Why humans are the only species who get wonky teeth and require orthodontic treatment??
In: Biology
>Why humans are the only species who get wonky teeth and require orthodontic treatment??
I’m unsure as to where this information is coming from. Every animal with teeth can experience or develop misalignment of said teeth.
IIRC, it results from the jaw shortening and thinning out over a couple hundred thousand years.
The vast majority of orthodontic treatment isn’t medically necessary, but we humans get a lot of it because we like straight teeth and orthodontists like money. Animals don’t get much of it because there’s little reason for orthodontists to do it. I’d guess that there are specialists who could perform orthodontic work on animals in zoos if it were necessary, but that wouldn’t be too common. There would probably be a somewhat higher percentage of designer dogs who would benefit from orthodontic treatment due to selective breeding, so, for pet owners willing to pay, there are probably pet orthodontists.
Our ancestors had larger ape like jaws for chewing vegetation. As we eveolved for a more omnviorus diet our jaw shrank but the number of teeth stayed the same leaving us with overcrowded jaws.
Changes in our diet: softer food means our teeth tend to “over-develop”.
> Corruccini reasoned that tooth size is preprogrammed to fit a jaw subjected during growth to levels of mechanical stress in line with a natural childhood diet. Subsequently, when the jaw does not get the needed stimulation during development, the teeth become crowded at the front end and impacted in the rear. He confirmed this hypothesis with experimental work on monkeys evincing that those fed softer diets had smaller jaws and impacted teeth.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-have-so-many-problems-with-our-teeth/
Because we evolved chewing harder food. This caused increased growth in the jaw. When we began to make softer food like bread, boiled meat, and roasted plants this stimulation was lost and so the growth of our jaws was reduced. When this happened there simply was not enough room in our jaws for our teeth. It was a very rapid change compared to evolution do we didnt have the time to evolve smaller teeth or fewer teeth.
I had a chinchilla that had an accident and afterwards his teeth grew misaligned. It was a nightmare, he couldn’t grind them down which rodents must do as they keep growing. For the rest of his life I took him to the vet every 3-4 months to get his teeth ground down and over the course of his life (about 6 more years) it cost me a fortune.
Loved that wee guy though.
Anyway, the premise is wrong. We aren’t the only species that get wonky teeth but we are the only species that can do something about it. Like many other things in the wild natural selection can take care of those with wonky teeth.
If you ever ask anyone who runs a large zoo they will tell you there are plenty of animals in need of orthodontic treatment. So much so there are veterinarians that specialize in animal orthodontics.
Our ancestors had smaller brains and bigger jaws than us, so even before humans became civilized our jaws were already cramped.
And for a lot of human history, the main method of preserving meat was dehydrating, and the meat itself was often overcooked and already tough. Which helped our jaws toughen up as developing children ate the tough jerky, which can best be described as “the texture and toughness of an old shoe with roughly the same amount of flavor”
Once better food preservation like canning took wind, gnawing on salty strips of flesh leather died down, leading to people’s jaws not developing as tough and being a bit smaller on average. Which was the final straw of teeth-cramping.
The reason you have wisdom teeth that grow in sideways? Big brain, and small and weak jaw.
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