The elephant has four teeth directly. They are located on one pair of each elephant cheek and are called buccal. It is by the cheek teeth that elephants grind vegetative food, while they periodically get sutured, and new teeth appear instead of them. For all elephant life such a change of teeth happens six times.
Of all mammals, elephants are the owners of the heaviest teeth. Once the giants of the Earth were mammoths, now this title is rightfully owned by their direct heirs – elephants. The African elephant, whose weight can reach seven and a half tons, is the largest land animal.
One must assume that with such an impressive amount and volume of consumed food, they need no less impressive teeth. Many of us have an elephant associated with tusks, each of which can reach a length of up to one and a half meters with a weight of twenty-five kilograms.
However, tusks can not be called full teeth, after all, they do not participate in chewing food, but are used, basically, as an auxiliary tool for the mobile trunk, which replaces the elephant’s hands. In addition, in females tusks are very rare, and if they are, they are very small.
