A continuing series of elephant photographs. Elephant molar, ridges like elongated dishes set to dry edgewise in a rack. Their molars work like huge horizontal vegetable graters, grinding food back and forth across sharp, upright edges. Elephants have four molars, two in the upper jaw, two in the lower. They erupt in the back of an elephant’s mouth and move forward, becoming a conveyor belt of teeth, crumbling off in pieces as they wear down in the front of the mouth. In their lifetimes elephants will have six sets of molars, the last set wearing down when an elephant is in its sixties. Only one percent of elephants will develop a seventh set.
ABOUT ELEPHANTS 