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.
this is misleading, the article starts by saying that life expectancy was 30-35 but then goes on to say that this is the average lifespan, which includes the fact that most people died in childhood.
When accounting for that, the average lifespan becomes at least 50 years old.
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?
I’m surprised that mammals evolved to not regrow teeth. You’d think it would be a significant advantage.
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.
It’s also only recently that we’ve been living for so long.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054#toc-prehistoric-life-expectancy
this is misleading, the article starts by saying that life expectancy was 30-35 but then goes on to say that this is the average lifespan, which includes the fact that most people died in childhood.
When accounting for that, the average lifespan becomes at least 50 years old.
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?
spoiler
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