Pandas’ teeth may become cavities due to regular consumption of bamboo

What is the relationship between bamboo and dental caries? Literally speaking, there is no relationship. However, if you look deeper into its inner meaning, you will find that bamboo is the main culprit in causing dental caries.

Why is bamboo said to be the main culprit in causing dental caries? It is clear at a glance if you look at the survival, reproduction and composition analysis of bamboo by botanists.

Bamboos are herbaceous plants, but they have unique woody branches. Generally, herbaceous plants bloom and bear fruit every year. Bamboo is different in this regard. Many kinds of bamboo take many years to bloom and then die. Bamboo propagates by sprouting from underground stems and growing year by year. Because the growth cycle of bamboo is longer than that of ordinary herbaceous plants, it provides a source of food for pandas. The ingredients of plants, taking Cane bamboo as an example:

Among these types of ingredients, the percentage of sugar is the most prominent, as high as 26.15%. We know that polysaccharide foods can easily cause dental caries.

When we studied the tooth morphology of pandas, we noticed that panda caries mostly occurred on the molars, and there were also a few specimens on the 4th premolars. The manifestation of dental caries is generally the appearance of holes in the enamel layer on the biting surface, which is medically called cavities. Caries with mild disease have small cavities, whereas those with less severe cavities have larger cavities. In the cavities of Papilloma pandas, we can sometimes see extremely large cavities, the depth of which has penetrated the dentin, which can be regarded as a "serious disease".

According to statistics on the caries rate, there are no caries in primitive pandas, less in small species of pandas, accounting for about 2-3%, and more in Papilion pandas. According to Wang Jiangke's study "Observation of Dental Caries in Fossil Giant Pandas in Guangxi, 1961", Papua New Guinea Among the 100 specimens of the upper 2nd molar and lower 2nd molar of the panda, 18 cases, accounting for 18%, suffered from dental caries. Furthermore, the caries of Papilloma pandas increases with age. Now it seems that pandas eating bamboo not only harm natural resources, but also threaten their own health.

As far as we humans are concerned, ancient humans always insisted on being omnivorous in their struggle with hot and cold climates. From a nutritional point of view, omnivorous food has high nutritional value, low sugar content and low fat. Therefore, ancient people rarely suffered from obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease. This is the conclusion drawn by anthropologists from studying the feces of ancient humans.

Horizontal ratio, vertical ratio, it is still better to be omnivorous.

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