• @cjoll4@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      329 days ago

      Holy crap. I’d heard of placoid scales but had no idea they were homologous to teeth. Thank you for sharing.

  • moving to lemme.zip.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    229 days 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 month 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.

            • @General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              129 days 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.

                • @General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  129 days 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
    link
    fedilink
    11 month ago

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

        • @Klear@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          21 month ago

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

      • Secret Music
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        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.

            • @General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              31 month ago

              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.

        • Ben Hur Horse Race
          link
          fedilink
          English
          31 month ago

          its probably only a matter of time before that scourge arrives in our little internet hovel. most likely already happening.