• SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    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.

        • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 day ago

          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.

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours ago

            Your teeth have never hurt? Teeth have a lot of nerves, and I have never really understood their biological purpose.

            • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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              5 hours ago

              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.

              • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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                4 hours ago

                Like to discourage trying to eat gravel? There aren’t many thingals that would cause acute tooth damage.

                • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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                  4 hours ago

                  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.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find.