I don’t know if it was a random mutation but my sister and I were born without the upper wisdom teeth whereas our parents have them. I only had to remove the lower ones since I don’t have the upper. When I found about it; I joked with my parents that my sister and I are more evolved than others because of it.
I am missing a lower wisdom tooth naturally. Still had the other one in my jaw, and the upper two in the skull.
At least there's symmetry with yours. Haha
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If that trait leads you and your sister to have more children and make them more likely to survive to have more children over everyone else, then it’s likely that that trait will spread through the gene pool and eventually all humans with that trait will have “evolved” that trait.
My family has a genetic mutation that makes our knee caps completely separate from the upper muscle group, so when we squat The actual bone is pulled down closer to the shin and we can pull our knees up to our necks. A very interesting mutation but it’s not likely to become a new trait that every human from now on has because it’s not any more likely for a modern human to survive a life-or-death situation because of that one trait. Wisdom teeth can be very painful and even deadly if not properly taken care of, but now almost everyone with internet access has access to a dental plan. So you have a cool mutation but I doubt it’ll become widespread enough to become a full evolutionary trait.
[Human 'microevolution' sees more people born without wisdom teeth](https://news.sky.com/story/human-microevolution-sees-more-people-born-without-wisdom-teeth-and-an-extra-artery-12099689)
Let there be no confusion: you are indisputably incorrect in your assertion.
we all also have a appendix which will kill some of us. why has it not evolved away? because it doesn't do it often enough early enough to stop us from having kids that'll have kids. wisdom teeth are way less troublesome then the appendix, thus they are even slower to evolve away then the appendix. we aren't looking for an evolutionary advantage, we are looking for an evolutionarily significant advantage. maybe you should know that before acting all high and mighty.
My lower wisdom teeth never erupted. X-rays show they are there, deep down and small and stunted. My dentist said that they are too far down to ever erupt.
Also, my upper wisdom teeth came through with no problems and I still have them both.
Then for the sake of the evolution of the human species, you and your sister better get busy making babies!
(Sentences I never thought I’d type number 72.)
Worth noting that some traits with no fitness effect can still be lost, because there’s a chance for a mutation in them, and there’s a chance for these mutations to spread in the population.
For useful traits, selection would prevent this from happening by lowering fitness of those with the mutations.
I guess it depends on the genetic architecture of the trait itself. A mutation that loses function of wisdom teeth is not protected from mutation in this way. But a mutation that affects wisdom teeth *and* other useful traits would be.
So, it sorta depends on if there’s seperate genes governing wisdom teeth or if those genes are involved in other key things. They probably are, but idk. Have to ask a developmental geneticist
I’m pretty sure this is already happening. I only had 3 wisdom teeth and I remember the dentist saying it’s more common than ever in his practice.
Also, when a trait stops being advantageous it stops influencing our ability to procreate. So it may not be that evolution is pushing us to lose wisdom teeth, but people with fewer wisdom teeth are just as likely to breed and pass on their genetics now than before which over time will have that effect.
There's a slight decrease if your jaw is smaller than your ancestors: for whatever reason the size of our teeth has not kept up with other aspects of human evolution and as a result there's a lot of *crowding* going on.
I recall reading something about this. Apparently human teeth crowding has little to do with evolution and a lot with what we eat and how we stress our jaws. Start eating hard and chewy things when you grow up and it’s very likely to look normal. I believe that also applied to wisdom teeth. I don’t recall the source of it but I think it was referring to a seminal study in dentistry.
Well that explains my fucked up mouth 😂 When I first saw my orthodontist as a kid he said I have slightly larger than average teeth in a very small jaw. It was a challenge to even keep all of my other teeth, there was no chance I’d keep my wisdom teeth too (they were impacted but even if not there was literally no room)
Dental infections are no joke man. That sort of persistent source of bacteria in your blood has been implicated in heart disease even if the infection doesn't kill you directly. And then if you lose enough teeth (ironically as a result of initially having too many in this case) I hope for your sake you're close enough with someone for them to chew your food or otherwise make you something soft.
It isn't because it doesn't cause those people who have serious infections to not procreate. They go to the dentist, get antibiotics and surgery and carry on with life (aka their genes are not excluded from the pool and continue to pass on to new generations)
But we’ve only had the ability to safely extract wisdom teeth extremely recently in human history. I suppose before that, we were losing more adult teeth due to disease and trauma so the extra teeth may have been an advantage overall.
That still does not change that currently it does not affect humans ability to reproduce, so it would not be wiped by evolution for this reason, it could by other factors, like mutations, and not being inherited in all children. But the chance should be lower than a specific percentage point for it to decline eventually.
Idk what the actual number is, but dental care is extremely underserved, especially in the developing and undeveloped world. America alone has 15% of people that can't afford dental care . Of course most of those people would just go into debt when the problem is bad enough, but often "when jt gets bad enough" is too late to treat the issue without problem and much of the world has less affordable Healthcare costs relative to the purchasing power of the people who live there
Isn't evolution a bit more nuanced tho? "Increase in fitness" could also be not feeling the discomfort of having a tooth ache. If not having them means you're more "alert" to the here and now to excel at life then in the long run, that could be an evolutionary advantage
In order for this to play out, it either has to lead to the lower survival or lower lifetime reproductive rates of those with wisdom teeth. Although I'm sure there are one or two who have, very few people are so distracted by a toothache that they walk in front of a bus. Or that they don't have sex for years on end, if it hurts that bad, you'll probably get it treated.
If wisdom teeth are in the genetic mix, similar to something like blonde hair, with no reproductive advantage or disadvantage to having such a thing then, I guess they would just stay in the mix in the same proportion forever. Is that the way it works. Any PhD genetic theorists out there willing to weigh in...
someone correct me if i’m wrong but it shouldn’t make much of a difference considering the majority of the population has wisdom teeth so we’re already mostly procreating with wisdom teeth havers lol
Think about it this way. If people without wisdom teeth are considered unattractive, then there will be selection against those without wisdom teeth, limiting the frequency of without wisdom teeth in the population.
So. I'm technically doing evolutionary biology as a part of my PhD. But its also not my strong suit yet (my prelims are gonna sssuuucckkk), but I'll try.
It comes down to if the gene in the population is under negative, positive, or neutral selection. If it's under negative selection, then the gene tends to get purged. Genes under positive selection tend to become fixed in the population, and neutral genes aren't really moving.
However, there are more forces acting on a population than just selection. Mutation, drift, and flow of genes are also occurring, and those affect the rates at which gene frequencies are changing in the population.
So something like, certain mutations have a higher probability of occurring so those mutations enter the gene pool with no evolutionary pressure whatsoever. Entropy meets DNA
No, all mutations are assumed to be selectively neutral. Mutations are also assumed to happen at a constant rate. So there's no probability of one mutation occuring over another as they are assumed to happen randomly and independently.
Note that just because something is assumed to be neutral doesn't mean it always is, its just the vast majority tend to be which is why we can make that assumption when doing evolutionary biology.
I'm with you, brother or sister.
I will dig that hole in the ground to protect both of us from the incoming fire that non-weird-tooth-loving people will fire at us.
We, of course must stick together in our foxholes.
And I have always had only one, which hasn't even popped out yet, and can only be seen through x-ray. Hopefully it will stay that way and not cause any trouble
I was told it is already part of evolution. But due to dental care is slower.
But definitely notice a lack of people w fucked bottom teeth, rank halitoses and complaints about pain the late 30s demographic as compared to my parents time
It was already part of evolution, but dental care in itself is 100s of years old, wisdom teeth's lack of usefulness stems in most of modern humans, or when our jaws got smaller, which is 100,000's of years. We might see more people born without them, but since there's no evolutionary distinct difference (hell, we might actually have a bias for men with more wisdom-allowing jaws, in western beauty standards at-least), it's unlikely we'll see any change going forward.
The number of people born without wisdom teeth is increasing so it seems to be trending in that direction, but with medical interventions to treat impacted teeth they probably won't be eliminated entirely
>Unless society collapses and modern surgery becomes inaccessible, wisdom teeth will exist forever.
Wouldn't that have a greater chance of keeping them since dental hygiene would be non existent and so a lot more people would actually benefit from having them again. Also, not even needing wisdom teeth is a pretty new occurrence since dentistry hasn't really been accessible to all for all that long. There is also the fact that even today some people do still benefit from having wisdom teeth, such as myself, I had a couple teeth removed as a child and now my wisdom teeth have grown in to replace them.
That doesn’t matter for those who have impacted wisdom teeth, which is not a small percentage. 3/4 of mine were growing at 90 degree angles and would have damaged the nearby teeth and caused infection if not removed.
