let's talk about teeth, shall we
Shrews aren’t the only ones with iron-coated teeth - komodo dragons and beavers can have them, too! And the gumboot chiton's s/tongue/radula "has many tiny teeth capped with magnetite, an iron mineral harder than stainless steel. The teeth contain so much magnetite, in fact, that a magnet can pick them up!" But limpet teeth are really the strongest stuff around.
“Limpets are the bulldozers of the seashore” - Prof Steven Hawkins (BBC)
oh and bloodworms have copper teeth, as well as just being [coincidentally?] “very disagreeable worms”, which makes me wonder who we’re comparing them to. How do you rate the disagreeability of worms? I mean, the world is chock-full of parasitic worms, which strike me as much more disagreeable (source: am potential host thereto).
okay cool so some teeth are literally metal, but otoh other teeth can move, so.
Less adorable example: the naked mole-rat “can move each of its front teeth separately, like a pair of chopsticks.”
Mantids don’t have teeth, but the Malaysian Dead Leaf Mantis mimics a giant mouth using its spiky forearms (tbf those arm spikes do serve some toothy functions for the mantis) (also tbf they do have mandibles and many other creative mouth parts).
The video below is from “The Malaysian Dead Leaf Mantis mimicking a mouth with teeth to scare off predators.” (esberat, r/NatureIsFuckingLit)
How does a mantis’s mouth work, then?
“Imagine having a large plate on your lips, your teeth are replaced with two giant scissor-like knives. and you also have a mustache underneath your lips, made entirely out of fingers” - Beep Boop (Quora)
Meanwhile, the crabeater seal has so many teeth that it has teeth on its teeth so it can teeth while it teeths
(The crabeater seal does not, however, eat crabs.)
Sheepshead fish win for the most familiarly toothish teeth I’ve seen lately. I’m almost sorry for what I’m about to show you, and you may not want to scroll down, because this fish’s teeth look like our teeth and I DO NOT LIKE IT (except of course I secretly kinda love it for them, too)
I loved my dentist’s waiting room as a kid - there was a little shelf on the back of the receptionist’s desk sized perfectly for a gameboy, and it felt just hidden enough that you got to feel delightfully sneaky when going behind the desk to snatch it. And while we’re free-associating here - geese don’t technically have teeth on their tongues but c’mon yeah they do. I’m kinda surprised no one has put some version of Untitled Goose Game onto a gameboy cartridge, actually. (ps TIL the term ‘cartmodding’!)
We’ve sort of barely been talking about teeth, if you want to get technical about it. Limpets don’t have a tongue, they have a radula. Mantids don’t have teeth, they have spines and tubercles and mandibles. Geese don’t have teeth, they have tomia (sharp cartilage along the edge of the beak), lamellae (serrated keratin along the edge of the beak), conical papillae (these are the pointy things on the tongue, I think also keratin?), and a lingual nail (hard pointy tip of the tongue). And I barely deserve my teeth, they’re totally stained from drinking lots of tea and coffee because I guess I could just stop and be sad all the time instead but why.
Anyways, a parting tidbit: the farmer in American Gothic was modeled by a dentist.
Top-notch stuff so far. Thanks!
A number of years ago Toph asked me about goose teeth and I confidently asserted that they didn't have any. Then she showed me a photo like yours and I confidently asserted that it was fake. I had to recant shortly after.