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by andrewem 5246 days ago
I'm missing two upper teeth [0], which resulted in my having enough room in my mouth for my upper wisdom teeth to fit comfortably. It's evidently of genetic origin in my case, as I have relatives who are missing the same teeth, which I think from that source are called the upper lateral incisors. Were I not missing those teeth I expect I'd have needed the upper wisdom teeth removed to make room.

(On a tangent, there's a great article [1] about how bulldogs have been bread to have massive jaws and a very short face and that results in all kinds of breathing difficulties.)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodontia [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/can-the-bulldog-b...

1 comments

Interesting. I know of at least two other people with that condition who were missing a number of adult teeth that never came in. Though, I think their example is somewhat more extreme (and according to Wikipedia, I guess it would be classified as oligodontia), because at least one of them required extensive dental surgery for implants since they quite literally lacked 6+ (maybe more?) teeth.

> (On a tangent, there's a great article [1] about how bulldogs have been bread to have massive jaws and a very short face and that results in all kinds of breathing difficulties.)

I bet that applies to persian cats, too, since they're bred with extensively concave faces (something that seems cruel, IMO).

Very interesting reply--thanks for sharing that, because I had completely forgotten that one of my friends has a similar condition. Can't believe I completely forgot he had implantation done, too...