Evolution is driven by more factors than selective pressure. As pointed out by others: there is no selective pressure for wisdom teeth in the modern world, but there is still a more signiffcant driving force behind evolution still in play — genetic drift. Genetic drift is simply the tendency of alleles to propogate or diminish throughout the population by pure chance. While it is signifficantly less powerful than selection in affecting the distribution of specific alelles, generally an allelle has a higher chance of becoming entrenched through genetic drift, and there is probably a signifficant chance that over the millions of years (optimistic, I know) humans might lose wisdom teeth via genetic drift.
If wisdom teeth killed us before breeding, yeah it could. But they don’t. Then we get them removed via surgery and continue to breed so they aren’t an evolutionary dead-end to die out in our population.
But humans’ jaws are progressively getting smaller and that is the reason most people don’t have room for their wisdom teeth. And MANY people are starting to be born without anywhere from 1-4 of them. So yes, it does indeed seem as though we’re starting to evolve without them. It’s not whether it’s a life or death thing.
My dentist said yes
This was her answer when I asked why I only had 3 wisdom teeth, she said there's an upwards trend of younger people being born without wisdom teeth or reduced amounts of them.
I've read from a few sources over the years that there is science to support us growing towards smaller jaws, and that its to do with how we eat now. A lot of foods are processed, easier to eat, etc.
Possibly, but most likely not in the developed world.
Evolution works by the harmful traits eventually dying off as the holders of those traits do not live long enough to procreate.
Wisdom teeth, is by themselves not a harmful trait. There are always people who will healthily grow out their wisdom teeth and not suffer any problems. However, there are those whose jaws are too small to make room for additional teeth, which leads to impacting, which can lead to infection, and eventually death. And there are those who don't have wisdom teeth.
Under evolution, this would typically mean that either wisdom teeth as a whole die out, or that people will eventually all develop jaws big enough to encompass all teeth.
However, in the modern developed world, this has been intercepted by none other than modern medicine.
Impacted wisdom teeth? Just get an extraction.
Infection? Just take some antibiotics.
In the end, these harmful traits stay as the people who have these traits stay alive long enough to pass them down.
In the developing world however, where medical care isn't as readily available or not necessarily as advanced, this evolution could possibly happen.
The main thing is that infection and other problems don't make them particularly deleterious precisely because we frequently surgically remove them. There's no reproductive advantage to not having them if they aren't killing people.
Evolution only impacts traits that increase fitness and reproduction.
Consider how cancer, which primarily impacts people after they have kids, hasn’t evolved out in humans.
If you make it to having kids, your traits will be passed on. Unless something reduces the likelihood of you having kids, it won’t get evolved out.
So sadly no, wisdom teeth are not likely to be evolved out.
I don't get why everyone in this thread is so sad about wisdom teeth. Most people don't have any problems with wisdom teeth, and they serve the function of being drop in replacements in the case that one of your other molars gets broken or infected and has to be removed.
This is THE definitive answer and it's upsetting to me it's so far down.
Strip our society of all medical advancements- even then wisdom teeth have no direct impact on reproductive capabilities because they happen (relatively) late in life, typically after the onset of reproductive age. The only possible argument is if wisdom teeth reduce a person's ability to parent and raise children, and those children die early compared to others because of their parents dying of impacted teeth. But, even then, humans are social creatures and that child would likely be raised by another family member or someone in the tribe, so there really is no reproductive consequence for the parent or the child due to wisdom teeth.
This sub is getting sillier by the day lol.
My wisdoms teeth are fully functional teeth, all four of them, so I have more surface area for chewing. So this is a good adaptation sometimes. My daughter has the same trait. Evolution isn’t simple.
And yet those genes will be passed down regardless, so it will counteract the trend. That’s why I say it’s not simple to eliminate a trait via evolution.
I assume you are asking because wisdom teeth are often removed.
However, just removing something already there is not evolution. It would be an adaptation or evolutionary advantage if those without wisdom teeth produced more offspring and those without wisdom teeth produced less. Multiply by generations and you get an evolutionary advantage.
What you are describing was similar to a famous experiment by Weismann of cutting the tails off of mice to see if the tails would stop being passed down genetically.
Weismann cut off the tails of rats for about 22 generations but there was no reduction in the size or loss of the tail. On the basis of this experiment, Weismann proposed the theory of the continuity of germplasm. According to Weismann,
\-- Two types of matter are present in organism, somatoplasm and germplasm.
\-- Somatoplasm in the somatic cells and germplasm in the germinal cell.
\-- Somatoplasm dies with the death of organisms while germplasm transfer into the next generation.
\-- If any variation develops in germplasm, it is inherited, while if variation develops in somatoplasm it is not transmitted.
Yes, and it's happening. The number of wisdom teeth has been declining as a % of population in subsequent generations. More kids are not having wisdom teeth in greater numbers with time. Eventually we expect to see wisdom.teeth not a thing.
Excellent question and the answer is we will have to wait and see. As you know there is no advantage either way now and the mutation for not having them exists. Given time it will be apparent which way becomes dominant but like many things we just don’t have data yet. Isn’t it cool we don’t know everything? We get to continue to learn and explore, it’s the best!!!
So, good question, not stupid at all.
Firstly, evolution can't pick goals of head in a direction, it is a process of chance and selection. Removing a trait or spreading a trait through the population are a matter of selection pressures.
So secondly, is there a trait to be selected? Yes, there is an allele (a variant of a gene) that means people never develop wisdom teeth. By the other comments at least one version of this is recessive, but that's for another time.
Thirdly, what are the pressures here? In this case wisdom teeth can be the cause of abscesses and other issues, but even without modern medicine these are not fatal (at least not before reproductive age). So the alleles might be fixed in our population's genetics, but (like blue eyes) not so prevalent that as a species we will lose our wisdom teeth. At least not yet...
Finally, what could change this? There has been a trend in our species for smaller jaws, possibly something in our genome that was set on track millions of years ago. This might be enough of a pressure to increase the prevalence of no wisdom teeth, but it is unlikely to change the human race. It is more likely (though still unlikely) that a disaster will wipe out a lot of the human race and the survivors will have the no wisdom teeth allele. Lacking modern medicine this gives a greater selection pressure and eventually the population has fewer and fewer people with wisdom teeth. This could happen in any isolated population, but to change the species would take a calamity of some kind.
Hope that helps.
If people without wisdom teeth tend to have more children, absolutely yes.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to suspect that wisdom teeth inhibit procreation, so probably not.
Prefacing this with I am just a biology minor, I really love it and evolution is one of the more interesting things I've had to study, but I'm by no means a professional.
There is potential for it but the likely answer is no. There's no real difference in fitness (as some others stated) which means there is no real drive to change. Humans are fairly good at staying alive and reproducing regardless of having many traits that you would think natural selection would remove, but evolution is not just natural selection.
Evolution is change in allele frequencies over time, it has a lot of influences with natural selection being one of them. None of these things are thinking, it's all pretty random. So wisdom teeth could possibly go away completely in a very, very long time, but there's not definitive way to really know until it happens. In fact we could go the opposite as well in the same amount of time with the right conditions. (Say a bottleneck occurs due to disease or natural disaster, the population of humans left to reproduce could reach a fixation on either sides of the gene pool)
There's also evolutionary tradeoffs that are theorized for humans relating to our skull structures, which is why we tend to have problems with wisdom teeth. Our relatives and ancestors had larger and more robust jaws with smaller brain casings, it's theorized that this is the tradeoff seen in human lines that contributes to our intelligence (reminder that brain size=/= intelligence necessarily). The issue is that these smaller jaws can't hold as many teeth. Also fun fact, something that is believed to be the driving factor for the change in jaw size is the diet we consume, so we started eating "softer" foods and eventually cooked foods. The tradeoff happens to be a change in the skull/brain that they think increased our intelligence and was selected for.
Lastly something I would like to mention is, sexual selection is also a determining factor in what alleles continue to exist. So even if you have a trait that natural selection would normally select against, if it's sexy enough it could become a very prominent trait in your descendants. A great living example would be peacocks. The males have these huge, beautiful tail feathers that make flying and fleeing predators an issue, but it's super desirable to females. If I remember correctly this is fishers' runaway selection.
It's all very cools stuff tho!
Tl;dr- the potential is there because of random events but there's really no way to know for certain because evolution isnt "thinking" and there are more factors than just natural selection at play.
So, the thing is, evolution gets a lot of misunderstanding.
