I caught an old episode of the original Star Trek, "Arena," in which Captain Kirk comes extremely close to the Gorn he is fighting:
My question is, what prevented the Gorn from simply biting Kirk's face off? Being as the Gorn was stronger than Kirk, clearly close enough in the face-to-face initial contest to have used his vicious looking front teeth to inflict serious damage to Kirk, why did he not end it quickly by what would seem to be the "natural" way?
Is there a canonical, in-universe explanation for this? Does Gorn psychology make such a tactic unacceptable? Has their physiology come to the point where their mouth's cannot open wide enough for such a maneuver? Or some other reason?