Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Settle in and lean back, this one ain’t moving too fast.
Snails have between 1,000 and 12,000 teeth located on their tongues.
When you gather for a picture and someone insists you smile or say cheese, what do you do? Spread the corners of your mouth a bit so your lips get wider? Bare as many teeth you can with a cheeky grin? Throw a tomato at the photographer because they’re not the boss of you?
If you were to request the same thing of a snail, it would probably ignore you. Snails don’t typically understand human languages. But if they could, they’d have quite a few teeth to throw your way.
Unlike a human mouth, a snail’s teeth reside on its tongue. The snail uses them much like we do, to gnash and whittle food down to more manageable proportions. Except snails regularly wear their teeth down, which can then regenerate back.
At any given time, a snail will have between 1,000 and 12,000 teeth in its mouth. That’s quite the tonal shift from the 28 to 32 that humans sport.
By the way, where’s my “wisdom teeth still intact” (WTSI) crew at?
Some species of snails have even wilder teeth. The cone snail, for example, has “harpoon-like” chompers called radula that shoot venom into its prey. This ocean dweller often hangs around coral reefs and mangroves and instantly paralyzes its meal with the radula before consuming.
And since just about everything in the ocean is terrifying, there aren’t many antibodies or antidotes available because different cone snails have different types of venom. How fun!
Luckily, not every snail is poisonous, and some can, in fact, be very cute. Snails tend to be pretty open-minded eaters, as well. Like me at a dinner buffet, they’re willing to try everything. (Just don’t dip them in molasses.)
The next time you have a toothache or bite your tongue, just remember: It could be a whole lot worse.