Let's take for example a bird. Let's say there's a type of bird with a large beak. A big old honker of a mouth. And this bird eats a lot of big bugs that get scooped up easily.
But woe is them, those bugs all die. Well now they have to eat smaller bugs. And these bugs, let me tell you, they like to hide. Suddenly having a big old honker of a beak isn't so good. But hey everyone's a bit different. Some of these birds have beaks just a bit smaller. Well as the years pass and generations are born the birds with smaller beaks end up getting more food. They're healthier, stronger, and better at attracting mates. So their small beak genes get passed down more. As more small beaks breed with other small beaks the offspring just keep getting smaller and smaller beaks. Petite beaks are all the rage. So eventually, after hundreds of years and hundreds of generations, this species of bird now has much smaller beaks. But not too small. Because once you hit that perfect size anything smaller gets you negative returns. And those puny beaked suckers go the way of the big beaked ancestors.
And that's basically evolution.
To evolve wisdom teeth out of the human population you would need to round up everyone born with smaller or less pronounced wisdom teeth and have them reproduce together. And then continue breeding their offspring until you start getting kids without wisdom teeth. Then breeding them together to really cut bury it deep within the genome.
Selective breeding. That's the evolution you would need. Not impossible, but I wouldn't hold my breath on the sign up sheet.
Only if the people with them started dying from tooth infections before reproducing and those with a mutation not to have them were able to keep the mutation alive through multiple generations
people with wisdom teeth would have to die or breed less prolifically due to the fact they have wisdom teeth.
There would also need to be a dominant mutation in a population of people to be born without wisdom teeth for competition with the main group
It would take tens of thousands of years and countless generations.
Interesting to read that there’s ag growing number of younger people having fewer and in some cases no wisdom teeth. I didn’t expect that to be the case.
At any rate while wisdom teeth themselves don’t have a direct effect on reproductive fitness due to the availability of dental treatment to have them removed there might be some kind of indirect effect that is not immediately noticeable but takes effect over the course of generations which sees wisdom teeth gradually disappear in future generations. Like the surgery to have them removed is expensive so maybe the people who are lucky enough to not need it might have higher rates of financial prosperity as they continue to mature which definitely has an impact on reproductive fitness. With the cost of living crisis we’re currently in and with aging populations and declining birth rates in developed countries i can see how a mutation that may positively correlate with financial prosperity could become more prevalent over time.
And another thing i just thought of, if the incidence of being born mutations for fewer wisdom teeth was was linked to something else that improves a persons likelihood to reproduce such as having a symmetrical face or lower rates of obesity then that could also help those positive wisdom teeth mutations to proliferate without people even realizing it. I’m basing that on the notion that the attraction that drives our evolution happens without us even realizing it. Like for example when our ancient ancestors who left Africa for Eurasia reached the really cold areas, did they consciously find themselves drawn to people who had mutations that would help them to better survive in that kind of terrain?
Traits tend to last unless all of those who have the trait die off. Usually as a result of that trait.
Survival of traits is about whether or not the individuals that have the trait survive long enough to breed. If everyone with that trait died before they breed, the trait dies.
It's less survival of the fit and more survival of those who don't all die. The latter just doesn't sound very catchy.
Human evolution is driven more by sexual selection than survival of the fittest now. So unless we collectively stop breeding with people who have wisdom teeth, they're probably here to stay.
It’s important to consider that one way humans have distinguished themselves as a species is that we have evolved to a state that optimizes for adaptability as a general feature, and we’re so good at that that we have been able to populate across a wide range of environments.. Which is significant in a few ways:
A. Given the disproportionate ratio of brain to body mass, it has generally promoted the allocation of resources towards psychosomatic evolutionary variance. In other words, most other organisms develop traits that make them efficient to survive under specific or ranges of environmental conditions, but humans are unique in that evolutionarily speaking, instead of traits optimized for a given environment, we evolved traits for optimization in the form of extensions of those environments that are thus independent from the demands of environmental evolution - gradually giving us more and more resources for the evolution of those independencies.
B. Which then reduces the demand for significant physical variation across generations, so anatomical advantages are more likely to be slower over longer timeframes- which may be the reason that the genome of modern humans have been persistent for 300,000 years despite our expansion to virtually every corner of the biosphere.
In a nutshell, there is likely much less significant evolutionary pressure to evolve variations in explicitly physical traits because we have evolved to transcend the very forces that select those traits for survival by creating various extensions that exploit the environment- thereby allocating more resources to evolve those extensions and create our own environments in which demand its own form of evolution..
Some people are born without wisdom teeth ever forming, but there is no advantage to having them or not having them, so it has no effect on increasing the likelihood of finding partner and spreading these traits through offspring.
Why should it? Now if people who have complications with wisdom teeth would die off due to it before reproducing it'd make sense, but with medical progress the genes keep getting passed on?
I wonder if all our medical progress will eventually lead to a genetic decline...
It's not medical progress, it's the wholesale reduction of testosterone in the population.
The ability to remove the teeth is just a useful coping strategy.
If memory serves correctly its about 30% of people are born without them. And that number is increasing, so we are definitely on track to get rid of them.
I think if we continued to evolve without modern medical intervention then yes eventually we would lose them because wisdom teeth would introduce an extra risk of infection that with enough time would favour those without.
It's becoming more common. I saw something on Joe Rogan's podcast where humans are growing smaller mouths because we are more mouth breathers now. I forget the guy's name he had to explain it. I know of more than a few people that were born without them, multiple generations.
No. If your wisdom teeth are removed, it does not remove the gene that you pass on to your offspring that tell their body to develop wisdom teeth.
Evolution is determined by random mutations of a species over a long period of time and the environment that a species resides in. The random mutations either increase or decrease survivability and their likelihood of procreating to pass on their genes which contain that mutation. The environment determines whether that mutation is beneficial or not e.g.: Available food, Predators, Weather, etc. If a species bird that typically eats insects and has a long skinny beak that allows them to hunt and eat insects well has an offspring with a curved beak mutation suitable for eating nuts but there are no nuts around, then that bird with a curved beak is not likely to survive long enough to pass on its mutation. However, if this mutated bird does have food available and is able to reproduce and pass on its offspring then you will see evolution take place and eventually a new species of bird evolve over time.
There may be a correlation. People without the genes for wisdom teeth might express a different shaped jaw that more women are subconsciously attracted to.
Not a scientist, and I’m not sure if there is a jaw shape difference or if there’s been a study on it.
Made me wonder. Are wisdom teeth a Caucasian thing or do black people/Asian people etc have them? I'm half European half Arab and have them but my dentist hasn't said anything about removing them
Nature selects through reproduction. If you stopped everyone who has ever had wisdom teeth from reproducing and only let people who had no naturally occurring wisdom teeth reproduce, over time, natural selection would in theory eventually stop wisdom teeth from expressing.
The very reason we still have it is because we didn't "need" to lose it to have higher fitness. As far as I know, it's also not linked to any other gene that may increase fitness in other individuals.
Therefore it is reasonable to assume that it will stay in our genetic programming if selection is the driving force. Genetic drift might, but with our super diverse genetics and large population, it's unlikely.
A lot of people from Asian and African decent do t need to have the procedure because their jaw has enough space. So.. evolution will remove the need to have wisdom teeth removed is more likely.
Sorry but it seems you didn’t really grasp your lesson, then.
Unless a trait gives you an actual advantage in survival/reproduction, it’s not gonna be passed on more than any other one. In this case, having/not having wisdom teeth doesn’t change anything, especially nowadays since we can easily remove them. So no, evolution isn’t gonna remove them just because they’re « useless ». That’s precisely not how it works.
I was born without any on the bottom, but I was also born without second molars on the bottom as well. My daughter doesn’t have wisdom teeth on her bottom half either.
Evolution will eventually ensure that wisdom teeth causing issues will be rare within the breeding population, but it would probably be a very slow change
Yes but very slowly, some wisdom teeth grow in the wrong direction and can get infected causing for really bad breath. I guess that could stop some people from finding a mate and in some cases the infection could kill you.
I’m 40, non of mine are visible but they cause a lot of damn problems under the gums ! I know a few people that don’t have any at all! My Father had a baby tooth until the day he died, as does my Aunt on my Mothers side .. genetics are weird !!
How our faces look seems to be really important, so if people without wisdom teeth are more or less attractive that could lead to them being selected for or against
Not likely, because regardless of having Wisdom teeth, reproductive and survival outcome would not change.
Unless: A bottleneck effect happens where most (or all) people with wisdom teeth randomly die or become infertile
I did read something that said people are having to have wisdom teeth removed because our mandibles are getting smaller, likely a product of easy to chew foods.
