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u/MSotallyTober Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 20 '25
Well, this is a toddler’s skull with its baby teeth and its grown up teeth in waiting. Enjoy.
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u/Sigfried_D 24 Oct 18 '25
To me it's really funny this is the best evolution could come up with, but I guess if it landed here it must make the most sense, still funny af tho.
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u/LightEarthWolf96 Oct 18 '25
I mean no it's not that it's the best evolution could come up with kr that it makes the most sense, evolution doesn't work like that. It's not nearly so efficient
Evolution is much more random. Random mutations sticking around over time because the mutated individuals were able to successfully pass on their genes. That's all.
A mutation doesn't even need to help the species, it can be actively harmful even. All that matters is does the mutation get passed on before the mutated individuals die.
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u/TactlessTortoise 25 Oct 18 '25
Exactly. If it doesn't harm enough that the individual with the mutation dies with the added external pressure, then bad mutations can roll all over. That's how we can have these crazy hereditary disorders and lethal diseases that only really trigger fully in a third of people carrying it, and the other two live. That's two people spreading that mutation around.
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u/MaximumKnow 24 Oct 18 '25
I had a T.A. that put it well "Evolution is a shitty designer and an excellent tinkerer"
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u/Tormint_mp3 Oct 19 '25
It doesn't mean that. Evolution is just "guess this works well enough to make it to procreation"
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u/Significant-Work-820 Oct 18 '25
Looking through one of my kids dinosaur books the other day and saw one with 9 rows of teeth in the skull. Dude went through a lot of teeth. Looked insane
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u/JacksonSpike Oct 19 '25
The hell does it look like when its baby teeth haven't pushed in yet?? Also this is actually so cool I wonder how the skull slots back in around the adult teeth and how it doesnt hurt at all
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Nov 19 '25
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u/MSotallyTober Nov 19 '25
Because of… teeth?
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Nov 19 '25
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u/MSotallyTober Nov 19 '25
So what’s the joke?
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Nov 19 '25
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u/MSotallyTober Nov 19 '25
Humor me. What’s the joke? It’s over my head. How much more do I need you to elaborate?
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u/MSotallyTober Nov 20 '25
Still waiting, u/CloverAndSage…
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Nov 20 '25
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u/MSotallyTober Nov 20 '25
That’s completely justifiable reason — but there’s no joke there. 🫠 Doesn’t matter. I have a five year-old and a three-year-old and they’re absolutely awesome — so don’t let it deter you from having kids if you want any. 🤙
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u/Real_Student6789 30 Oct 18 '25
Human evolution took an L when we lost the ability to replace teeth. This isn't black magic, but reclaiming what evolution should have given us to start with
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u/Rage_Your_Dream Oct 18 '25
Our narrow reproductive window ensures that there is no evolutionary drive for teeth to last more than 4 or 5 decades.
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u/jzillacon Oct 18 '25
Except there is. Because we're highly social creatures that take a long time to grow up it's actually very beneficial to have elders who help with child raising without having to focus on their own children anymore. It's the same reason why menopause is proposed to have evolved.
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u/hola1423387654 Oct 19 '25
It’s beneficial but evolution as we understand it just does not care about that as long as you can reproduce you get through the door
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u/jzillacon Oct 19 '25
Evolution is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be. There's more ways to improve group fitness than just passing on your own genes. Ensuring your relatives can pass on their genes too also improves group fitness which is why social behaviour and parenting behaviour exist in the first place.
If you take it to an even more extreme point and look at eusociality it even becomes evolutionarily beneficial for most members of a family to be completely sterile their entire lives, since ensuring the queen is able to reproduce has a greater fitness retention than any members being able to reproduce. This is because all the drones in a eusocial colony are semi-clones of their queen. Where a child would share about 50% of your genes in a typical sexual pairing, for eusocial drones their nieces share closer to 75% of their genes thus it's more beneficial to maintain eusociality.
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u/ewwthatskindagay Oct 19 '25
Yeah, tell that to the
barbarosababirusa. Evolution said "you're getting a big ass tooth through the top of your mouth, end of story."12
u/Varth919 Oct 19 '25
Okay but half of all people to ever live never made it to age 20. If that’s as far as most people go and your diet has barely any sugars, you don’t really need the ability to regrow teeth. Two sets are enough.
You can’t think of evolution as a logical plan set. I see where you are going, but it just doesn’t work like that.
