Whether you’re talking about sharks, crocodiles, lions, or even velociraptors, some of the most fearsome traits of these predators involve their rows of sharp, crushing, or jagged teeth.
Only vertebrate animals have real teeth, though some invertebrates have hard tooth-like plates they use to eat. One of the earliest creatures with teeth were conodonts, an eel-like creature that first appeared around 500 million years ago. These creatures also have the record for the sharpest teeth, according to the Guinness World Records.
Since then, vertebrates have done a lot with teeth — in the case of birds, they have even lost them. Other vertebrates have evolved teeth in ways that are truly unique, whether in terms of size, quantity, or just sheer oddity.
Here is a look at some of the creatures with the craziest teeth on the planet.
The Largest Tusks
The longest teeth in the world are usually called tusks — whether you’re talking about elephants, narwhals, or walruses. Those three creatures all have unique developments when it comes to teeth.
The first part of the walrus’ scientific name (Odobenus rosmarus)translates to tooth-walking, since the creatures’ enlarged upper canines are so large they use them to pull themselves up onto icebergs — no small feat considering adults can weigh up to two tons. Tusks on males can reach nearly 40 inches in length — about 3.3 feet.
African elephant tusks nearly double those of the walrus. An adult male’s tusk, which in the elephant’s case are enlarged incisors, can be about 7.7 feet long. Like the baby teeth of humans, elephants start off with miniature tusks that they usually lose between six and 13 months of age. Once their permanent tusks come in, they grow at a rate of about 6.7 inches per year.
One of the strangest tusks — the unicorn-horn found on male narwhals — is a massively enlarged left upper canine. In fact, the tooth may have given rise to unicorn legends, says Carolina Loch, an oral biologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who has studied cetacean teeth.
The tooth, which looks more like a tusk, spirals out to a length of 10 feet long, weighing about 22 pounds. In fact, the narwhal’s scientific name even translates to “one tooth, one tusk,” Loch says. This enlarged tooth usually only erupts in male narwhals, though occasionally it occurs in females as well.
“Even more rare are males with two tusks, from both left and right upper canines,” Loch says.
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The Biggest Teeth
If we separate out the tusks — which are different from regular teeth because they don’t even fit inside the animal’s mouth — then some of the biggest teeth belong to the hippopotamus. The lower canines of hippos can be more than a foot long, and probably seem even longer when staring into the gaping mouth of these territorial giants.
The biggest teeth in the whale world are found in sperm whales, which can be 4 to 8 inches long.
“These conical teeth are only located in the lower jaw both in males and females,” Loch says. Any rudimentary teeth in the upper jaw never erupt, she adds. Orcas aren’t too far behind in terms of size, with teeth 4 to 4.75 inches long.
The Most Teeth
If we ignore the fact that invertebrates don’t have teeth, then the winner in this category would go to snails and slugs, which have radula — basically a kind of mat covered with tooth-like hooks for dragging food into their mouths. The radula can have 10,000 of these teeth-like hooks, depending on the species.
As far as vertebrates go, sharks are among the toothiest. Whale sharks, which may be big but are hardly alpha predators, can have more than 3,000 teeth, but they are only the size of a tear drop. Great whites, in contrast, only have about 300 at any one time, though the fact they replace teeth means they might go through as many as 30,000 through their lifetimes.
For land mammals, the giant armadillo is at the top with up to 100 teeth.
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The Strongest Teeth
The winner of this category is a kind of snail. Engineers tested the strength of the teeth of limpets — a kind of marine snail. Limpets have the strongest teeth using goethite nanofibers.
“Observations highlight an absolute material tensile strength that is the highest recorded for a biological material, outperforming the high strength of spider silk currently considered to be the strongest natural material, and approaching values comparable to those of the strongest man-made fibers,” the authors of the study wrote in Interface.
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Guinness World Records. Sharpest teeth
Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Walrus
Seaworld. Physical Characteristics
Britannica. Hippopotamus
Natural History Museum. A Microscopic Look at Snail Jaws
Marine Megafauna Foundation. Whale Shark Anatomy: Exploring the Body Plan of the World's Largest Fish
BBC Wildlife. How many teeth does a great white shark have? A guide to its deadly, razor-sharp gnashers
IUCN. Giant armadillo
The Royal Society. Extreme strength observed in limpet teeth
Joshua Rapp Learn is an award-winning D.C.-based science writer. An expat Albertan, he contributes to a number of science publications like National Geographic, The New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, Hakai, and others.