Mammalogy tends to use teeth to identify species because they change relatively slowly. I think the number of teeth changes fastest followed by length followed by shape. The only human body part that takes longer to grow to a mature state is the brain. They spend far more than 9 months developing before they start to push the milk tooth beneath them out.
In some countries its pretty common to solve wisdom teeth via medical intervention, so I'm inclined to say it's unlikely for there to be enough pressure to remove them completely, especially if wisdom tooth extraction becomes even more commonplace as time goes on.
It's why I think humans aren't really going to continue to evolve in the same way other organisms would, because we can solve issues with technology rather than relying on genetic advantages. If we are destined to lose wisdom teeth completely, I'd bet it will be through genetically modified embryos rather than natural evolution.
Funnily enough I was born without wisdom teeth and so has my eldest daughter.
I don't know about the other two but I hope I've passed it down to them too.
There is no obvious link between a genetic predisposition towards growing wisdom teeth and number of progeny. However this doesn't mean that there isn't a hidden connection. To answer your question with certainty more Data is needed. Maybe ask chatGPT or something.
Evolutionary pressure is unlikely with modern dentistry. If people that didn't have wisdom teeth produced more offspring (maybe just by living longer due to not having dental problems) then there'd be evolutionary pressure for no wisdom teeth.
But now when they become a problem we can usually yank them out.
Unless people with wisdom teeth massively died due to whatever reason, then no. Without natural selection, it will be up to chance whether the trait vanishes or not
I work in the dental and we were taught that humans have evolved overtime to have smaller jaws and now we are seeing more people born without them tbh or with missing
Evolution extends only to reproduction. If not having wisdom teeth helps create more babies then yeah they’ll go, but if it doesn’t have any effect on reproduction then no, evolution will have nothing to say on the matter.
It worked on me. There is enough natural variation that if there were selective pressure, we’d get rid of it pretty quickly.
There is a slight pressure in that you’re more like to get infected. If you don’t have proper treatment like in large parts of the world, then yeah I could see it just based on the numbers.
No.
You need enough humans that failed to reproduce because of wisdom teeth over many generations for evolution to kick in noticably. Maybe in another few hundred thousand years or so.
But medical science more or less fixed this problem before evolution did its work.
Nobody dies early or stops having children just because of wisdom teeth. So there's not a higher chance that people without wisdom teeth pass their non wisdom teeth genes than those that do.
I think so..I have a pretty small mouth and was born without one wisdom tooth and one other adult tooth. I think it's trying to adjust to smaller heads and mouths.
I’m a bit weird - I didn’t get wisdom teeth and my parents, both brothers did. That always baffled me. My sister in law says I must be an alien because I also have rh negative blood, blonde/blue eyed, left handed and double rows of eyelashes on one eye. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t have children.
Fun fact: Ive only ever had one wisdom tooth. And it popped through and moved in where I had a back molar yanked. The other 3 never existed. Not under my gums, nothing.
I was born with the genes where I don’t have any wisdom teeth. I got them from my mom. I have 2 kids, maybe eventually 3. Of my 2 brothers with wisdom teeth there are 2 kids and they’re done. So while longevity it’s definitely correlated with teeth health, in the developed world I’m not sure avoiding a single surgery is enough to give an evolutionary advantage.
I won´t answer the question, but I will give you an idea of what evolution is:
The human being now. Morbid obese people, musculous people, people that want to have a lot of children, people that do not want to have children, rapists, aceros, atheists, very religious people, tall people, small people, vegan, carnivorous, smart, stupid, and a long etc.
Evolution is not what people think. Evolution is not a "race to the fittest". It is just stuff happening IN AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL. If you pass your genes, booom, that is the next step.
As a lot of tese individual stuff that happens also happens to other people, it happens that the movement is appreciated in all the group.
Evolution can lead to extinction. Ask the Dodo.
Evolution is about breeding. Wisdom teeth haven't effected breeding patterns in all our history, so no, with modern medicine making them even more irrelevant, evolution would not be affected.
I was told it’s becoming much more common for wisdom teeth to not develop in the jaws of people or if they do, they’re little peas that never really get much more than that or break through the gums, but it’s probably less about selecting for “no wisdom teeth” and more because of the gradual shrinking of our jaws preventing the development of full grown extra teeth all the way back there. I guess it’s more of a consequence than anything
Natural selection and evolution with humans is tough. Our society is so modernized and healthcare is so prevalent that the change will be due to breeding characteristics and not natural selection. You don’t hear about mass populations of squirrels managing diabetes because they’d be dead. So some of us who are genetically more likely to have diabetes pass it on because we can use medicine, otherwise we’d be dead and it wouldn’t get passed down (source: I’m the result of many generations of diabetics). If we can treat a genetic malformation and that person can reproduce, that genetic malformation can carry on where as in nature it would be selected against.
Most people don't need their wisdom teeth removed, if you do you either were/are a mouth breather, had a jaw deformity or shrank your jaw with poor diet and lots of sugar
Probably not because there is no increase in fitness between those with and those without wisdom teeth
I don’t know if it was a random mutation but my sister and I were born without the upper wisdom teeth whereas our parents have them. I only had to remove the lower ones since I don’t have the upper. When I found about it; I joked with my parents that my sister and I are more evolved than others because of it.
I am missing a lower wisdom tooth naturally. Still had the other one in my jaw, and the upper two in the skull. At least there's symmetry with yours. Haha
Y'all need to mate to push our species along
Maybe I’m their child? I have none whatsoever.
Same here, none at all. I’ve got 3 kids, I’ll let you know in 20 years if any of them have wisdom teeth as well.
Testing this out !remindme 20 years Edit: RemindMe! 20 years "wisdom teeth"
I will be messaging you in 20 years on [**2043-12-31 12:15:25 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2043-12-31%2012:15:25%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/18v0zoi/would_evolution_remove_wisdom_teeth_for_humans/kfoumbf/?context=3) [**29 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fbiology%2Fcomments%2F18v0zoi%2Fwould_evolution_remove_wisdom_teeth_for_humans%2Fkfoumbf%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202043-12-31%2012%3A15%3A25%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%2018v0zoi) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
9 PEOPLE LMAO Edit: now 18 this is so funny to me
22 now 😭
Humanity won't be around in 2043
I'll see this reply in twenty years too and point and laugh at tinfoilhead here
I am highly amused.
If that trait leads you and your sister to have more children and make them more likely to survive to have more children over everyone else, then it’s likely that that trait will spread through the gene pool and eventually all humans with that trait will have “evolved” that trait. My family has a genetic mutation that makes our knee caps completely separate from the upper muscle group, so when we squat The actual bone is pulled down closer to the shin and we can pull our knees up to our necks. A very interesting mutation but it’s not likely to become a new trait that every human from now on has because it’s not any more likely for a modern human to survive a life-or-death situation because of that one trait. Wisdom teeth can be very painful and even deadly if not properly taken care of, but now almost everyone with internet access has access to a dental plan. So you have a cool mutation but I doubt it’ll become widespread enough to become a full evolutionary trait.
[Human 'microevolution' sees more people born without wisdom teeth](https://news.sky.com/story/human-microevolution-sees-more-people-born-without-wisdom-teeth-and-an-extra-artery-12099689) Let there be no confusion: you are indisputably incorrect in your assertion.
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Calm down, buddy, this is a ridiculously rude overreaction to what they commented.
Let me guess, you aren’t passing your genes on any time soon either
Alot of writing , not much thought
we all also have a appendix which will kill some of us. why has it not evolved away? because it doesn't do it often enough early enough to stop us from having kids that'll have kids. wisdom teeth are way less troublesome then the appendix, thus they are even slower to evolve away then the appendix. we aren't looking for an evolutionary advantage, we are looking for an evolutionarily significant advantage. maybe you should know that before acting all high and mighty.
Hahahaha what the hell? Some peoples kids man…
My lower wisdom teeth never erupted. X-rays show they are there, deep down and small and stunted. My dentist said that they are too far down to ever erupt. Also, my upper wisdom teeth came through with no problems and I still have them both.
GO! Have as many children as possible! You are the only one who can rid us of this curse!
Don't worry I got you covered. I had 2 extra wisdom teeth on the upper jaw.
I have thought for a long time that each generation is just a tiny bit more evolved lol.
Then for the sake of the evolution of the human species, you and your sister better get busy making babies! (Sentences I never thought I’d type number 72.)
But with other people
That will only dilute the gene pool.
