Got a question about the weird and wild animal world? Tweet me or leave me a note or photo in the comments below. (See “ Rare ‘Smiling’ Bird Photographed in Colombia.”)Įmily has made appliances to straighten the crooked beaks of birds, as well as prosthetics to repair broken beaks so they can function properly. That’s all in a day’s work for Emily, who will even do dentistry on animals with no teeth.īirds, for example, use their beaks for feeding and numerous other functions, and may have problems if a beak doesn’t fit together quite normally (think a human overbite). Several of the perikymata near the cervices of the teeth are faintly incised, indicating mild enamel hypoplasia having occurred at about the age of 5 years 18. It’s not easy: A normal dental drill won’t work on hippos’ large, round, ever-growing incisors, which means you “have to cut the nerve out with a scalpel.” The canine is your third tooth when you start counting from one of your front teeth. (You can see a wolf eel’s upper jaw in this photo.)Įmily hasn’t worked on a wolf eel, but “I’ve done root canals on hippos,” he said. Browse 920+ chimpanzee teeth stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. If we compare humans to our closest living cousinschimpanzeeswe can see that we share a number of traits with them as well. Both types are ideal for crushing crabs and other crustaceans. The group, composed of singer/songwriter/guitarist Swift, trombonist Dan Fox, and percussionist Scott Kessel, had already created a stir on the East Coast club circuit, when they made the album in 1998. The wolf eel, for example, “has a whole row of teeth right in the roof of his mouth,” called palatal teeth, in addition to long canines. Chimpanzee was the debut CD for the Ben Swift Band. “They are made the same-with enamel, dentine, and a ligament to support them inside the jawbone”-but the shape and size can vary wildly, he said. (Also see “ The Real Story of ‘The Incredible Dr. In his four decades of animal dentistry, Emily has seen some of the world’s weirdest choppers. When an animal loses a tusk, “all the soft tissue inside of it will have disappeared, and then it appears as if the tooth has always been hollow.” Reiter, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, said via email. (Also see “ Elephants Use Their Trunks to Ace Intelligence Tests.”)Ī part of the tooth called the apex, which is located in the jawbone, “allows plenty of space for the pulp that lets the tooth grow,” Alexander M. Tusks may “look like canines that have become long,” but they’re actually the elephant’s incisors-the narrow teeth at the front of the mouth, Emily said.Īnd, like our own teeth, a tusk has a hollow chamber containing blood, nerve, and pulp tissue that keep the tooth nourished and strong. chimpanzee, (Pan troglodytes), species of ape that, along with the bonobo, is most closely related to humans. and morplhologic details) anid the microstructure of chimpanzee teeth. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Ĭontinuing the tooth trend, reader Danny Huynh wondered, “Why are elephant tusks hollow?” METRIC AND MORPHOLOGIC VARIATIONS IN THE DENTITION OF THE LIBERIAN CHIMPANZEE. Furthermore these ape teeth from Ngorora and Lukeino suggest that extant African apes evolved in Africa, and did not immigrate into the continent from Europe or Asia.Please be respectful of copyright. They found 3.3 per cent of teeth in living primates had caries, which is similar to the incidence in fossil humans (ranging from 1 to 4 per cent of teeth in different species). The numbers above represent how many teeth a chimpanzee has in each quadrant or side of the jaw top, bottom, left, and right. The typical dental formula for chimpanzees is: Incisors 2/2, Canines 1/1, Premolars 2/2, and Molars 3/3. If these few specimens from Kenya are indeed more closely related to chimps and gorillas than to hominids, then this implies that the dichotomy between African apes and hominids occurred several million years earlier than is currently estimated by most researchers. Like most primates, adult chimpanzees have a total of 32 teeth unless disrupted by dental conditions. Four recently discovered ape-like specimens from the late Middle Miocene (12.5 Ma) and Late Miocene (5.9 Ma) of Kenya partly fill the gap in the fossil record of African apes, and show some morphological and metric affinities with teeth of chimpanzees and gorillas. Several thousand specimens from the Plio–Pleistocene of Africa have been attributed to Hominidae (sensu stricto) of which only a few, including Ardipithecus ramidus, have been re-interpreted by some authors as possibly representing an ape rather than a hominid ( Senut, 1998). One of the major lacunae in our knowledge of African hominoid evolution concerns the origins of the chimpanzee and gorilla.
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