Adaptations - Teeth and Skulls

Focus: Different types of teeth are adapted to grasp, hold, and chew different kinds of food. Examining the kinds of teeth a mammal has and the shape of its jaw and skull helps us determine the type of food it eats.

Puppets (Herbert Hare, Marsha Mouse, Wilma Weasel, Rocky Raccoon)

Materials Checklist
Puppet Show (puppets,script) Tooth Touch (mold or model of human teeth, apples, popcorn, fruit leather, celery, other food that is eaten in a variety of ways)
Tooth Types (skull drawings of herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, insectivore)
Skull Skills (skulls, Skull Investigation sheets, skull information cards, paper, pencils)
Complete a Jaw (cardboard skulls (or copies of paper template of skull if preferred), plasticine modeling clay, paper, scissors, markers or crayons, tape, drawings of skulls and teeth from Tooth Types activity above)
A Skull of Many Parts (5/6 ELF) (skull diagram sheets, real skulls and/or large skull diagram, pencils)

Supplementary Reference Materials (Anatomy Chart, Skull Investigation card, Skull Diagram, Skull Types, Template for Complete a Jaw, 5/6 ELF Activity: Skull of Many Parts)

Additional Reading/Resources
Skulls and Bones, by Glenn Searfloss, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 1995.
The Carnivores, by R.F. Ewer and Devra Kleiman, Comstock Press, 1998.
Cleaning Animal Skulls website from University of Arizona.
Venom in Shrews article
Tooth Type chart (pdf file)

ELF Notes - Template for newsletter on Teeth and Skulls
* Word document * pdf file

For Younger Children
Many of the activities in VINS's new Small Wonders book can be used in ELF, too. To find appropriate activities for children aged 3-6, click here.

Teaching suggestions

If you are teaching in an urban environment, you might want to include an additional focus: Many urban critters depend on easy-to-find human leftovers for some of their food. How do the diets of various animals differ from their wild dwelling cousins' foods? Are there consequences to animals eating 'unnatural' foods (just as there seem to be for humans)?

Puppet Show
Urban Critters are represented by Mouse, Raccoon puppets whose diets reflect a natural setting. What city foods might appeal to some of the characters? Hare or rabbit: lawn vegetation and gardens; Mouse or rat: people food, in or outside the house; Raccoon: garbage, pet food, bird feeder seeds. Introduce the question: Which animals are most numerous in city spaces? Squirrels and other rodents, raccoons, skunks, opossums, i.e. those whose diets can include what is plentiful in the city, which includes people food.

Tooth Touch
First have students bite off a piece of carrot (use front or premolars). Then have them bite off a piece of red licorice (they'll tear it with molars). Then have them pop in a piece of popcorn (also molars for grinding).

One group gave each student a small mirror to investigate their own dentition, count their own teeth, and discover the three tooth types.

Skull Skills
You may want to hold up one skull, like a bobcat's, and go over all the things to notice, before children begin to work separately with the skulls at stations.

To make guessing skull identification a bit easier, put up a list on the blackboard of all the skulls in the set. You might want to list possibilities grouped by similarity -- that is: mouse, rat, chipmunk, squirrel, muskrat, beaver; otter, mink, weasel; dog, coyote, fox; etc.

If you are in a city environment, study the specimens of urban dwellers like red or gray squirrels, cat, raccoon, mouse or rat. Revisit puppet show questions about diet for your skull specimens. Ask the children: Which animals survive best in city spaces? Mostly smaller animals including a variety of rodents and slightly larger omnivores (raccoons, skunks) Why are there not more carnivorous predators (like weasels, foxes, etc.) in the city, even though there may be suitable prey available? There are other habitat limitations such as space, and a low human tolerance for larger wild predators.

What's for Dinner?
Can the children come up with natural and 'city' foods on their animal's menu?

Complete a Jaw
For Kindergarteners, modify the complete-with-teeth skull drawings by whiting out the teeth on the bottom jaw only. Then students draw teeth to match those on the upper jaw AND then decide what animal it could be and draw the eyes and ears.

One school cut the jaws out of craft foam sheets instead of cardboard

Learning Goals

Concepts/Ideas

• The teeth of plant-eating mammals (herbivores) are different from those of meat-eating mammals (carnivores).
• Humans have different types of teeth that perform different actions when we eat.
• Different kinds of mammals have different tooth-types corresponding to the kinds of food they eat
• Arrangement of teeth along with skull shape and eye placement help to tell about an animal's lifestyle.

Vocabulary: Adaptation, mammal, predator, prey, carnivore, herbivore, insectivore, omnivore, incisors, canine teeth, molars, jaw, skull, diet

Skills

• Actively listening to learn about the variations in animals' teeth and their uses in eating food.
• Observing and discussing the different kinds of teeth humans have and how they are used.
• Comparing and contrasting mammal teeth and relating the skull and teeth of an animal to the foods it eats.
• Examining animal skulls and using observations to hypothesize generalizations about the animal's diet, lifestyle and identity.
• Creating a model of a set of teeth designed to fit a particular animal's diet.

Grade Expectations:
Grades PK-K (S30, S38) People and other animals have teeth. They use them to eat food that is needed to stay alive.

Grades 1-2 (S 30, S38) Animals including humans have different kinds of teeth used to eat different kinds of food.

Grades 3-4 (S30, S38, S39) Animals that eat meat have teeth and skull shapes that are different from animals that eat only plants. They may be differentiated and grouped according to tooth-type, skull shape and the kinds of food they eat.

Grades 5-6 (S38) Teeth and skulls of mammals share many similarities, but these features may vary widely in shape and size. Particular teeth and skull features can be used to identify a specific mammal.

Good question!
Do most mammals have baby teeth like humans, that fall out and are replaced by permanent teeth?
Yes. All mammals that have teeth (anteaters don't) start out life with a set of "baby teeth", also called "milk teeth" or "deciduous teeth". Usually these teeth begin to develop in the womb, before a baby is born; but rodents grow and lose their baby teeth and replace them with permanent teeth before they are born!

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