Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find
Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find
WHAT?!
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08944-w
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Makes logical sense, I like it!
It does?
It does to me, I read the headline and immediately agreed with it
Hmm. Something about it feels just wrong to me. I'm fairly sure, though, that it's a gut feeling and nothing logical. Because teeth on the outside? Because sensory organs in teeth? IDK.
Your teeth have never hurt? Teeth have a lot of nerves, and I have never really understood their biological purpose.
It's important to not destroy your teeth. For wild animals, that means starvation. Given that you can't have nerves right in the enamel, it makes sense to have nerves lower down and make them very sensitive. I have the pet theory that we evolved to hate that teeth grinding sound for exactly the same reason.
If those nerves were vestigial, they really should have disappeared by now.
Like to discourage trying to eat gravel? There aren't many thingals that would cause acute tooth damage.
For example. Bear in mind that each animal needs to figure that out on its own as it grows up. Have you heard about humans who are unable to feel pain? Very rare congenital condition. Doctors remove their baby teeth or else they will chew up their tongue and mouth. That's the sort of thing you need to think about.
A number of animals, birds especially, swallow rocks to help them grind up food in their intestine.
I just am not sure what biological purpose it serves, other then to dissuade eating extremely abrasive stuff all the time. It's not like if their teeth hurts they can go to a dentist and or nutritionist to get them repaired or tell them exactly what is wrong with their diet.
Fair enough. We have pain receptors all over our internal organs, and I can't figure out what they are good for. Maybe teach us to avoid blunt force trauma?
I think our ancestors cracked nuts with their teeth. I think those nerves might help to get that right.