Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-05-17
QUEER FACTS ABOUT TEETH

its saw, which is prolongation of the nasal
process, is fringed with teeth Again you
have weapon to strike right and left for the
purpose of wounding its prey. In mammals,
however, the teeth are restricted to the jaw
bones. Lizards and snakes have them on
the palate as well. True bony teeth are pc
culiar to animals which have backbones.
The most elaborate dental apparatus known
are composed of forty pieces, moved by forty
separate, muscles. Snails have sort Of rib
bon with which they rasp their food as with
a file. Ant-eaters, though they are mann
mails, have no teeth at all, having no need to
chew their prey. The whalebone whale is a
mammal that has no, teeth, its practice be-
ing to swallow its food whole.
The biggest of fresh water fishes, the ARA
palma" of the Amazon, in South America,
which grows to six feet in length, has teeth
on its tongue, SO that the latter resembles
the file, and is used as such.
Some kinds Of trout also have the same
popularity. Fishes that swallow their prey
entire have their teeth so supported on hexi-
BILE bases as to bend backward but not for
ward in order that their victims shall not
escape after they have been seized.
In ages gone by there were ferocious sharks
seventy feet in length Plenty of their teeth
have been found which are five inches long,
whereas the biggest of the teeth belonging
to sharks that exist at the present day are
one and half inches long.
Certain animals have teeth which grow dur
ing all their lives. The rat and the squirrel
are examples of this. Our own teeth are de-
vloped from pulps, which are absorbed and
disappear after the teeth are grown; but in
a rats tooth the pulp is perpetual, and is con-
tinually secreting material by which the in
cisors gain length. Therefore the animal is
obliged to gnaw all the time to keep the tooth
ground down to the proper length. 1t is COM
out of pure mischief but such is not the case.
Sometimes it happens that the animals
upper and lower incisors do not meet proper
ly, so that it is unable to gnaw, and its teeth
keep growing around in spiral Cases have
been known where rats tooth grew in this
manner through its skull, so as to pierce the
brain and kill the unfortunate.
One advantage about teeth is that they are
harder than almost anything else in nature
and will last longer, so that they may be
picked up in an excellent state of preserva-
ton ages after the animals to which they
originally belonged are dead.
You often heal, of rendering a rattlesnake
harmless by pulling out its fangs. Then,
again, you read of cases where a serpent so
treated has bitten persons fatally. The rea-
son for this is that a poisonous snake is de-
prived only temporarily of its venomous
powers by the extraction of the two incisors
in the upper jaw, at the bases of which are
the poison glands.
low, so that when the animal strikes, the We
nom gushes through them into the flesh of
the person struck. Now, by drawing the two
teeth the snake may be rendered harmless
for few weeks but after short time the
two teeth just behind the original fangs move
up and take their places, making connections
with the poison glands, and thus becoming
poison fangs as good and effective as the old
ones.