Josie the Groundhog is taking a nap, so I took a nice picture of her teeth for rodent education time! 🦷🦷 "Rodent" is Latin for "chisel tooth" and you can see how they got that name in this photo. Our teeth are covered in hard enamel with a softer dentin core. But rodents only grow enamel on the fronts of their teeth. That way the back always wears away faster leaving them with their sharpened chisel shape! Our rodent friends don't have super special bite strength compared to some champion biters out there such as canines and crocodiles. But the special shape of their incisors lets them pierce, cut, and destroy objects in a way that cone-shaped predator teeth don't. I'd like to see a wolf sit and open 50 walnuts in a row! You of course know those teeth are also famous for growing continuously. And you may have heard that our friends need hard/tough toys and food to keep them worn down. This is actually a partial myth! Rodents maintain the shape of those incisors by rubbing them together. You can sort of see in the picture how Josie might slide her teeth across each other to maintain that sharp point. But chew toys DO seem to serve the purpose of exercising the jaw muscles and maintaining fine muscle control. "So what's the difference?" you might ask. If a rodent has an issue that affects the symmetry of their jaw muscles such as a bad ear infection, chew toys may not be enough to keep things straight. Learn how to check on those incisors, and seek your vet's help to reshape any problems using a diamond burr rotary tool. (Way safer than any kind of clipping!) Most pet rodents will let you simply push their cheeks back with your fingers while holding them to get a good look. Also everything I said applies to rabbits! Sorry for the wall of text! This is why I'm bad at TikTok! #rodents #petrodents #bunny #rabbits #rodentistry #rodentdentistry #rabbitdentistry #animaltrivia https://www.instagram.com/p/ChIbd2_uv1h/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
