Teeth
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97 free Teeth trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Scurvy makes gums swell and bleed until teeth can fall out; a lack of which vitamin leads to it?
Vitamin C
Vitamin C: it comes mainly from fruit and vegetables, and most people treated for scurvy start feeling better within days.
Q 02A baby's first teeth usually arrive at around six months; which ones most often come through first?
Bottom front teeth
Bottom front teeth: the top pair usually follows, but some babies start teething before four months, and a few are even born with a tooth.
Q 03Which Arctic animal hauls itself onto ice with its tusks and sucks shellfish out of their shells?
Walrus
The walrus: apart from its tusks its teeth are flat, so it seals its lips to its prey and pulls back a piston-like tongue to create a vacuum.
Q 04Why can the damaged outer layer of a tooth never grow back?
It contains no living cells
It contains no living cells: saliva and fluoride can put back minerals lost in early decay, but once a cavity forms, the body can't rebuild the lost enamel.
Q 05The proverb 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' comes from checking a horse's teeth to judge what?
Its age
Its age: a horse's gums recede as it grows older, making its teeth look longer, which also gave us the phrase 'long in the tooth'.
Q 06Which whale has no teeth at all and strains krill through plates of baleen instead?
Blue whale
The blue whale: the largest animal ever to live gulps huge mouthfuls of krill-filled water, then pushes the water out through its baleen with its tongue.
Q 07The pointed 'eye teeth' take their other name from the Latin word for which animal?
Dogs
Dogs: canine comes from Latin canis, 'dog', and the upper ones are called eye teeth because they sit just beneath the eyes.
Q 08What is the technical name for a gap between two teeth?
Diastema
A diastema: many mammals have one as a normal feature, and in horses that toothless gap is exactly where a rider's bit rests.
Q 09Which acid, made by mouth bacteria feeding on sugar, is the main cause of tooth decay?
Lactic acid
Lactic acid: each sugary snack sets off a fresh acid attack, which is why sipping and grazing all day does more damage than one dessert.
Q 10What is the soft tissue at a tooth's core, carrying its nerve and blood vessels, called?
The pulp
The pulp: if decay or a crack lets bacteria infect it, a root canal clears it out, or the tooth may have to be pulled.
Q 11Which wild pig's upper tusks grow up through the top of its snout and curve back toward its forehead?
Babirusa
Babirusa: if a male's tusks aren't worn down, they can keep growing and, in rare cases, pierce its own skull.
Q 12In medieval Europe, narwhal tusks were sold as what?
Unicorn horns
Unicorn horns: buyers believed the horns could protect them against poison.
Q 13About how many teeth does a great white shark have at any one time?
About 300
About 300: they sit in rows that move forward like a conveyor belt, and a great white keeps growing replacements as long as it lives.
Q 21About how many times may a crocodile replace each of its roughly 80 teeth over its life?
About 50 times
About 50 times: a small replacement tooth waits under each working one, and each tooth is swapped out roughly once a year.
Q 22What do hippos mainly use their huge lower tusks for?
Fighting
Fighting: hippos battle with those tusks, while the chewing is left to their molars.
Q 23What does a giraffe have instead of upper front teeth?
A hard palate
A hard palate, or dental pad, meets the lower incisors, as in cattle; the giraffe strips leaves with a 45 cm dark tongue whose colour may protect against sunburn.
Q 14The largest known shark teeth, more than seven inches tall, belonged to which extinct species?
Megalodon
Megalodon: a shark's skeleton is cartilage that rarely fossilises, so megalodon is known almost entirely from teeth like these.
Q 15A snail's rows of microscopic teeth sit on which ribbon-like feeding organ?
A radula
A radula: some predatory sea snails pair it with an acid secretion to drill through other molluscs' shells and eat what's inside.
Q 16Which group of molluscs has no rasping tongue-ribbon at all?
Bivalves such as clams
Bivalves such as clams: they have no head either, and their big gills do the feeding, trapping food in mucus that cilia carry to the mouth.
Q 17Which burrowing East African rodent digs its tunnels with its big front teeth?
Naked mole-rat
The naked mole-rat: it lives in colonies like an ant's nest, where only the queen breeds while workers dig the burrows with those teeth.
Q 18Which animal goes through up to six sets of cheek teeth in its lifetime?
Elephant
The elephant: new teeth don't grow up from below but form at the back of the jaw and push the worn ones forward and out.
Q 19Which animal nicks skin with razor-sharp front teeth, then laps up the blood that flows?
Vampire bat
The vampire bat: anticoagulants in its saliva keep the blood from clotting, so the wound keeps flowing while it feeds.
Q 20A rodent's gnawing teeth stay razor sharp because the hard coating covers only which side of them?
The front face
Enamel covers only the front face of a rodent's incisors; the softer tissue behind wears away faster, leaving a self-sharpening chisel edge.
Q 24Which French physician's book The Surgeon Dentist earned him the title 'father of modern dentistry'?
Pierre Fauchard
Pierre Fauchard: he rejected the old idea that worms caused tooth decay, blaming acids from sugar instead, and filled cavities with tin or lead.
Q 25What is the medical term for habitually grinding or clenching the teeth, often during sleep?
Bruxism
Bruxism: stress and anxiety are common triggers, and it can wear teeth down and leave the jaw painful.
Q 26In which country was the oldest known dental work, a 14,000-year-old cleaned tooth, found?
Italy
Italy: a 14,000-year-old molar from Riparo Villabruna in the Dolomites had decay scraped out with a flint tool; Stone Age dentists at Mehrgarh in modern Pakistan were drilling teeth with bow drills around 7000 BC.
Q 27Which official under Pharaoh Djoser is often called the earliest named dentist?
Hesy-Ra
Hesy-Ra: one of his titles can be read as 'great one of the dentists', though it may instead mean 'great one of the ivory cutters'.
Q 28The world's first dental college opened in 1840 in which American city?
Baltimore
Baltimore: yet John Harris had already been training dental students at a small school in Bainbridge, Ohio.
Q 29What were George Washington's dentures made from?
Ivory and human teeth
Ivory and human teeth: none of his sets used wood, and he complained that his dentures made his lips bulge out.
Q 30The Etruscans made partial dentures from the 7th century BC by fastening teeth with bands of what?
Gold
Gold: some writers have called these appliances ancient braces, but reviews find no evidence they were used to move teeth.