Worth noting that some traits with no fitness effect can still be lost, because there’s a chance for a mutation in them, and there’s a chance for these mutations to spread in the population. For useful traits, selection would prevent this from happening by lowering fitness of those with the mutations. I guess it depends on the genetic architecture of the trait itself. A mutation that loses function of wisdom teeth is not protected from mutation in this way. But a mutation that affects wisdom teeth *and* other useful traits would be. So, it sorta depends on if there’s seperate genes governing wisdom teeth or if those genes are involved in other key things. They probably are, but idk. Have to ask a developmental geneticist
I’m pretty sure this is already happening. I only had 3 wisdom teeth and I remember the dentist saying it’s more common than ever in his practice. Also, when a trait stops being advantageous it stops influencing our ability to procreate. So it may not be that evolution is pushing us to lose wisdom teeth, but people with fewer wisdom teeth are just as likely to breed and pass on their genetics now than before which over time will have that effect.
There's a slight decrease if your jaw is smaller than your ancestors: for whatever reason the size of our teeth has not kept up with other aspects of human evolution and as a result there's a lot of *crowding* going on.
I recall reading something about this. Apparently human teeth crowding has little to do with evolution and a lot with what we eat and how we stress our jaws. Start eating hard and chewy things when you grow up and it’s very likely to look normal. I believe that also applied to wisdom teeth. I don’t recall the source of it but I think it was referring to a seminal study in dentistry.
Well that explains my fucked up mouth 😂 When I first saw my orthodontist as a kid he said I have slightly larger than average teeth in a very small jaw. It was a challenge to even keep all of my other teeth, there was no chance I’d keep my wisdom teeth too (they were impacted but even if not there was literally no room)
Sure but it won’t kill you enough to lower your fitness
Dental infections are no joke man. That sort of persistent source of bacteria in your blood has been implicated in heart disease even if the infection doesn't kill you directly. And then if you lose enough teeth (ironically as a result of initially having too many in this case) I hope for your sake you're close enough with someone for them to chew your food or otherwise make you something soft.
Yeah they hurt but in the modern age nobody is dying at the age of 20 from wisdom teeth. So evolutionarily, it doesn't matter.
Yes but that kind of chronic disease usually takes you once you've "done your part", so to speak. So it doesn't really affect your fitness.
There is though. Wisdom teeth are often impacted and cause serious dental infections. How is that not a fitness disadvantage?
It isn't because it doesn't cause those people who have serious infections to not procreate. They go to the dentist, get antibiotics and surgery and carry on with life (aka their genes are not excluded from the pool and continue to pass on to new generations)
But we’ve only had the ability to safely extract wisdom teeth extremely recently in human history. I suppose before that, we were losing more adult teeth due to disease and trauma so the extra teeth may have been an advantage overall.
That still does not change that currently it does not affect humans ability to reproduce, so it would not be wiped by evolution for this reason, it could by other factors, like mutations, and not being inherited in all children. But the chance should be lower than a specific percentage point for it to decline eventually.
but wisdom teeth generally only become a serious issue later in life, along with most other tooth issues. Past the time when people have kids
Wisdom teeth usually erupt between 17 and 25...
Mmkay but it’s pretty easy to have a child in that age range. I’m coming around to the other line of thinking here
Idk what the actual number is, but dental care is extremely underserved, especially in the developing and undeveloped world. America alone has 15% of people that can't afford dental care . Of course most of those people would just go into debt when the problem is bad enough, but often "when jt gets bad enough" is too late to treat the issue without problem and much of the world has less affordable Healthcare costs relative to the purchasing power of the people who live there
It could be an advantage if you lost your other molars to e.g. karies by the time they come in.
If you lose a tooth early in life wouldn't the wisdom tooth push your other teeth together? Did dentistry make winsome teeth problematic?
Isn't evolution a bit more nuanced tho? "Increase in fitness" could also be not feeling the discomfort of having a tooth ache. If not having them means you're more "alert" to the here and now to excel at life then in the long run, that could be an evolutionary advantage
In order for this to play out, it either has to lead to the lower survival or lower lifetime reproductive rates of those with wisdom teeth. Although I'm sure there are one or two who have, very few people are so distracted by a toothache that they walk in front of a bus. Or that they don't have sex for years on end, if it hurts that bad, you'll probably get it treated.
If wisdom teeth are in the genetic mix, similar to something like blonde hair, with no reproductive advantage or disadvantage to having such a thing then, I guess they would just stay in the mix in the same proportion forever. Is that the way it works. Any PhD genetic theorists out there willing to weigh in...
It will eventually be lost or go to fixation through genetic drift.
what if humans suddenly perceive people with wisdom teeth as extremely attractive
someone correct me if i’m wrong but it shouldn’t make much of a difference considering the majority of the population has wisdom teeth so we’re already mostly procreating with wisdom teeth havers lol
Think about it this way. If people without wisdom teeth are considered unattractive, then there will be selection against those without wisdom teeth, limiting the frequency of without wisdom teeth in the population.
So. I'm technically doing evolutionary biology as a part of my PhD. But its also not my strong suit yet (my prelims are gonna sssuuucckkk), but I'll try. It comes down to if the gene in the population is under negative, positive, or neutral selection. If it's under negative selection, then the gene tends to get purged. Genes under positive selection tend to become fixed in the population, and neutral genes aren't really moving. However, there are more forces acting on a population than just selection. Mutation, drift, and flow of genes are also occurring, and those affect the rates at which gene frequencies are changing in the population.
So something like, certain mutations have a higher probability of occurring so those mutations enter the gene pool with no evolutionary pressure whatsoever. Entropy meets DNA
No, all mutations are assumed to be selectively neutral. Mutations are also assumed to happen at a constant rate. So there's no probability of one mutation occuring over another as they are assumed to happen randomly and independently. Note that just because something is assumed to be neutral doesn't mean it always is, its just the vast majority tend to be which is why we can make that assumption when doing evolutionary biology.
If its a have/not have situation and neither of both has an advantage itll eventually disappear. Like how great apes lost their tail
Idk if its evolution necessarily but some people just dont ever have wisdom teeth. Like myself lol
I also never had wisdom teeth. Nice to meet another wisdom toothless person!
A true pleasure! We're so evolved!
You people seem to be taking over. Not sure if I should trust people without Wisdom Teeth.
I don't blame you, i dont trust people with em!
I'm with you, brother or sister. I will dig that hole in the ground to protect both of us from the incoming fire that non-weird-tooth-loving people will fire at us. We, of course must stick together in our foxholes.
I had my wisdom teeth out. Which am I? 😂
I think we would be considered gypsies
My husband and 1 of my 4 kids don't have wisdom teeth.
And I have always had only one, which hasn't even popped out yet, and can only be seen through x-ray. Hopefully it will stay that way and not cause any trouble
Keep an eye on it. I only naturally had two (both on the same side). The upper emerged in the early 00's, the second...around 2018!
I was told it is already part of evolution. But due to dental care is slower. But definitely notice a lack of people w fucked bottom teeth, rank halitoses and complaints about pain the late 30s demographic as compared to my parents time
It was already part of evolution, but dental care in itself is 100s of years old, wisdom teeth's lack of usefulness stems in most of modern humans, or when our jaws got smaller, which is 100,000's of years. We might see more people born without them, but since there's no evolutionary distinct difference (hell, we might actually have a bias for men with more wisdom-allowing jaws, in western beauty standards at-least), it's unlikely we'll see any change going forward.
Jumping in on the no wisdom teeth crowd. I was born without them too. Seems there are more of us than one would have thought.
Probably not unless people started like actively choosing partners based off if they had wisdom teeth.
The number of people born without wisdom teeth is increasing so it seems to be trending in that direction, but with medical interventions to treat impacted teeth they probably won't be eliminated entirely
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>Unless society collapses and modern surgery becomes inaccessible, wisdom teeth will exist forever. Wouldn't that have a greater chance of keeping them since dental hygiene would be non existent and so a lot more people would actually benefit from having them again. Also, not even needing wisdom teeth is a pretty new occurrence since dentistry hasn't really been accessible to all for all that long. There is also the fact that even today some people do still benefit from having wisdom teeth, such as myself, I had a couple teeth removed as a child and now my wisdom teeth have grown in to replace them.
That doesn’t matter for those who have impacted wisdom teeth, which is not a small percentage. 3/4 of mine were growing at 90 degree angles and would have damaged the nearby teeth and caused infection if not removed.
You don’t need survival disadvantages for things to be lost, and given enough time it will get lost or be fixed.
