Do many of you check out the mouths of your catches? I’m sure you see a lot of worn down teeth especially in coyotes and raccoons.
I see a lot of trashy teeth in pets. But sometimes wonder why. I know a lot of it is genetic, but the heavy tartar, gum erosion and root exposure, resorptive lesions makes me question if is because pets live so much longer or if it is the refined diets we feed them.
Anyone see any really nasty mouths in their catches?

I saw some bucktoothed coyotes in Pennsylvania.

Lol this guy??

I caught a coon once that had a broken/healed lower jaw. The canine was rotated out about 45 degrees. He also had a club foot. Tough ol boar.

I have seen some pretty bad teeth. I think a LOT of wildlife die from tooth problems.

My guess is a few things come into play, genetics, diet and the ever-undeniable reality of strongest survive in the wild. A injured/sick animal has a greatly reduced chance of surviving and even less chance of breeding and passing on its genetics.

FWIW I also think a lot of wild animals don't live long enough to get bad teeth

This^ time in the wild is shorter pets have a healthcare plan compared to wild critters.

I've caught a lot of raccoons with badly worn teeth. Usually, but not always, their body condition is poor. I think they were probably old.

I had the largest non domestic fox I've ever seen here for a few years. He always smelled terrible. His fur was always pretty poor looking. He lived off of eggs we dumped, that didn't hatch. He would walk up to the egg dump when he heard me coming. I think he slept in the row right next to it. He would get within a few feet of me when I was dumping eggs. As soon as I dumped the eggs he would start eating. He appeared to be missing all of his teeth.

I had as many as 5 full cabinet incubators of eggs going at a time. We often threw out more than a full wheelbarrow of eggs a week.

Keith

I caught some old cats in Arkansas many years ago that had no points on any of its teeth. Mostly just worn down.

They seemed healthy as far as body mass would indicate so obviously they made it work as to what they ate. Granted weather conditions are much more favorable in that state so I am sure that always contributes to survival rates.

I feel like weasels would have crappy teeth…..? Seen a lot of ferrets who get yucky mouths

Smash,
I think the change in what/how people now feed their dogs has a lot to do with it. Decades ago most dogs that we grew up with got a real bone on occasion. They would chew on it for hours. A milk bone doesn't last very long. And the inclusion of grain in dog food up until recently hasn't helped. Dogs didn't die from cancer when 10 years old back then.

Our dogs work the heck out of those hard plastic chew toys any normal cloth type toy gets shredded quickly. They work on the bigger cow bones also not sure how much those teeth can take but the give the a workout.

Why would anyone not give their dog a bone??????

Soft foods don’t keep their teeth clean they are nothing like a chicken bone, just where do you think the horns people sell are going to, pet chews.

Domestic ferrets are overly inbred and have lots of health problems because of that.

The A. R. Harding Publishing Company, who created the old Hunter-Trader-Trapper, Fur-Fish-Game Magazine and the first trapping books I ever had, had a book on raising ferrets I bought. Zanesville, Ohio used to be called Ferretsville. Thousands of ferrets were produced there and shipped by railroad all over the US for rat control and to run power lines in conduit. All the ferrets in the US are descended from just 6 imported ferrets.

Every mink I ever caught had excellent teeth.

Keith

That's fascinating .

A. R. Harding Publishing Company has a lot of excellent books. I bought a bunch of them. The trapping books by V. E. Lynch were my favorites. The books on raising ferrets and mink were great too.

You can read some of them online here:

https://openlibrary.org/publishers/A._R._Harding_Publishing_Company

Keith

I think wildlife dies, cattle are an example, people here used to buy broken mouth cows out of sand country and bring them here for pennies on the dollar put them on grain and fermented feed they would live for quite a few more years.

My response Lawdog was

sable and marten often have terrible teeth, missing or worn down to short nubs. Otters too. Mustelids are redundantly robust and efficient hunters and thrive without teeth or even feet. I read a report from a British wildlife agency once where they decided to euthanize a pine marten that had been found in a trap because they couldn't save its foot and believed it would be doomed if released. Sheer incompetence. There was a report in one of our Russian hunting research/wildlife mangement journals a few years ago about a sable that was caught in a leghold somewhere in Eastern Siberia (= harsh winters). Apparently it was a serial bait thief because its other three feet were missing and healed yet it had fat deposits.


Last winter I caught a fox with worn-down bad canines. It was healthy and fat, but looked very different from our foxes and a local fur buyer said it was an Aleutian fox, so I contacted local researchers who study tame foxes and they contacted their experimental farm and the farm workers admitted that one of their control group females had escaped a few weeks earlier (a rare occurrence). By a very weird coincidence it traveled quite a few miles from the farm, away from the city, and ended up in my bunny snare. Ranch foxes get bored in their cages and many of them spend hours playing with their steel bowls, which wears down their teeth, usually on one side.

I've been forgetting to clean its skull.

A friend shot a bear last week that weighed around 300, had the biggest paws I have ever seen, The teeth were terrible, what were still there.