Seems pretty dumb in our biological design to not be able to regenerate such a functional (and also easily breakable) part of our body.
Almost like there isn’t a God and we weren’t designed hey?
Uhh, ever heard of this natural selection thing?
we ended up not needing infinitely regrowable teeth
Because they last long enough to reproduce. After that, evolution doesn’t care.
We need to make children later
That indeed seems to be the trend nowadays
I mean… we grow teeth a total of 3 times. The first for our baby teeth, the second time for our ‘mature’ teeth, and the make up ‘wisdom’ teeth to fill any that might’ve fallen out at that point. I’m guessing those three growths were the most needed for humans early survival before we got all fancy with farming and hygiene. At which point we kind of broke survival of the fittest and things just kind of happen now.
Kind of like how humans are one of a handful of mammals that didn’t evolve out of menstruation.
Can you elaborate on mammals that don’t menstruate? I’ve never heard about that.
You can read more about it here.
I had to read more about it myself and I am mistaken in the origins of it. It’s not that most other creatures evolved out of it, we’re just one of the ‘lucky’ few to develop it.
They might soon just do that with some help.
I’m sure it will only be $10,000 per tooth.
$10,000 per tooth
easily 10x this in US medical money lol
Depends on if they can grow the teeth with planned obsolescence in mind. 10K but they last a year.
I could see it being a trend. Get the new off off white model with Bluetooth capability so you know when to brush your teeth. 10K for the install with a monthly service fee of 2.5K.
No selection pressure after the age at which our adult teeth fail
This concept can be scaled up to a lot of things, like why most of our systems break down. Nature only maintains what is needed to continue the species, everything that happens to you afterwards, with the exception of child-rearing, will be abandoned by nature unless someone gains some trait from living longer that helps the species propagate.
But nature is kind of silly, it doesn’t make “choices” so some of the adaptations can be weird. Like how our retina’s blood supply formed on the front of the retina so your brain has to always edit out your blood vessels from your vision and you can only see it using special tricks of light and then BAM all the spaghetti appears that’s been there all along.
Imagine what else our brain tells us and shows or doesn’t show us to make sense of what evolution has turned us into.
Do you have any resources for the eye spaghetti? That sounds cool
The idea is that if you can make your surroundings as dark as possible, then shine a very small point of light into your eye and wiggle it so there’s a shadow changing angles rapidly across your retina, this will make the blood vessels you can’t normally see shift slightly in your field of vision so your brain forgets how to edit them out and they pop into view.
This site gives instructions how to use black construction paper with a pinhole in a dark room, but I’ve learned how to do it with a nearly closed fist and any bright light source.
So its kinda like how your brain edits your nose out but if you close and open alternate eyes fast it has a hard time doing that?
Yep! Or even how you usually breath without thinking about it but can take over manual control. Your brain does a LOT of things with your senses all the time that you don’t notice, it has layers and layers of intelligence that makes decisions on what it will “report” upwards, so you depend on basically a vast system of managers or sub-officers that are conscious but have no language, to fully captain and control your meat-ship.
Meat ship is my new band name
X-Men 97 recently gave me “Inferior Freak Fluids” for a good band name. Maybe we can open for you, once I learn how to play.
You said exactly why in your post: “…our biological design…”
There’s no such thing. We evolved. That means we’re a mix of traits passed along over time by individuals that managed to live long enough to breed.
That’s it. That’s the whole explanation for any question about “why don’t humans do x thing as part of our biology?”
Any given trait is all about lasting long enough to make babies. Once that occurs, all that’s left is a general proclivity to ensuring the babies survive long enough to do the same. Regrowing teeth isn’t part of that. It’s a niche trait that isn’t as useful as you’d think for humans. We don’t need to gnaw at things, we don’t need to crack bones with our mouths, nothing that would make a third set of teeth an advantage, or different teeth an advantage.
