30,000 Teeth in One Mouth.

Otago Witness, Issue 2076, 7 December 1893, Page 48

30,000 Teeth in One Mouth.

" It is a fortunate thing for man and the rest of the animal kingdom," said a naturalist, " that no large wild animal has a mouth constructed with the devouring apparatus btilt on the plan of the insignificantlooking snail's mouth, for that animal could out-devour anything that lives. " The snail eats with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. The tongue is a ribbon which the snail keeps in a coil in his mouth. This tongue is in reality a band-saw, with the teeth on the surface instead of on the edge. The teeth are 30 small that as many as 30,000 of them have been found on one snail's tongue. They are exceedingly sharp, and only a few of them are used at a time — probably about 4000 or 5000. He does this by means of his coiled tongue. He can uncoil as much of this as he chooses, and the uncoiled part he brings into service. "By use the teeth wear off or become dulled. When the snail finds that this tool is becoming blunted, he uncoils another section and works that out until he has come to the end of the coil. Then he coils the tongae up again and is ready to start anew, for while he has been using the latter portions of the ribbon the teeth have grown in again in the idle portions — the saw has been filed and reset-, so to speak — and while he is usicg them the teeth in the back part of the coil are renewed."