ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
The Ruminant sorting mechanism protects teeth from abrasives.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Inter-microscope comparability of dental microwear texture data obtained from different optical profilometers: Part II Deriving instrument-specific correction equations for meta-analyses using published data.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Pooled it
- Teeth and the gastrointestinal tract in mammals: when 1 + 1 = 3.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Masticatory myology of the llama (Lama glama, Camelidae) and comparisons with other camelids and euungulates.Journal of anatomy · 2023Article
- Reassessing assumptions about the evolution of herbivore teeth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dental wear due to ingestion of dust and grit has deleterious consequences. Herbivores that could not wash their food hence had to evolve particularly durable teeth, in parallel to the evolution of dental chewing surface complexity to increase chewing efficacy. The rumen sorting mechanism increases chewing efficacy beyond that reached by any other mammal and has been hypothesized to also offer an internal washing mechanism, which would be an outstanding example of an additional advantage by a physiological adaptation, but in vivo evidence is lacking so far. Here, we investigated four cannulated, live cows that received a diet to which sand was added. Silica in swallowed food and feces reflected experimental dietary sand contamination, whereas the regurgitate submitted to rumination remained close to the silica levels of the basal food. This helps explain how ruminants are able to tolerate high levels of dust or grit in their diet, with less high-crowned teeth than nonruminants in the same habitat. Palaeo-reconstructions based on dental morphology and dental wear traces need to take the ruminants' wear-protection mechanism into account. The inadvertent advantage likely contributed to the ruminants' current success in terms of species diversity.
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