Toothy grins!

Caring for teeth is clearly important, whether they're in a human's or a pet's mouth. Here are some toothy facts I bet you didn't know!

Image from upsidedowndogs.com

Human children have 20 baby teeth that fall out, and 32 adult teeth that succeed the baby teeth. Puppies have 28 teeth and adult dogs have 42.

So, each of my dogs have 10 teeth more than I do. I guess that's fair - they have bigger mouths as well.

What about other animals? Say... a shark?

According to sharkwatchsa.com, a white shark has about 24 exposed teeth on their top and lower jaws respectively. Behind these 48, a white shark can have 5 more rows of developing teeth! When the shark loses one main tooth, a developing tooth rotates in and replaces it.

Alligators have a similar system. An alligator has an average of 80 teeth in the mouth at any one time, and when one falls out, another one takes its place.

Going back to mammals, dolphins have a surprising amount of teeth. An Atlantic bottlenose dolphin has between 80 and 100 teeth. The short-beaked common dolphin has around 240.

240 teeth sounds like a lot, but that's nothing compared to a snail. Some snails have just a few teeth, but others have thousands. I'm sure glad snails don't eat humans. Or dogs.

~ Maria Sadowski ~