Humans Have Canine Teeth: Therefore They Are Carnivores!

The title of this post is what I wanted to discuss this time. I have read on many blogs and forums that are frequented by people with less than perfect intelligence that humans are carnivores because they have canine teeth.

First of all, even if humans do have canine teeth that certainly in and of itself doesn't prove that humans are carnivores. It's not a definite proof.

There are lots of animals in nature that have some very threatening looking canine teeth and they do not eat the flesh of animals. There are also many others with big canine teeth that get less than 5% of their calories from flesh of other animals.

To justify eating as much as 65% of your daily intake from the flesh of animals because there are 4 teeth in your mouth that resemble those of carnivores is a bit beyond my ability to understand.

First, let's look at the teeth of a wolf. A wolf is definitely a carnivore. I do not argue with that at all. I have seen them devour an animal after they stalk it and then kill it. They love the scent of a fresh kill and consume the animal's body from head to toe even eating the contents of the bowels and blood vessels.

The picture above is of what the canines of a wolf look like. Do they look like the teeth in most human's mouth? Here is a photo of the teeth of a human.
The canine teeth are the third teeth from the front on either side and on both the top and bottom. Obviously to even the untrained, there is a huge difference between these human canines and the ones of a true carnivore. The human teeth are flat and barely stick out beyond the point where the other teeth stick out to. The wolf teeth stick out a great deal beyond the rest of the teeth.

Here is a picture of a gorilla's canine teeth.

These teeth are much more prolonged than even the wolf's teeth. They stick out way more than a human's teeth or even the wolf's. The gorilla doesn't kill any large animal to eat. In fact other than insects, the gorilla doesn't eat anything from the animal kingdom at all. Maybe they exist to frighten any predators away, but they certainly are not there to hunt and kill prey.

The argument that humans have canine teeth and therefore are carnivores has zero credibility. It is like saying that the moon is made of cheese because it looks yellow. There are lists as long as 150 items that show that a human is not a carnivore and not even an omnivore but I will leave it to the reader to check this out. I might continue on this in another post in the future.