Teeth are not easily breakable. We actually can crack bone with our jaws and the teeth will usually survive if the bone isn’t too thick; we just have better tools for that because way back when, the proto-humans that used tools had more babies that survived to make more babies. You have to abuse and/or neglect your teeth to break them for the vast majority. There are congenital issues where that isn’t the case, but we’ve also bred ourselves into a social species that takes care of each other, so we aren’t limited to a harsh, primitive survival level of things.
I really don’t get why people think of teeth as fragile. They’re incredibly durable for what we need them for, and require only minimal care to last well beyond breeding age. Even if you factor in modern diets being bad for teeth, regular care for them (brushing and flossing) can stave off those effects for decades. Go search up some of the dental research on old human bodies from archaeological sites. People survived very well with just one set of adult teeth.
And, some humans do have extras that can come in later in life, though it’s very rare and comes with drawbacks (according to the last lady I dated that was an anthropologist anyway). Supposedly, having the extras actually weakens the regular adult teeth and makes them more prone to damage. There’s always a tradeoff in things like this.
People like me have only one problem with what you just said, and it’s called “Bruxism”.
Well, if you make it to breeding age, and successfully do so, then it really doesn’t matter from a species perspective. If you don’t, then whatever traits led to the grinding are weeded out, so that’s also irrelevant to the species in a different way. Also, there are treatments to help with bruxism. It isn’t something that can’t at least be managed to reduce the speed of damage.
Not really? Bruxism is heavily linked with stress and anxiety, which we have too much of in our contemporary society (meaning: a drop of water in our whole evolutionary history), and it’s very rarely going to incapacitate anyone, so evolution doesn’t care, and has cared even less before civilization.
Your baby teeth and adult teeth all began developing before you were even born. Our DNA still contains all the genes that sharks use to grow their endless conveyor belt of replacement teeth, but in humans these genes are deactivated by the 20th week of foetal development.
The advantages of keeping the same teeth through adulthood is that they can be securely anchored in the jawbone, which allows us to chew tough plants and grains.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-cant-we-regrow-teeth
though a drug is being developed that could allow us to regenerate teeth
You’re saying we could reactivate the gene and get infinite teeth?? 🫨
That sorta makes it sound like a nightmare
Possible, but it may come with downsides you don’t like.
Side effects may include dry mouth, diarrhea, attacking swimmers at the beach. Do not take Teethenall if you are allergic to shellfish.
Imagine teeth grew like our nails and had to be clipped regularly
I hate that, please stop
Stop
Let me guess, the downside is infinite teeth.
The downside could be something that nobody has imagined yet. That is the problem with change. I’m not against this, but I demand reasonable study. (but not unreasonable levels - vaccines and GMO have been studied enough to conclude they are generally safe despite people yelling more study needed)
Shoulda been a rodent
🥰
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I disagree.
I believe that humans were created by an ancient race of machine-men that used biology the same way we use machines. When we became self-aware we destroyed them and lost all prior knowledge.
Now we’re on the brink of creating the next race of machine men that will destroy us only to repeat the cycle until the end of time.
First there was God, then came the monkey, then came the robot! Then there was God, next came the monkey, then came the robot! Again there was God, then came the monkey, then came the robot!
…and on and on amen.
The diet that we evolved to consume (fruits, lean meats and fibrous plants) was much less damaging to our teeth than the current high-sugar, high-fat, highly processed foods. And human lifespans was shorter, so less time for teeth to damage. So there wasn’t a strong evolutionary need to regenerate them (unlike an animal like sharks)
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Because our design is not particularly intelligent …
Edit: Scientific proof of my thesis:
As compared to?
“Intelligent design” is the term Young-Earth Creationists use when they want to sound smart while questioning evolution as powered by natural selection.
Source: My childhood and teen years.
So this is going to be like the same thing as Reddit? Where it’s only stupid questions that the op didn’t even bother to Google?
Nice try r/Spez.
Because when it comes to survival until procreation, you don’t need more than two sets.
