So that's why they are so freaking sensitive!
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Imagine. You're a fish just swimming around. You have skin that senses like a humans teeth can sense....a larger creature comes and crunches you and your teeth skin with their gigantic boned armoured jaw.
And then remember the last time novacaine didn't work when someone was drilling your teeth.
I wonder if this was how sharks got their skin teeth
Holy crap. I'd heard of placoid scales but had no idea they were homologous to teeth. Thank you for sharing.
It's just a cool piece of information that it's impossible not to share.
New teeth horror just dropped.
That explains narwhals 🦄
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.
Stuff evolves from the most unexpected stuff
Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find.
thats right
Why do people do this? Not the first time I've seen someone comment the title of the post and nothing else. On Reddit, that would've been a sure sign that it was a GPT bot because that's the kind of thing those bots do occasionally when they slip up.
I think it's a reply to my incredulous "what?!"
Oooh, that actually makes sense lol. Guess I'm just slow.
Ehh. It took me a while, too, and I wrote it. Seriously though. What kind of sick evolutionary history is that? This is worse than the whole swim bladder thing. At least that doesn't make me uncomfortable.
swim bladder
I beg your pardon
Swim bladders evolved from lungs. You wouldn't think that something that makes the fishies better ocean divers originally evolved to let them breathe air.
its probably only a matter of time before that scourge arrives in our little internet hovel. most likely already happening.
What?
Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find.