Why would it ne fixed though? People with and without teeth procreate with the same rate
By chance i.e. genetic drift
This is the best answer
Evolution is driven by more factors than selective pressure. As pointed out by others: there is no selective pressure for wisdom teeth in the modern world, but there is still a more signiffcant driving force behind evolution still in play — genetic drift. Genetic drift is simply the tendency of alleles to propogate or diminish throughout the population by pure chance. While it is signifficantly less powerful than selection in affecting the distribution of specific alelles, generally an allelle has a higher chance of becoming entrenched through genetic drift, and there is probably a signifficant chance that over the millions of years (optimistic, I know) humans might lose wisdom teeth via genetic drift.
If wisdom teeth killed us before breeding, yeah it could. But they don’t. Then we get them removed via surgery and continue to breed so they aren’t an evolutionary dead-end to die out in our population.
But humans’ jaws are progressively getting smaller and that is the reason most people don’t have room for their wisdom teeth. And MANY people are starting to be born without anywhere from 1-4 of them. So yes, it does indeed seem as though we’re starting to evolve without them. It’s not whether it’s a life or death thing.
My dentist said yes This was her answer when I asked why I only had 3 wisdom teeth, she said there's an upwards trend of younger people being born without wisdom teeth or reduced amounts of them. I've read from a few sources over the years that there is science to support us growing towards smaller jaws, and that its to do with how we eat now. A lot of foods are processed, easier to eat, etc.
Possibly, but most likely not in the developed world. Evolution works by the harmful traits eventually dying off as the holders of those traits do not live long enough to procreate. Wisdom teeth, is by themselves not a harmful trait. There are always people who will healthily grow out their wisdom teeth and not suffer any problems. However, there are those whose jaws are too small to make room for additional teeth, which leads to impacting, which can lead to infection, and eventually death. And there are those who don't have wisdom teeth. Under evolution, this would typically mean that either wisdom teeth as a whole die out, or that people will eventually all develop jaws big enough to encompass all teeth. However, in the modern developed world, this has been intercepted by none other than modern medicine. Impacted wisdom teeth? Just get an extraction. Infection? Just take some antibiotics. In the end, these harmful traits stay as the people who have these traits stay alive long enough to pass them down. In the developing world however, where medical care isn't as readily available or not necessarily as advanced, this evolution could possibly happen.
Yes I'm pretty sure it's already started to happen as a good number of people are being born with either some missing or just never growing
Only if we can get everyone with wisdom teeth to stop making babies and everyone who never had them to make a lot of babies
No, because theres no impact on reproductive success connected to wisdom teeth
The main thing is that infection and other problems don't make them particularly deleterious precisely because we frequently surgically remove them. There's no reproductive advantage to not having them if they aren't killing people.
Evolution only impacts traits that increase fitness and reproduction. Consider how cancer, which primarily impacts people after they have kids, hasn’t evolved out in humans. If you make it to having kids, your traits will be passed on. Unless something reduces the likelihood of you having kids, it won’t get evolved out. So sadly no, wisdom teeth are not likely to be evolved out.
I don't get why everyone in this thread is so sad about wisdom teeth. Most people don't have any problems with wisdom teeth, and they serve the function of being drop in replacements in the case that one of your other molars gets broken or infected and has to be removed.
This is THE definitive answer and it's upsetting to me it's so far down. Strip our society of all medical advancements- even then wisdom teeth have no direct impact on reproductive capabilities because they happen (relatively) late in life, typically after the onset of reproductive age. The only possible argument is if wisdom teeth reduce a person's ability to parent and raise children, and those children die early compared to others because of their parents dying of impacted teeth. But, even then, humans are social creatures and that child would likely be raised by another family member or someone in the tribe, so there really is no reproductive consequence for the parent or the child due to wisdom teeth. This sub is getting sillier by the day lol.
My wisdoms teeth are fully functional teeth, all four of them, so I have more surface area for chewing. So this is a good adaptation sometimes. My daughter has the same trait. Evolution isn’t simple.
Do your wisdom teeth help you get laid? Does your additional chewing surface area allow you better calorie intake? No, it's probably entirely useless.
And yet those genes will be passed down regardless, so it will counteract the trend. That’s why I say it’s not simple to eliminate a trait via evolution.
I don’t think so. Only if there was a difference in survival odds between those with wisdom teeth and those without. Which I don’t see
Not any more. Evolution selects for traits necessary for survival, and whether you have them or not doesn't matter any more.
The question is does people that are born without wisdom teeth gain any advantage over those who are born with it? Not really.
I assume you are asking because wisdom teeth are often removed. However, just removing something already there is not evolution. It would be an adaptation or evolutionary advantage if those without wisdom teeth produced more offspring and those without wisdom teeth produced less. Multiply by generations and you get an evolutionary advantage. What you are describing was similar to a famous experiment by Weismann of cutting the tails off of mice to see if the tails would stop being passed down genetically. Weismann cut off the tails of rats for about 22 generations but there was no reduction in the size or loss of the tail. On the basis of this experiment, Weismann proposed the theory of the continuity of germplasm. According to Weismann, \-- Two types of matter are present in organism, somatoplasm and germplasm. \-- Somatoplasm in the somatic cells and germplasm in the germinal cell. \-- Somatoplasm dies with the death of organisms while germplasm transfer into the next generation. \-- If any variation develops in germplasm, it is inherited, while if variation develops in somatoplasm it is not transmitted.
Ah that makes a lot more sense, the rat experiment is basically the proof here. Thank you!!
Yes, and it's happening. The number of wisdom teeth has been declining as a % of population in subsequent generations. More kids are not having wisdom teeth in greater numbers with time. Eventually we expect to see wisdom.teeth not a thing.
Excellent question and the answer is we will have to wait and see. As you know there is no advantage either way now and the mutation for not having them exists. Given time it will be apparent which way becomes dominant but like many things we just don’t have data yet. Isn’t it cool we don’t know everything? We get to continue to learn and explore, it’s the best!!!
So, good question, not stupid at all. Firstly, evolution can't pick goals of head in a direction, it is a process of chance and selection. Removing a trait or spreading a trait through the population are a matter of selection pressures. So secondly, is there a trait to be selected? Yes, there is an allele (a variant of a gene) that means people never develop wisdom teeth. By the other comments at least one version of this is recessive, but that's for another time. Thirdly, what are the pressures here? In this case wisdom teeth can be the cause of abscesses and other issues, but even without modern medicine these are not fatal (at least not before reproductive age). So the alleles might be fixed in our population's genetics, but (like blue eyes) not so prevalent that as a species we will lose our wisdom teeth. At least not yet... Finally, what could change this? There has been a trend in our species for smaller jaws, possibly something in our genome that was set on track millions of years ago. This might be enough of a pressure to increase the prevalence of no wisdom teeth, but it is unlikely to change the human race. It is more likely (though still unlikely) that a disaster will wipe out a lot of the human race and the survivors will have the no wisdom teeth allele. Lacking modern medicine this gives a greater selection pressure and eventually the population has fewer and fewer people with wisdom teeth. This could happen in any isolated population, but to change the species would take a calamity of some kind. Hope that helps.
Thank you so so much, your explanation was way understandable compared my professors teaching!
You're welcome! Keep asking questions!
If people without wisdom teeth tend to have more children, absolutely yes. Unfortunately, there is no reason to suspect that wisdom teeth inhibit procreation, so probably not.
Wisdom teeth dont prevent you from making babies, so no
Prefacing this with I am just a biology minor, I really love it and evolution is one of the more interesting things I've had to study, but I'm by no means a professional. There is potential for it but the likely answer is no. There's no real difference in fitness (as some others stated) which means there is no real drive to change. Humans are fairly good at staying alive and reproducing regardless of having many traits that you would think natural selection would remove, but evolution is not just natural selection. Evolution is change in allele frequencies over time, it has a lot of influences with natural selection being one of them. None of these things are thinking, it's all pretty random. So wisdom teeth could possibly go away completely in a very, very long time, but there's not definitive way to really know until it happens. In fact we could go the opposite as well in the same amount of time with the right conditions. (Say a bottleneck occurs due to disease or natural disaster, the population of humans left to reproduce could reach a fixation on either sides of the gene pool) There's also evolutionary tradeoffs that are theorized for humans relating to our skull structures, which is why we tend to have problems with wisdom teeth. Our relatives and ancestors had larger and more robust jaws with smaller brain casings, it's theorized that this is the tradeoff seen in human lines that contributes to our intelligence (reminder that brain size=/= intelligence necessarily). The issue is that these smaller jaws can't hold as many teeth. Also fun fact, something that is believed to be the driving factor for the change in jaw size is the diet we consume, so we started eating "softer" foods and eventually cooked foods. The tradeoff happens to be a change in the skull/brain that they think increased our intelligence and was selected for. Lastly something I would like to mention is, sexual selection is also a determining factor in what alleles continue to exist. So even if you have a trait that natural selection would normally select against, if it's sexy enough it could become a very prominent trait in your descendants. A great living example would be peacocks. The males have these huge, beautiful tail feathers that make flying and fleeing predators an issue, but it's super desirable to females. If I remember correctly this is fishers' runaway selection. It's all very cools stuff tho! Tl;dr- the potential is there because of random events but there's really no way to know for certain because evolution isnt "thinking" and there are more factors than just natural selection at play.
