#snail teeth

[dinosaurwithablog]

Snail teeth. They have thousands of them. Very cool 😎 it sorta freaked me out when I first learned this. It gave me great respect for the snail 🐌

[wtf-fun-factss]

Prepare to be amazed by thousands of snail teeth. Click to read the full fact.

[the-animal-kingdom]

Did you know, that garden snails have a total of around 14,000 teeth, with other species being known to even be as much as 20,000? This sheet of microscopic teeth is called a radula, as they are all connected to a band on the snail’s mouth.

These teeth, that are arranged row by row on a chitinous ribbon, are used for the purpose of scraping and cutting up food, then the jaw is used to break off larger pieces of food like, for example, leaves.

This is an image of the radula under a microscope.

[gracewight]

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A post shared by sluglady (@powolnamilosc)

WAS NO ONE GOING TO TELL ME MY FAVORITE ANIMAL HAS TEETH?!?

[furiosity-wills-the-cat]

Exciting Snail Fact #6

Some snails have teeth!!!

I’m not sure how I feel about this!!

But the excessive exclamation marks feel appropriate!!!!!

I hope all snails with teeth are having a good evening!!!!

Also I’m going to be processing this for a cool minute!!!

[elliaustr017-blog]

Snail Teeth

Snaisin Sneeth~

[hier-und-dar]

Cat snails! Inktober 03?

[furiosity-wills-the-cat]

I love all the responses to my snail teeth post and I’m going to try and respond to each of them eventually, (also I’ll try to respond to all of the questions in the tags and replies of my other posts! Thank you for asking them! They fill me with joy!)

But for now to tide you all over in your need for answers about snail teeth, I’ll leave you this quote

(from Mental Floss’s article, “Terrifying Fact: Snails Have Thousands of Teeth,” by Michele Debczak, which was posted on Christmas day in 2018)

“Of all snail varieties, limpets—a small type of sea snail—may be the most dentally gifted: Their teeth are made from protein reinforced by fine mineral nanofibers called goethite, and according to one study, they're even stronger than spider silk, potentially making them the toughest biological material on Earth”