Question

Giving examples, discuss how dentition varies between orders of mammals. Include in your answer a description of how teeth have become specialised to cope with insectivorous, carnivorous and herbivorous diets (400 words no plagiarism)

Answer 1

Due to the evolution and natural selection there so many specific features is visible among the same class of animals , here we are going to describe the different dentition features among various mammals. Basically mammals has 4 types of tooth those are incisors, canine, molar, premolar. And their orientation is bit similar to each other but their size and capping is different . If we see the timeline of evolution we can see that herbivores has well build molar, and premolar tooth where the carnivore has bigger and strong canine tooth for tearing meat, and herbivores has sharp incisors for tearing plants, for grinding those food they have strong molar and premolar crowned tooth, but they may not be present on both the upper and lower jaw. In case of carnivores they have developed their tooth in a way that can help in cutting the flesh and killing the prey, they have very long and strong, sharp canine which helps in damaging the spinal cord of the prey. They have smaller but sharp incisors. Herbivores are horse, cow where they have the aforesaid features of tooth and cat, tiger, lion are the carnivores they have the carnivore dental features.

Here comes the insectivorous dental structure, these animals are the very unique type of mammals those are golden mole, aardvark, pangolin, shrews. The dental formula is 3/3, 1/1, 4/4, 3–4/3–4 in thse type of mammals, it contains total of 44 to 48 tooth , significant variant still exist there.Rooted but primitive teeth structure is visible there. Deciduous teeth may remain not useful at the early age of these animals. The upper molar pattern in shrews and moles is dilambdodont (W shaped), whereas tenrecs, solenodons, and golden moles have a zalambdodont pattern (V shaped). The upper molars of hedgehogs and gymnures have four main cusps. Solenodons (Solenodon sp.) and some shrews (Neomys fodiens and Blarina sp.) produce toxic saliva from the submaxillary gland, and the saliva is delivered through deep grooves in the lower incisors