against regular people... Yeah, it's kinda easy for an animal bite to do that. Specifically focusing on bites, humans have a tough time breaking skin, but if a human bite does break the skin, you're more likely to be infected with diseases from a human bite than the bites of most other organisms. This is going off pure memory and not checking if I was actually legit, though. This is much weaker than, say, the bite of a Tasmanian devil which... Well, a creature that can break through metal is sure as heck going to break bone. Why do you think Australia warns people against messing with Tasmanian devils? Even without this level of an advantage, I can guarantee that any carnivoran bite can break the skin since... Well, you have to break the skin to get to the meat.

 

[H3110l12345I20]

Thanks for the answer!