Wednesday, May 13, 2009

How come out brains are so wonderfully constructed and our teeth are not?

After millions of years of evolution we still get toothache and bad teeth. Yet there is no evolutionary reason for it. I can understand why you feel pain in your hands--it stops you putting your finger in the fire. But what on earth use is toothache?





Sharks have a much better deal than humans--they grow new teeth when the old ones wear out.





NB this isn't a Creationist argument. Toothache would make no more sense from a Creationist point of view than from an evolutionary one.

How come out brains are so wonderfully constructed and our teeth are not?
Most tooth problems happen when you are older, or are because of excessive sugar intake when younger. It's not that toothache has a "use", any more than the ache of a boil: it is a signal telling us that we are injured/infected.





When humans were evolving, we didn't have enough sugar in our diet to cause this problem.


By the time we were old enough to have tooth problems, we'd already have had children and passed our genes on, so there was no evolutionary pressure to have any other system.





Sharks, OTOH, are constantly losing teeth throughout their lives. Their method of feeding just causes them to get ripped out periodically, so they *need* to have replacements constantly provided.



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