Teeth are not the largest, but very important parts of the human and animal body. When they are in good, "working" condition, we do not pay attention to them, except when cleaning. But as soon as your teeth get sick, life changes dramatically, and not for the better. Even now, with the advent of serious pain relievers and the development of dental technology, more than half of the adult population is afraid of going to the dentist.
Dental problems also occur in animals. Moreover, if a person's dental diseases are unpleasant, but, with the right approach, are not fatal, then in animals this situation is much worse. Lucky for sharks and elephants, which will be described below. In other animals, especially predators, the loss of teeth is often fatal. It is extremely difficult for animals to change their usual diet to one that they can eat without teeth. The individual gradually weakens and, in the end, dies.
Here are some more facts about teeth:
1. Narwhal has the largest teeth, or rather, a singular tooth. This mammal, living in cold sea waters, is so unusual that its name was made up of the Icelandic words "whale" and "corpse". The fat carcass weighing up to 6 tons is equipped with a flexible tusk that can reach 3 m in length. It is clear that at first everyone thought that the narwhal was stringing food and enemies onto this giant tooth. In the novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” the narwhal was even credited with the ability to sink ships (wasn't that when the idea of a torpedo arose?). In fact, the tooth of the narwhal serves as an antenna - it has nerve endings that respond to changes in the external environment. Only occasionally do narwhals use the tusk as a club. Strictly speaking, the narwhal also has a second tooth, but it does not develop beyond its infancy.
2. The age of a sperm whale can be determined in much the same way as determining the age of a tree - by saw cut. Only you need to cut not the sperm whale, but its tooth. The number of layers of dentin - the inner, hard part of the tooth - will indicate how old the sperm whale is.
Sperm whale teeth
3. To distinguish a crocodile from an alligator is easiest by the teeth. If the mouth of the reptile is closed, but the fangs are still visible, you are watching the crocodile. In an alligator with a closed mouth, the teeth are not visible.
Crocodile or alligator?
4. Most of the teeth - tens of thousands - are found in snails and slugs. The teeth of these molluscs are located directly on the tongue.
Snail teeth under an electron microscope
5. Sharks and elephants absolutely do not need the services of dentists. In the former, the “spare” one moves out of the next row to replace the missing tooth, in the latter, the teeth grow back. It is interesting that with all the external dissimilarity of these representatives of the animal world, shark teeth grow in 6 rows, and elephant teeth can grow again 6 times.
Shark teeth. The second row is clearly visible, the rest are shorter
6. In 2016, a 17-year-old Indian teenager came to a dental clinic with a complaint of persistent pain in the jaw. The doctors of the provincial hospital, not finding the pathologies known to them, sent the guy to Mumbai (formerly Bombay). And only there, scientists were able to find dozens of additional teeth that grew due to a rare benign tumor. During the 7-hour operation, the patient lost 232 teeth.
7 India also holds the record for the length of a human tooth. In 2017, an 18-year-old man had a canine tooth nearly 37 mm long removed. The tooth was healthy, just considering that the average canine length is 20 mm, the presence of such a giant in the mouth could not lead to anything good.
Longest tooth
8. On average, a person's teeth become 1% smaller in 1,000 years. This decrease is natural - the food we chew becomes softer and the load on the teeth decreases. Our ancestors, who lived 100,000 years ago, had teeth twice as large - with modern teeth, raw vegetable food or barely fried meat can be chewed, but not for long. Most of us have difficulty consuming cooked food without regular visits to the dentist. There is even a hypothesis that our ancestors had more teeth. It is based on the fact that from time to time some people grow the 35th tooth.
The teeth were definitely larger
9. Toothlessness of newborns is well known. Occasionally, babies are born with one or two teeth already erupted. And in Kenya in 2010, a boy was born, who has already erupted all his teeth, except for the wisdom teeth. Doctors could not explain the cause of the phenomenon. The teeth of the toddler, who attracted attention, grew more slowly than those of their peers, and by the age of 6, "Nibble" was no longer different from other children.
10. Teeth can grow not only in the mouth. There are cases when teeth grew in the nose, in the ear, in the brain and in the eye of a person.
11. There is a technology for restoring vision with a tooth. It is called “osteo-one-keratoprosthetics”. It is no coincidence that such a complex name is. Vision restoration takes place in three stages. First, a tooth is removed from the patient, from which a plate with a hole is made. A lens is placed in the hole. The resulting structure is implanted into the patient in order for it to take root in the body. Then it is removed and transplanted into the eye. Several hundred people have already “received their sight” in this way.
12. American Steve Schmidt was able to tear off a load weighing 100 kg from the ground 50 times with his teeth in 60 seconds. A native of Georgia, Nugzar Gograchadze, managed to move with his teeth 5 railway cars with a total weight of almost 230 tons. Both Schmidt and Gograchadze trained like Hercules: first they dragged cars with their teeth, then buses, then trucks.
Steve Schmidt in training
13. Michael Zuck - a specialist in aesthetic dentistry - bought the teeth of John Lennon ($ 32,000) and Elvis Presley ($ 10,000) so that in the future, when human cloning becomes possible, he could make copies of his favorite musicians.
14. Dentistry is not cheap in principle, but when it comes to celebrities, the amount on checks for the services of cosmetic dentists are astronomical. The stars are usually reluctant to divulge such information, but from time to time, information still leaks out. And Demi Moore at one time did not hide that her teeth cost her $ 12,000, and this is far from the limit. Tom Cruise and George Clooney spent more than $ 30,000 on the attractiveness of the jaws, and the rather rarely smiling Victoria Beckham spent $ 40,000.
Was there anything to spend 40,000 dollars on?
15. Artificial teeth and dental prosthetics were known thousands of years ago. Already in ancient Egypt they did both. The ancient Incas also knew how to make prosthetics and transplant teeth, and they often used precious stones for prosthetics.
16. Toothbrush as a mass commodity began to be produced in England by William Addis in 1780. He came up with a method of making a brush while serving a sentence in prison. The Addis firm still exists.
Addis products
17. Powder for cleaning teeth appeared in ancient Rome. It had a very complex composition: hooves and horns of cattle, eggshells, shells of crabs and oysters, antlers. These ingredients were crushed, fired and ground into a fine powder. It was sometimes used to brush teeth mixed with honey.
18. The first toothpaste in 1878 was launched on the American market by the Colgate Company. The 19th century pasta was sold in glass jars with screw caps.
19. Adepts of alternative medicine have developed a theory according to which each tooth is “responsible” for the state of a particular organ of the human body. For example, by looking at a person's incisors, you can determine the state of his bladder, kidneys and genitourinary system. However, official medicine denies such possibilities. The only established direct connection between the state of teeth and organs is the harm of toxins that get from a sick tooth into the digestive tract.
Diagnostics according to the condition of teeth
20. The bite of human teeth is as original and unique as the pattern of papillary lines. Bite analysis is not often used in court, but for detectives it is an additional confirmation of the presence of a person at the crime scene.
