Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle · en
9. Some animals have tusks like the boar, others have not; some have
pointed teeth, as the lion, panther, and dog; the teeth of others have
an even surface, as the ox and the horse. Animals with pointed teeth
have their teeth fitting into each other; no animal has both tusks and
horns, neither those with pointed teeth nor any others. Most animals
have their front teeth sharp, and their hind teeth flat; all the teeth
of the seal are sharp pointed, showing an approximation to the race of
fishes, for all fishes have pointed teeth.
10. None of these genera have a double row of teeth. But, if we may
believe Ctesias, there are some which have this peculiarity, for he
mentions an Indian animal called martichora, which had three rows of
teeth in each jaw; it is as large and as rough as a lion, and has
similar feet, but its ears and face are like those of a man; its eye is
grey, and its body red; it has a tail like a land scorpion, in which
there is a sting; it darts forth the spines with which it is covered
instead of hair, and it utters a noise resembling the united sound of
a pipe and a trumpet; it is not less swift of foot than a stag, and is
wild, and devours men.
11. Man sheds his teeth, and so do other animals, as the horse, the
mule, and the ass; man sheds his front teeth, but no animal sheds the
molar teeth; swine do not shed any of their teeth. About dogs, there
is some doubt; some persons think they do not shed their teeth at all,
others that they shed only the canine teeth; but it has been observed
that they do shed their teeth like men: perhaps it has escaped notice,
because they do not shed them before the inner ones, which are similar,
are grown up.
12. And it is probable that the same takes place in other wild animals,
since they are said only to shed their canine teeth. Young dogs are
known from old ones by their teeth, for young dogs have sharp white
teeth, old dogs have them black and blunted. The horse is in this
respect different from all other animals; for while the teeth in other
animals become darker as they grow older, in the horse they become more
white.
13. Those which are called canine teeth are placed between the cutting
and the molar teeth, and partake of the nature of both, for they are
wide below, but sharp at the top. The male has more teeth than the
female in mankind, and sheep, and goats, and swine. This has not been
observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number
of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated,
smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.
14. The last molar teeth, which are called wisdom teeth, appear, both
in the male and female about the age of twenty, and some women cut the
molar teeth at eighty years of age, causing great pain in the extremity
of the jaw, and some men also: this happens with persons who do not cut
their wise teeth at the proper age.