50 free Teeth trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
47 free Teeth trivia questions with answers. Teeth trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Dental & Dentist trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many teeth are in a full set of adult human teeth?
32
That includes the four wisdom teeth, which many people have removed or never grow at all.
Q 02How many baby teeth does a child usually get?
20
They start forming in the embryo at six to eight weeks and begin poking through around six months after birth.
Q 03What is the hardest substance in the human body?
Enamel
It is about 96 percent mineral and rates a 5 on the Mohs hardness scale, about the same as a steel knife blade.
Q 04Why can the damaged outer layer of a tooth never grow back?
It contains no living cells
The ameloblast cells that build the layer are destroyed once the tooth erupts, so a cavity is permanent until a dentist fills it.
Q 05How many molars, including wisdom teeth, does a full adult mouth contain?
Twelve
The rest of the set is eight incisors, four canines and eight premolars.
Q 06Wisdom teeth are the third molars. Between what ages do they usually come through?
17 to 25
The Latin name is dens sapientiae, and they are the most commonly impacted teeth in the mouth.
Q 07Which human teeth have the longest roots?
The upper canines
Canines are also the only teeth with a single cusp, and they are nicknamed eye teeth because they sit beneath the eyes.
Q 08Canine teeth are named for being especially prominent in which animal?
Dogs
Humans have four; in many species the males' are far larger and used for display and fighting.
Q 09What is the technical name for a gap between two teeth, like the one Madonna has?
Diastema
The French call them dents du bonheur, lucky teeth, and in Nigeria and Ghana the gap is considered attractive.
Q 10Below what pH does mouth acid begin dissolving a tooth's outer mineral layer?
5.5
The bacterium Streptococcus mutans turns sugar into lactic acid, which is why sweets and decay go together.
Q 11Which bacterium is the main culprit behind tooth decay?
Streptococcus mutans
As of 2016 roughly 3.6 billion people, almost half the planet, had cavities in their permanent teeth.
Q 12The narwhal's famous spiral tusk is actually what?
A canine tooth
It projects from the left side of the upper jaw, can reach three metres and holds millions of nerve endings.
Q 13In medieval Europe, narwhal tusks were sold as what?
Unicorn horns
At the peak of the trade a tusk could fetch hundreds of times its weight in gold.
Q 21A rodent's gnawing teeth stay razor sharp because the hard coating covers only which side of them?
The front face
The softer dentine behind wears away faster, leaving a chisel edge without any effort.
Q 22Which animal's teeth are made of thin hexagonal tubes, giving its order the name Tubulidentata?
The aardvark
It is born with incisors and canines that fall out and are never replaced, leaving only cheek teeth that regrow continuously.
Q 23How often can a crocodile replace each of its roughly 80 teeth over its lifetime?
Up to 50 times
A small replacement tooth waits beside every full-grown one; unlike an alligator, all its teeth show when the mouth is shut.
Q 14About how many teeth does a great white shark have at any one time?
Around 300
They sit in rows like a conveyor belt, and some shark species shed around 35,000 teeth in a lifetime.
Q 15The largest known shark teeth, more than seven inches tall, belonged to which extinct species?
Megalodon
Fossil collectors pay steep prices for them; Dunkleosteus was an armoured fish with bony blades rather than teeth.
Q 16A snail carries thousands of microscopic teeth on a ribbon-like organ called what?
A radula
It is made of chitin and works like a rasp; limpet versions contain iron and rank among the strongest biological materials known.
Q 17Which group of molluscs has no rasping tongue-ribbon at all?
Bivalves such as clams
Clams and oysters filter-feed with cilia instead of scraping.
Q 18An elephant's tusks are enormously overgrown versions of which kind of tooth?
Incisors
They are the second upper incisors; about a third of each tusk is hidden in the skull, and they keep growing around 17 cm a year for life.
Q 19How many sets of molars does an elephant go through in its lifetime?
Six
New sets move in from the back; once the last set wears down in an elephant's forties, it can starve.
Q 20What defines a rodent's teeth?
Two pairs of ever-growing incisors
The word rodent comes from the Latin rodere, to gnaw, which they must do constantly to keep the incisors short.
Q 24How long can a hippopotamus's lower canine teeth grow?
Up to 50 cm
The jaw hinge sits so far back that a hippo can open its mouth to 100 to 110 degrees.
Q 25What does a giraffe have instead of upper front teeth?
A hard palate
It strips leaves with a 45 cm dark tongue instead, which may be dark to protect against sunburn.
Q 26Which French physician's 1728 book The Surgeon Dentist earned him the title "father of modern dentistry"?
Pierre Fauchard
He disproved the ancient tooth-worm theory, blamed sugar acids for decay and described braces made of gold wire.
Q 27For thousands of years, what did people in Sumer, Egypt, India and China believe caused toothache?
A tooth worm
The idea only died out after early microscopists went looking and found nothing.
Q 28In which country was the oldest known dental work, a 14,000-year-old cleaned tooth, found?
Italy
Stone-age dentists at Mehrgarh in what is now Pakistan were drilling teeth with bow drills around 7000 BC.
Q 29The first named dentist in history, Hesy-Ra, practised in the 27th century BC in which civilisation?
Ancient Egypt
During the Middle Ages the job passed to barber-surgeons, who mostly just pulled teeth.
Q 30The world's first dental college opened in 1840 in which American city?
Baltimore
The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery invented the DDS degree and is now part of the University of Maryland.