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How Birds Lost Their Teeth
An anonymous reader writes A research team from the University of California, Riverside and Montclair State University, New Jersey, have found that the lack of teeth in all living birds can be traced back to a common ancestor who lived about 116 million years ago. From the article: "To solve this puzzle, the researchers used a recently created genome database that catalogues the genetic history of nearly all living bird orders--48 species in total. They were looking for two specific types of genes: one responsible for dentin, the substance that (mostly) makes up teeth, and another for the enamel that protects them. Upon finding these genes, researchers then located the mutations that deactivate them, and combed the fossil record to figure out when those mutations developed. They concluded that the loss of teeth and the development of the beak was a two-stage process, though the steps basically happened simultaneously. The paper states: 'In the first stage, tooth loss and partial beak development began on the anterior portion of both the upper and lower jaws. The second stage involved concurrent progression of tooth loss and beak development from the anterior portion of both jaws to the back of the rostrum.'"
Have you ever seen a bird brush and floss? I haven't.
No wonder they lost all of their teeth.
In other words beaks are superior to teeth and won out in the stages of the evolution. Where do I go to get a beak installed? I have a friend that has a beak, that looks like a large nose. But he has teeth too We still call him "big bird"
Prehistoric hockey games?
Except it was a guy who changed into a bird. The concept of micro evolution is fine, but macro evolution never made much sense to me. This being one of them. Why give up teeth and how to convince your unborn offspring to do take it to the next step. You would expect these animals to be superior to us and make conscious decisions to change their DNA, to evolve. The first gender based, non-single cell organism would have had to been born with the ability to successfully reproduce the first time AND so would its compatible mate and have the ability to sustain that new life. That new life would have to survive. What are the chances? Is that chance even a meaningful number that we just keep increasing the time of to increase the one in infinity chance that it could happen?
Can you imagine the genetic testing that could have been done to test this? Imagine, freaky-looking birds WITH TEETH, and they get loose!
A friend of mine has a flock of feral peach-faced lovebirds that visits her bird feeder, there are about a dozen of them and they're probably several-generations out from the pet-escapees that started the flock. BIRDS WITH TEETH could probably survive without direct human care. And it would be frightening.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Their common ancestor flew into an elevator with Ray Rice.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
They have the loss of teeth and the development of the beak, but where did the gizzard develop? They would not have been able to loose their teeth and develop a beak without one, and birds are the only animal (That I know of) that has one.
Plus gizzards are great when fried. ;)
Nothing succeeds like a toothless budgie. Other birds flocked to the gene pool following the same example.
No hands, unable to brush teeth. Any other question?
6005.99999 years ago, one of them flipped God the bird and so He did Smite them and lo their teeh were no more and there was lamentaion and suffering.
Also, beaks are much lighter than teeth, which was probably a significant factor.
Also also, if you're thinking about mammal teeth, you're probably imagining it wrong. One of the unique things about mammal teeth is their complexity relative to the other branches of the vertibrates. Studying mammal evolution has been described as an exercise in studying teeth.
It's thought this advanced tooth development went hand in hand with warm blooded development during the pre-mammal period as more adavanced, inerlocking teeth were requied to mash up food better for quicker digestion which was required for a faster metabolism.
Most reptile teeth look primitive by comparison. Except that simple teeth are easily replacable and so reptiles can regrow lost teeth much more easily (later on some mammals in the ungulates developed open roots for continuous growth which was useful for grazers, whereas others hae a large stock of teeth then starve to death when they run out). The specialisation makes these much harder.
It seems likely that birds did not have the great teeth for supporting warm blooded metabolisms, but rather the simple, robust general purpose teeth of other reptiles, so in this sense there were not losing nearly as much. They also solved the grinding problem in a different way, using a gizzard (this may well predate birds: crocs have gizzards as well and it is speculated that some dinosaurs did). As a result they were replacing the bit that grips and possibly does some initial cutting of food with a much more lightweight structure.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
to hear my dentist tell it.
Have you ever seen one use a urinal? Their urine is mixed with their poop and let out at the same time, causing it to be white.
Anthropic principle can be applied here. If birds had teeth, they would evolve into mammal-eaters and pose great threat to any mamal that lives above surface. It is hard to imagine human evolution in such circumstances. Basically, if birds had teeth, there would be nobody intelligent to observe them. It is one of many unlikely random events in nature (including many constants physics) that is somehow biased towards our existence.
839*929
i didn't know this
Interesting reports like this can be rare as hens teeth.
In the last case, I think that taking the artistic liberty of adding an actual story, with a real conflict to be resolved, necessitates communication of some kind.
The problem in the novel is "I have to get my time machine back", and the conflict is between the Time Traveller and the environment. Learning how to communicate with the locals is a subproblem of this problem.
While the solution in both movies (people still speak English!) leaves something to be desired
It just bugs me that the writers of both adaptations were afraid to spend a mere three minutes of the script on language elicitation. A feature film is not like an episode of Star Trek: $subtitle where you have 44 minutes to tell a story with no time to spend on language-of-the-week. It could have been done as in Avatar or Dances With Wolves before it. Even The Fifth Element managed to work Leeloo's ongoing acquisition of English as a second language into a plot thread. (Multipass!) The Eloi have the mental capacity of five-year-olds, whether by evolution or by the mind-altering pesticides that their Morlock masters spray on their food. So based on the scant clues in the novel, their language can't be that hard to pick up.
Birds have very poor oral hygiene. Eating worms and scratching the dirt and what not. And they never flossed. It was just a matter of time before they lost their teeth.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They messed with Chuck.
But let's just say that the Tooth Fairy used to have a different business model.
Very badly written article. The bad writing is not in the summary, it is in the original. There are about 4500 bird species. There are 48 orders. Species -> genus -> family -> order. All extant bird orders, and they took one sample species from each. The article has mangled the reporting of the original research.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wouldn't some birds with teeth still be around? Why would they died out?
I always thought it was due to bad landings...
They learned how to play hockey!
Climate Change.
Welcome our new winged overlords, that sprung teeth as a result of genetic manipulation. Will see who's chicken then.
I guess, on a story like this, one can expect most of the comments to bite.
I already read this story on my old fashioned paper newspaper last Friday. Is internet news slow today, or is my newspaper unbelievably fast?
The first rule is that nobody talks about Bird Fight Club
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --