Tooth Free And Thriving: 10 Animals Who've Perfected The Art Of Eating

Giant Anteater: Their habitat is in Central and South America, and they eat ants and termites. Giant anteaters has a long, sticky tongue (up to 2 feet) that flicks in and out up to 150 times per minute. No teeth at all and instead, it relies on a muscular stomach to grind food, often swallowing small stones and sand to aid digestion. They can even eat over 30,000 insects in a single day.

 

 Turtle (All species): Their habitat is Worldwide (terrestrial & aquatic). What they eat is depends on species, some are herbivores, others carnivores or omnivores. Instead of teeth, turtles have sharp beak-like mouths to cut, crush, or tear food. Aquatic turtles often use suction feeding to slurp up prey like fish or insects. Some species (like snapping turtles) have powerful jaws that can crack bones.

 

Bird: Their habitat is Global and they eat insects, seeds, nectar, fish, meat, etc. Birds have specialized beaks adapted to their diets: Hummingbirds have long beaks for nectar. Eagles have hooked beaks for tearing flesh and food is often swallowed whole or ground up in the gizzard, a muscular part of the stomach. Birds swallow stones (gastroliths) to help break down food in the absence of teeth.

 

Snake: They are found on every continent except Antarctica and they eat rodents, birds, eggs, frogs, insects. While snakes have fangs, they lack chewing teeth. They swallow prey whole, using flexible jaws that can stretch around large food. A python can eat prey five times wider than its own head!

 

Penguin: They are found in Southern Hemisphere and they eat fish, krill, squid. They have no teeth instead, their tongues and the roofs of their mouths are lined with backward-pointing spines to grip slippery fish. They swallow their food whole and their barbed tongues act like natural fishhooks.

 

Seahorse: They are found in shallow tropical and temperate oceans. They eat tiny crustaceans and plankton. They have no teeth and no stomach. Use a snout to suck prey like a vacuum and digest it quickly. Must eat constantly—up to 3,000 tiny meals a day—due to lack of stomach.

 

Octopus (and some squid species): They are found in oceans worldwide and their diet are Crabs, clams, fish. They have no traditional teeth, but they have a powerful, sharp beak to bite prey. Some species inject venom to paralyze or liquefy prey before sucking it up. The beak is made of chitin and is the only hard part of their body.

 

Parrotfish: Their habitat is coral reefs (tropical oceans). They eat Algae scraped from coral. Their “teeth” are actually fused jaw plates, not true teeth. Bite off chunks of coral and grind algae using pharyngeal jaws in the throat. They excrete ground coral as sand — a single parrotfish can produce hundreds of pounds of sand per year!

 

Butterfly: They are found Worldwide and they eat Nectar, rotting fruit, tree sap. They have no teeth or jaws; instead, they use a coiled proboscis (like a straw) to sip liquids. Some species can even absorb minerals from mud puddles (a behavior called “mud-puddling”). Butterflies taste with their feet.

 

Slug: Their habitat is Moist habitats — gardens, forests, fields and they eat decaying plant matter, fungi, algae. Slugs don’t have teeth, but they use a radula — a ribbon-like tongue with rows of tiny, chitinous “teeth” — to rasp or scrape food. Some slugs have up to 27,000 microscopic teeth on the radula.