• catloaf@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I’m surprised that mammals evolved to not regrow teeth. You’d think it would be a significant advantage.

    • MumboJumbo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I wouldn’t imagine it’d play a role in reproducing though. It may help ones ability to live longer, but they have probably procreated long before tooth loss has become a major issue of well being or mortality.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      Most mammals instead evolved to have their teeth keep growing, like beavers, thus they need to keep using their teeth to keep them from growing out of control.

      Secondly, humans in particular, added tooth-enamel-eating-bacteria into our diet hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before that, we didn’t have a huge number of issues with our teeth, and so perhaps not enough time has actually passed since we got the bacteria eats our teeth for an evolutionary advantage that stops it from being an issue? Evolution isn’t so cut and dry, it’s not like it’s trying to solve problems. People with resistances to mouth bacteria probably exist, but are they reproducing enough to become the dominant geneaology? Who the fuck knows?

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        They do exist, from memory they have another type of bacteria instead and there’s even a project trying to transfer it from people with it to people without it.

        Also as you said evolution doesn’t try to fix stuff and there’s a whole lot of stuff that could have evolved for the better (heck, we’re not even that well adapted to be standing up!), but if it doesn’t prevent reproduction then it gets passed down.

        • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          That’s like asking why we can’t just eliminate gonorrhea… people keep inoculating each other with the bad shit.

          I do tell my expecting parents (who happen to have bad teeth) that they should not test the food in their mouth and use the same spoon with their new child, as they will be passing on their bacteria to the kid. I do also imply they shouldn’t share things like drinks.

          Whether or not they listen to me isn’t my problem…

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          we sort of can, it’s called eating a better diet.

          stop feeding the bacteria tons of sugar, start eating more chewy things that effectively brush your teeth as you eat them, and maybe even start chewing stuff like stalks of grass or twigs, that’s how a lot of people keep their teeth clean even today.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        can we maybe not propagate misinformation? it was perfectly normal for hunter-gatherers to reach at least 50 years old, and if you think about it for a bit it makes sense that the age where we start to fall apart is about the oldest that people got to in the past, which is around 50-60 yrs.

        the average lifespan in the past was something like 35, but that’s because tons of people died early on, which remained true up until the invention of modern medicine which was like 100 years ago and doesn’t really have anything to do with your diet.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      For evolution to fix a problem that problem has to kill off everyone that isn’t immune to it before they can breed. If that doesn’t happen people with shitty teeth just keep getting born even if some have a mutation to regrow them.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Or at least space them out a bit. You get one set for the first 5-10 years, and then the second set has to last you the remaining 60-70.

      Getting a new set at like 35-40 seems like a more sensible system to me.

      • bagelberger@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Gotta be awkward at the office when Dave starts losing his baby teeth and has his midlife crisis at the same time

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      There didn’t used to be multivitamins. The broad spectrum of hominid diets never guaranteed you’d get enough trace minerals and elements to keep growing more teeth and there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to do so when you’re like five to ten years into your adult teeth when puberty hits.

    • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’s our modern diet of refined sugar and plenty more that harms teeth

      It’s somewhat within our control to do something about it

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The redundancy is already there since we have 32 teeth to begin with. If you lose one or two it’s not really a big deal.

      And there’s a fine line between helpful regrowth and cancer. the more regrowth there is, the more likelihood there is of cancer.