Science: Food and Digestion

During science for the past few weeks, we have been studying food and digestion, and have recently been looking at teeth,  comparing carnivore teeth to herbivores. We learnt how the different diet of that particular animal affects the tools they have to break the food down. For example, the teeth cows possess  grind down their food are predominantly premolars and molars, as those teeth offer a wider and flatter surface area for them to use to break down the fibre rich grass which their diet predominantly consists of. Carnivores on the other hand, possess sharper and more prominent incisors which are used for cutting into their food, as well as canines, four large teeth situated near the front of the mouth which are used for holding and securing their prey to prevent it from escaping. These teeth are also responsible for tearing the food into smaller chunks, making it easier for the incisors and other teeth to chew. We also looked into the different ways these groups of animals have of chewing their food. Cows have a jaw that enables them to move their mouth in a circular motion, and this makes it easier for them to grind the food over their teeth. Carnivores on the other hand, possess a jaw that moves up and down, and this gives them a much stronger bite power. Their jaw is able to move upwards with the help of strong temporalis muscles that pull their jaw upward and backwards into their skull. That kind of went of the point, so to cut a long story short, below is a video that we made. We had to look at the teeth the different skulls had and then had to guess what it was and then answer a few more questions in the video (which is below).