I’ve noticed that most animals have nearly perfect teeth. Why do our teeth suck?
In: 3501
TLDR: sugar
Sugar feeds bacteria which produce acid that deteriorates our teeth, and we eat WAY too much of it.
Simply reducing the amount of sugar in our diet would have a huge benefit for our teeth.
Archeologists even made note that while tooth problems are seen in ancient skulls, it’s way more prevalent as soon as refined Sugar was first introduced into the European diet.
Like are you talking tooth alignment? A lot of it is that way back in the day, humans had larger jaws to be able to handle tougher foods like super lean meat of wild game, etc. as we became more agricultural and “refined” as a species, the larger jaws weren’t needed, but the number of teeth didn’t go down. So basically we’re trying to fit too many teeth in too small a space. Other species have teeth that allow them to eat efficiently, since not eating means dying, so “snaggletoothed” animals die out early.
Diet and human evolution.
Diet is simple: the bacteria that erode teeth feed on sugar in your mouth, and they damage your teeth via the by-products that feeding produces. Modern humans eat *much* more sugar than our pre-agricultural ancestors did, particularly if you count the starches (wheat, rice, corn, potato) that get converted into sugars in our mouths. Evolution hasn’t caught up with that yet. Our soft diet also matters, since it reduces the length of our jaws, which contributes to the effect in the next paragraph.
The other difficulty is human evolution. Human heads have been changing shape a lot over our recent evolutionary history because our brains got a lot bigger. The problem is that a very large head makes childbirth very difficult, so human heads have gone through a number of changes to both (a) allow our brains to fit and (b) allow human women to not die when giving birth (although human childbirth is still MUCH harder than it is for most other animals). Among other things, our face had to shrink inward compared to other primates, and this makes teeth more crowded. As a result, human teeth have been shrinking throughout our existence as a species, and some populations have lost their wisdom teeth entirely – but our heads have evolved so quickly that changes in the size of our teeth haven’t kept up!
[EDIT: Though as the top comment points out, the premise of OP’s post isn’t really true either. Animals do have tooth problems too, just not as many as humans without medical care do.]
Survivor ship bias. You don’t see the animals with bad teeth cause they couldn’t eat and died.
Also, animals live much shorter lives, so their teeth don’t usually get the chance to get as bad as ours can. Plus, animals like dogs chew and that scrapes off plaque etc.
Oof. You’re obviously not a vet or farmer/longtime pet owner. Believe me, those chompers are not perfect and get very costly very quickly.
Also, in the wild you don’t see the animals with the bad teeth, because they die.
They really do have sucky teeth sometimes. I had to pay $800 to have all but 2 of my cats teeth out because she has bad genes/always infected and it affected her eating.
A lot of wild animals have pretty bad teeth as they get older. For instance ungulates (deer, elk, etc.) have their molars wear down significantly as they age from grinding down their food. It is possible to age a deer skull down to the year by how worn the teeth are, though there can be some variation depending on where they live (e.g. how much sand might get in their food), and it can be harder to be that specific as they get too old/worn. But there is a stark contrast when comparing a young deer’s teeth to an older deer’s teeth.
Selection bias.
The ones with severe toothache or rotting teeth are more likely to die, because they can’t concentrate on avoiding predators, or they are in severe pain, or they get infected. Therefore you’re less likely to see animals wandering around with bad teeth.
Human teeth last just as long as they always have, as any other animal tooth has. What messes them up is modern living (extreme amounts of sugar, etc.) and not using them as much as animal teeth (so things like milk teeth are still around moving the adult teeth out of alignment).
So, I’m a zooarchaeologist and have looked at literally hundreds of thousands of animal teeth in my career. Animals don’t have perfect teeth. I’ve seen all sorts of cavities, broken and worn teeth, missing teeth, tooth reabsorption due to illness or malnutrition, infections that have been so serious that it has destroyed the surrounding jaw bone, and a wide range of other defects.
ETA this also includes malocclusion, misalignment, discoloration, retention of milk teeth into adulthood, crooked teeth, missing teeth, teeth growing in in weird places, jaw malformations and abnormalities. I’ve definitely seen some pigs that could use braces)
It’s hard to identify some dental issues just from a quick glance if you’re unfamiliar with the normal dentition of an animal, or what the markers of disease and wear look like. Additionally, if the dental abnormalities are severe enough to impact eating, the animal just starves and you’re unlikely to see really major issues because the animal died before it became easily visible.
On a personal note, my cat has some kind of autoimmune issue that causes tooth decay, and last year I ended up having to get her incredibly infected upper canines pulled. The vet showed me her teeth and it was super disgusting. The infection was so bad that the tooth roots were almost completely decayed away. The only reason I knew she wasn’t well is that she stopped eating her dry food and lost a pound in a few months. It was scary but she’s doing great now!
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