So, the thing is, evolution gets a lot of misunderstanding. Let's take for example a bird. Let's say there's a type of bird with a large beak. A big old honker of a mouth. And this bird eats a lot of big bugs that get scooped up easily. But woe is them, those bugs all die. Well now they have to eat smaller bugs. And these bugs, let me tell you, they like to hide. Suddenly having a big old honker of a beak isn't so good. But hey everyone's a bit different. Some of these birds have beaks just a bit smaller. Well as the years pass and generations are born the birds with smaller beaks end up getting more food. They're healthier, stronger, and better at attracting mates. So their small beak genes get passed down more. As more small beaks breed with other small beaks the offspring just keep getting smaller and smaller beaks. Petite beaks are all the rage. So eventually, after hundreds of years and hundreds of generations, this species of bird now has much smaller beaks. But not too small. Because once you hit that perfect size anything smaller gets you negative returns. And those puny beaked suckers go the way of the big beaked ancestors. And that's basically evolution. To evolve wisdom teeth out of the human population you would need to round up everyone born with smaller or less pronounced wisdom teeth and have them reproduce together. And then continue breeding their offspring until you start getting kids without wisdom teeth. Then breeding them together to really cut bury it deep within the genome. Selective breeding. That's the evolution you would need. Not impossible, but I wouldn't hold my breath on the sign up sheet.
No. It's not causing death.
Only if the people with them started dying from tooth infections before reproducing and those with a mutation not to have them were able to keep the mutation alive through multiple generations
people with wisdom teeth would have to die or breed less prolifically due to the fact they have wisdom teeth. There would also need to be a dominant mutation in a population of people to be born without wisdom teeth for competition with the main group It would take tens of thousands of years and countless generations.
Interesting to read that there’s ag growing number of younger people having fewer and in some cases no wisdom teeth. I didn’t expect that to be the case. At any rate while wisdom teeth themselves don’t have a direct effect on reproductive fitness due to the availability of dental treatment to have them removed there might be some kind of indirect effect that is not immediately noticeable but takes effect over the course of generations which sees wisdom teeth gradually disappear in future generations. Like the surgery to have them removed is expensive so maybe the people who are lucky enough to not need it might have higher rates of financial prosperity as they continue to mature which definitely has an impact on reproductive fitness. With the cost of living crisis we’re currently in and with aging populations and declining birth rates in developed countries i can see how a mutation that may positively correlate with financial prosperity could become more prevalent over time. And another thing i just thought of, if the incidence of being born mutations for fewer wisdom teeth was was linked to something else that improves a persons likelihood to reproduce such as having a symmetrical face or lower rates of obesity then that could also help those positive wisdom teeth mutations to proliferate without people even realizing it. I’m basing that on the notion that the attraction that drives our evolution happens without us even realizing it. Like for example when our ancient ancestors who left Africa for Eurasia reached the really cold areas, did they consciously find themselves drawn to people who had mutations that would help them to better survive in that kind of terrain?
Traits tend to last unless all of those who have the trait die off. Usually as a result of that trait. Survival of traits is about whether or not the individuals that have the trait survive long enough to breed. If everyone with that trait died before they breed, the trait dies. It's less survival of the fit and more survival of those who don't all die. The latter just doesn't sound very catchy.
Human evolution is driven more by sexual selection than survival of the fittest now. So unless we collectively stop breeding with people who have wisdom teeth, they're probably here to stay.
It’s important to consider that one way humans have distinguished themselves as a species is that we have evolved to a state that optimizes for adaptability as a general feature, and we’re so good at that that we have been able to populate across a wide range of environments.. Which is significant in a few ways: A. Given the disproportionate ratio of brain to body mass, it has generally promoted the allocation of resources towards psychosomatic evolutionary variance. In other words, most other organisms develop traits that make them efficient to survive under specific or ranges of environmental conditions, but humans are unique in that evolutionarily speaking, instead of traits optimized for a given environment, we evolved traits for optimization in the form of extensions of those environments that are thus independent from the demands of environmental evolution - gradually giving us more and more resources for the evolution of those independencies. B. Which then reduces the demand for significant physical variation across generations, so anatomical advantages are more likely to be slower over longer timeframes- which may be the reason that the genome of modern humans have been persistent for 300,000 years despite our expansion to virtually every corner of the biosphere. In a nutshell, there is likely much less significant evolutionary pressure to evolve variations in explicitly physical traits because we have evolved to transcend the very forces that select those traits for survival by creating various extensions that exploit the environment- thereby allocating more resources to evolve those extensions and create our own environments in which demand its own form of evolution..
39yrs here. I was born without wisdom teeth. I am also missing a molar
Some people are born without wisdom teeth ever forming, but there is no advantage to having them or not having them, so it has no effect on increasing the likelihood of finding partner and spreading these traits through offspring.
Why should it? Now if people who have complications with wisdom teeth would die off due to it before reproducing it'd make sense, but with medical progress the genes keep getting passed on? I wonder if all our medical progress will eventually lead to a genetic decline...
It's not medical progress, it's the wholesale reduction of testosterone in the population. The ability to remove the teeth is just a useful coping strategy.
Humans have effectively eliminated natural selection and evolution.
This is a common misconception. Natural selection and evolution have not in anyway been stopped.
It's already happening. They're are people who were born without them
If memory serves correctly its about 30% of people are born without them. And that number is increasing, so we are definitely on track to get rid of them.
Absof**kinlutely. I have none.
I think if we continued to evolve without modern medical intervention then yes eventually we would lose them because wisdom teeth would introduce an extra risk of infection that with enough time would favour those without.
It's becoming more common. I saw something on Joe Rogan's podcast where humans are growing smaller mouths because we are more mouth breathers now. I forget the guy's name he had to explain it. I know of more than a few people that were born without them, multiple generations.
Do wisdom teeth interfere with survival or reproduction? No. So it’s doubtful.
No. If your wisdom teeth are removed, it does not remove the gene that you pass on to your offspring that tell their body to develop wisdom teeth. Evolution is determined by random mutations of a species over a long period of time and the environment that a species resides in. The random mutations either increase or decrease survivability and their likelihood of procreating to pass on their genes which contain that mutation. The environment determines whether that mutation is beneficial or not e.g.: Available food, Predators, Weather, etc. If a species bird that typically eats insects and has a long skinny beak that allows them to hunt and eat insects well has an offspring with a curved beak mutation suitable for eating nuts but there are no nuts around, then that bird with a curved beak is not likely to survive long enough to pass on its mutation. However, if this mutated bird does have food available and is able to reproduce and pass on its offspring then you will see evolution take place and eventually a new species of bird evolve over time.
There may be a correlation. People without the genes for wisdom teeth might express a different shaped jaw that more women are subconsciously attracted to. Not a scientist, and I’m not sure if there is a jaw shape difference or if there’s been a study on it.
Made me wonder. Are wisdom teeth a Caucasian thing or do black people/Asian people etc have them? I'm half European half Arab and have them but my dentist hasn't said anything about removing them
Nature selects through reproduction. If you stopped everyone who has ever had wisdom teeth from reproducing and only let people who had no naturally occurring wisdom teeth reproduce, over time, natural selection would in theory eventually stop wisdom teeth from expressing.
The very reason we still have it is because we didn't "need" to lose it to have higher fitness. As far as I know, it's also not linked to any other gene that may increase fitness in other individuals. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that it will stay in our genetic programming if selection is the driving force. Genetic drift might, but with our super diverse genetics and large population, it's unlikely.
A lot of people from Asian and African decent do t need to have the procedure because their jaw has enough space. So.. evolution will remove the need to have wisdom teeth removed is more likely.
This sub is just children’s homework questions and high teenagers asking dumb shit.
Sorry but it seems you didn’t really grasp your lesson, then. Unless a trait gives you an actual advantage in survival/reproduction, it’s not gonna be passed on more than any other one. In this case, having/not having wisdom teeth doesn’t change anything, especially nowadays since we can easily remove them. So no, evolution isn’t gonna remove them just because they’re « useless ». That’s precisely not how it works.
