Did you know snails have more teeth than sharks?

Snails are herbivores (plant eaters) and mainly eat leaves. Sharks are hunters and therefore carnivores. They mainly feed on fish, seals, and the like.

Sharks are known to have a lot of teeth to hunt effectively. They have several rows of teeth that allow them to grasp their prey firmly. If a shark loses or wears out a tooth, it is replaced by a tooth in the row behind it. As a result, a shark can wear out or lose up to 1000 teeth during its lifetime.

One would expect a shark to have many more teeth to hunt effectively. However, a snail has many more teeth than a shark. An average snail has about 12,000 teeth, which is much more than the 300 teeth of an average shark. There are also snail species known to have more than 20,000 teeth.

Like a shark, a snail has different rows of teeth. They are located on a kind of tongue called the radula. The snail uses its teeth to scrape off and eat small pieces of leaves.