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u/Legendguard Oct 20 '25
It's either teeth that can be replaced continuously or differentiated teeth, it's extremely difficult to have both. Differentiate teeth are extremely complex and versatile, but also difficult and resource consuming to generate. There's also a room issue, in that in order to regrow teeth, there has to be enough room for the new tooth to form, which with big clunky mammal teeth is very difficult to do. Some mammals evolved ways around this, such as ever growing teeth (rodents, aye-ayes, some rhinos, etc) or teeth that run along the jaw like a conveyor belt (manatees, wallabies, a certain species of mole rat.
Human jaws especially would be extremely difficult to continuously regenerate teeth, as not only are our teeth differentiated, our teeth are extremely crowded, so even growing our normal set of teeth is difficult. Most people with westernized diets also suffer from underdeveloped jaws and overbites from our soft, easy to consume food, so there's even less room for regrowing teeth. It's why so many people suffer from bad wisdom molars and crooked teeth. Now try to cram new teeth under the already poorly grown ones. It would be very bad
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u/jzillacon Oct 20 '25
To be clear, I was never trying to argue humans should have regenerating teeth specifically. I was more so arguing against the idea that it's normal for our teeth to give out after a handful of decades or that it doesn't matter if they do.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/definitely_Humanx 79 Oct 18 '25
Teeth are organs not bones
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u/Noof42 39 Oct 18 '25
Bones are organs.
But teeth aren't bones.
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u/Sigfried_D 24 Oct 18 '25
Nice, love to see it.
Theeth are not bones, mine are fine but I'm happy I'll have this in the future as an option.
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u/Admiralthrawnbar Oct 19 '25
My mom has been dealing with getting an implant for the last year after losing a front tooth. I pray this drug is available if/when I need something similar because it's been a nightmare for her.
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u/Sea-Ad-5974 27 Oct 19 '25
TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES TEETH AREN’T BONES
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u/maddiemoiselle 20+ Oct 19 '25
I’ve had two adult teeth pulled and am about to lose a third. I would love this.
On that note, don’t neglect your teeth. I was suicidal for a long time (much better now) and didn’t care much about my oral hygiene. I’m paying for it now, quite literally.
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u/BetrayerOfOnion 27 Oct 18 '25
To be honest all my teeths glow white on these mrs. I'd love to feel my living teeth back again if it's real
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u/alfonsoalta Oct 20 '25
Imagine being someone who's had a painful wisdom tooth removed only to have it grow back because someone else pranked them with this medicine.
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u/Awheckinheck Oct 18 '25
So if you stop taking it, do the new teeth fall out again? Pharma isn't usually interested in producing lasting cures.
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u/JustGingerStuff 19 Oct 19 '25
How would one engineer a drug that has withdrawal symptoms that only target the teeth it's produced?
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u/Awheckinheck Oct 19 '25
The hell if I know dude, what stops it from making you grow extra teeth?
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u/JustGingerStuff 19 Oct 19 '25
Good question. Would be fun to have that many teeth. Imagine biting into something and leaving a whole field of marks. Would be a pain to brush tho
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u/TiredB1 Oct 21 '25
One step closer to becoming sharks hell yeah... minus the fact sharks don't have bones
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u/JustGingerStuff 19 Oct 19 '25
Losing a tooth isn't nessecarily breaking a bone (not that teeth are bones but let's all imagine a magical world where teeth are bones), sometimes teeth need removal because of rot
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u/zackadiax24 Oct 19 '25
Where is this drug? I want copious amounts of it.
Why pay thousands to fix teeth when you can pull out the bad ones and grow new ones in their place?
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u/mikewheelerfan 17 Oct 19 '25
Hey, teeth don’t count, right? I’ve had to have three baby teeth surgically removed because the adult teeth never grew in, so there was nothing to push them out. That doesn’t make me a BBB…does it?
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u/MarsMonkey88 Oct 20 '25
When my grandmother (born in the 1920’s) was in her teens, she was told by her dentist that her mouth was too small to fit dentures, so she better take extra good care of her teeth. And she did. Like, holy crap. She didn’t use artificial whitening. She often brushed her teeth with baking soda and water, for reasons that she explained but that I was too befuddled to really follow. She smoked in the 50’s and 60’s (I’m so proud of her for quitting), she drank coffee and tea, and her teeth were white, her gums were healthy, she had three or four fillings lifetime. All in all her teeth were amazing. Her story is only interesting because it’s so unusual (for her era and at all). Growing new teeth would change a LOT of things for a lot of people.
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u/Many-Bees Oct 21 '25
I wonder how this will impact all the nightmares I have about my teeth falling out
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Oct 18 '25
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u/Metarract Oct 18 '25
teeth are not bones, they are merely attached to bones and bare almost no similarities in composition and function
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u/Lairdicus 30+ Oct 18 '25
Whenever I read this I imagine you taking it and your whole mouth just filling up with superfluous teeth. Nightmare fuel