So, why do we lose our baby teeth anyway? I mean, they seem fine for a few years, then they just fall out! Why can’t we just keep the same ones forever? How does this whole tooth-replacement process work?
In: Biology
Our mouths, along with the rest of our bodies, grow a significant amount during our childhood and into adolescence. It shouldn’t be surprising that the set of teeth that we have as kids wouldn’t fit our mouths very well when we approach our full-size. So we evolved a system where throughout that period of growth, our bodies replace our smaller original teeth with larger ones to fit our larger mouths.
This also has the nice ‘side effect’ of giving us some new teeth a bit later in life that aren’t as worn-down and/or damaged as they would’ve been if we’d been using them since we were kids.
Lots of animals get new teeth through the course of their lives. You mentioned sharks, and they actually continually replace their teeth throughout their lives, not just once, and that’s because a combination of their tooth structure and their hunting/eating methods make tooth damage/loss much more likely throughout their lives.
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