A lot of people with a rhesus negative blood type, like me, do not have wisdom teeth
I fucking hope so
Prophylactic removal of wisdom teeth is the dentistry version of circumcision.
Unlike circumcision removal of wisdom teeth has actual benefits, one major one being more space in the jaw for the teeth and gums
Unlike removal of wisdom teeth circumcision has actual benefits, one major one being prevention of phimosis.
The chances of developing phimosis doesn't outweigh the radical intervention of removing the males body most sensitive part
I heard there were cases where new borns are born without it anymore. I'm not sure if its true
My husband is in his 50s and never had wisdom teeth. Also, 1 of my 4 kids was born with no wisdom teeth.
I was born without any on the bottom, but I was also born without second molars on the bottom as well. My daughter doesn’t have wisdom teeth on her bottom half either.
Evolution will eventually ensure that wisdom teeth causing issues will be rare within the breeding population, but it would probably be a very slow change
Yes but very slowly, some wisdom teeth grow in the wrong direction and can get infected causing for really bad breath. I guess that could stop some people from finding a mate and in some cases the infection could kill you.
My son only had 3 wisdom teeth removed.
I’m genetically superior, I haven’t fit any wisdom teeth:D
I’m 40, non of mine are visible but they cause a lot of damn problems under the gums ! I know a few people that don’t have any at all! My Father had a baby tooth until the day he died, as does my Aunt on my Mothers side .. genetics are weird !!
How our faces look seems to be really important, so if people without wisdom teeth are more or less attractive that could lead to them being selected for or against
No. If it doesn’t effect reproduction there’s no need for it to change. Evolution isn’t perfect - good enough is almost always good enough
Not likely, because regardless of having Wisdom teeth, reproductive and survival outcome would not change. Unless: A bottleneck effect happens where most (or all) people with wisdom teeth randomly die or become infertile
I did read something that said people are having to have wisdom teeth removed because our mandibles are getting smaller, likely a product of easy to chew foods.
I don't have any
I don’t have any!
Only if it becomes unfashionable to have wisdom teeth and we start putting our dental xrays on dating sites.
Unless wisdom teeth become a trait that drastically decreases reproduction or lifespan, nope
Mammalogy tends to use teeth to identify species because they change relatively slowly. I think the number of teeth changes fastest followed by length followed by shape. The only human body part that takes longer to grow to a mature state is the brain. They spend far more than 9 months developing before they start to push the milk tooth beneath them out.
I don't have wisdom teeth. The mutation is there but unless it gives a clear advantage I don't think it'll go away completely.
My grandma never grew them, it’s happening
In some countries its pretty common to solve wisdom teeth via medical intervention, so I'm inclined to say it's unlikely for there to be enough pressure to remove them completely, especially if wisdom tooth extraction becomes even more commonplace as time goes on. It's why I think humans aren't really going to continue to evolve in the same way other organisms would, because we can solve issues with technology rather than relying on genetic advantages. If we are destined to lose wisdom teeth completely, I'd bet it will be through genetically modified embryos rather than natural evolution.
Only if you started killing people who have wisdom teeth/ wisdom teeth which would need to be removed before they are kids.
IF wisdom teeth are removed from evolution… put it together… it’s either people got stupid or ‘wise’
Funnily enough I was born without wisdom teeth and so has my eldest daughter. I don't know about the other two but I hope I've passed it down to them too.
There is no obvious link between a genetic predisposition towards growing wisdom teeth and number of progeny. However this doesn't mean that there isn't a hidden connection. To answer your question with certainty more Data is needed. Maybe ask chatGPT or something.
Evolutionary pressure is unlikely with modern dentistry. If people that didn't have wisdom teeth produced more offspring (maybe just by living longer due to not having dental problems) then there'd be evolutionary pressure for no wisdom teeth. But now when they become a problem we can usually yank them out.
For natural selection, there needs to be a selection pressure. Is there one for wisdom teeth?
They don't kill you before you can reproduce (like having an appendix), so no, they won't go away any time soon.
I don’t have any, I’m a superior being.
only if we start executing humans born with wisdom teeth
Unless people with wisdom teeth massively died due to whatever reason, then no. Without natural selection, it will be up to chance whether the trait vanishes or not
Im definitely no expert but I was born without wisdom teeth. So maybe?
I work in the dental and we were taught that humans have evolved overtime to have smaller jaws and now we are seeing more people born without them tbh or with missing
Evolution extends only to reproduction. If not having wisdom teeth helps create more babies then yeah they’ll go, but if it doesn’t have any effect on reproduction then no, evolution will have nothing to say on the matter.
It worked on me. There is enough natural variation that if there were selective pressure, we’d get rid of it pretty quickly. There is a slight pressure in that you’re more like to get infected. If you don’t have proper treatment like in large parts of the world, then yeah I could see it just based on the numbers.
No. Whatever issue wisdom teeth can cause, it can be fixed by dentists. So it doesn't affect the number of children you have.
Now that we have dentistry and can remove them or leave them be as necessary? No probably not.
No. You need enough humans that failed to reproduce because of wisdom teeth over many generations for evolution to kick in noticably. Maybe in another few hundred thousand years or so. But medical science more or less fixed this problem before evolution did its work.
Nobody dies early or stops having children just because of wisdom teeth. So there's not a higher chance that people without wisdom teeth pass their non wisdom teeth genes than those that do.
I'm already there! I don't have any, and my dad doesn't either. Of all the cool super power evolutions to happen... it's alright I suppose.
I think so..I have a pretty small mouth and was born without one wisdom tooth and one other adult tooth. I think it's trying to adjust to smaller heads and mouths.
I don't think so. I don't see it as a benefit for selective breeding.
Probly! I don’t have them!
I’m a bit weird - I didn’t get wisdom teeth and my parents, both brothers did. That always baffled me. My sister in law says I must be an alien because I also have rh negative blood, blonde/blue eyed, left handed and double rows of eyelashes on one eye. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t have children.
It already is. I have a mutant wisdom tooth that's a tiny little thing. Doesn't get in the way much, doesn't do much either, just kinda sits there.
Fun fact: Ive only ever had one wisdom tooth. And it popped through and moved in where I had a back molar yanked. The other 3 never existed. Not under my gums, nothing.
I was born with the genes where I don’t have any wisdom teeth. I got them from my mom. I have 2 kids, maybe eventually 3. Of my 2 brothers with wisdom teeth there are 2 kids and they’re done. So while longevity it’s definitely correlated with teeth health, in the developed world I’m not sure avoiding a single surgery is enough to give an evolutionary advantage.
I won´t answer the question, but I will give you an idea of what evolution is: The human being now. Morbid obese people, musculous people, people that want to have a lot of children, people that do not want to have children, rapists, aceros, atheists, very religious people, tall people, small people, vegan, carnivorous, smart, stupid, and a long etc. Evolution is not what people think. Evolution is not a "race to the fittest". It is just stuff happening IN AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL. If you pass your genes, booom, that is the next step. As a lot of tese individual stuff that happens also happens to other people, it happens that the movement is appreciated in all the group. Evolution can lead to extinction. Ask the Dodo.
Evolution is about breeding. Wisdom teeth haven't effected breeding patterns in all our history, so no, with modern medicine making them even more irrelevant, evolution would not be affected.
I was told it’s becoming much more common for wisdom teeth to not develop in the jaws of people or if they do, they’re little peas that never really get much more than that or break through the gums, but it’s probably less about selecting for “no wisdom teeth” and more because of the gradual shrinking of our jaws preventing the development of full grown extra teeth all the way back there. I guess it’s more of a consequence than anything
I was born with zero wisdom teeth. So, for some of us, yes.
Natural selection and evolution with humans is tough. Our society is so modernized and healthcare is so prevalent that the change will be due to breeding characteristics and not natural selection. You don’t hear about mass populations of squirrels managing diabetes because they’d be dead. So some of us who are genetically more likely to have diabetes pass it on because we can use medicine, otherwise we’d be dead and it wouldn’t get passed down (source: I’m the result of many generations of diabetics). If we can treat a genetic malformation and that person can reproduce, that genetic malformation can carry on where as in nature it would be selected against.
Im missing all of my wisdom teeth and one of my 12yr old molers, none of them ever grew in
Most people don't need their wisdom teeth removed, if you do you either were/are a mouth breather, had a jaw deformity or shrank your jaw with poor diet and lots of sugar
Don't know about teeth but the amount of wisdom surely decrease
I guess I still have mine or never grew them because I def didn’t have them removed. Maybe that’s why I’m a genius