8 of the Weirdest Mouths in the Animal Kingdom

Open your mouth, scream: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

We’ve all probably spent time in front of a mirror, wondering how weird our mouths look. But let us tell you, human mouths are nothing compared to some of the maws that are out there.

Some animals have absolutely mind-boggling gobs. And it’s not just the weird life of ancient Earth — even living animals sport some truly bizarre mouth parts.

So, without further ado, here are eight of the weirdest mouth in the animal kingdom.

And, if you’d like to check out some more puzzling body parts, here are our previous lists of strange animal anatomy:

1. Snail

You probably don’t spend too much time thinking about snail mouths — but maybe you should. After all, they have the most teeth out of any animal.

A snail’s mouth can have anywhere between 14,000 and 20,000 teeth. Unlike with most other animals, however, those teeth aren’t arranged in rows on opposing jaws.

Instead, they’re all attached to the snail’s radula. Although it’s not quite the same thing, you can think of the radula as a tongue covered in tiny sharp teeth that the snail uses to scrape bits of food into its mouth.

2. Thylacoleo

What the heck is a Thylacoleo? Well, they were carnivorous marsupials — otherwise known as “marsupial lions” — that lived in Australia until 40,000 years ago.

Basically, the Thylacoleo is what happens if a wombat goes psycho and develops a taste for flesh. Despite being apex predators, they still had very rodent-like mouths, with large incisors and only four molars that had grown into large, cutting blades.

And boy, could those blades cut. The Thylacoley had the strongest bite out of any mammal, living or dead, that allowed it to kill animals much larger than itself.

Which is impressive, considering that the thing was the size of a female lion.

3. Cookiecutter Shark

Cookiecutter sharks are small sharks living in tropical seas. They’re named as they are because their jaws function pretty much like a cookie cutter.

The cookiecutter shark is a parasite that uses its fat, fleshy lips to suction onto a passing fish or whale. It breaks out the bandsaw-like teeth on its lower jaw and slices off a chunk of meat.

The shark then lets go, leaving behind a neat, almost perfectly circular bloody hole in its still-living victim. A cookie cutter, indeed.

4. Atopodentatus

The Atopodentatus (meaning “weirdly toothed”) is a marine reptile that lived some 240 million years ago. It really couldn’t decide if it wanted to look like a duck or a hammerhead shark, so it kind of went for both looks.

This creature had a weird hammer or shovel-shaped mouth with several rows of tiny teeth. It’s believed that it used its bizarre jaws to scoop algae, seaweed, and small critters off the sea floor.

But as bizarre as it is, researchers initially believed the Atopodentatus was even weirder. They thought it had a zipper-like, vertical, tooth-lined slit running up its face — until they realized the specimen they were looking at had had its skull smashed in millions of years ago.

5. Platybelodon

The Platybelodon kind of looks like if you gave someone copious amounts of drugs and asked them to draw an elephant. This 15-million-year-old distant relative of modern animals certainly looks like it popped out of an opium dream.

The top portion of the Platybelodon’s mouth was more traditionally elephantine, with a trunk and (relatively) short tusks. However, its lower jaw was bizarrely elongated and terminated in a pair of buckteeth.

Frankly, the Platybelodon’s mouth is so friggin’ weird that nobody is quite sure how it managed to eat anything. The current prevailing theory is that it used its buckteeth to strip barks and cut branches off of trees before awkwardly showing them back with its trunk.

6. Anomalocaris

Mouths come in all shapes and sizes, but have you ever seen a conical mouth? That’s what you get with the Anomalocaris, a… Thing that lived in Cambrian seas 500 million years ago.

The Anomalocaris sported what’s called an oral cone. This pyramidal structure had three large, hard plates with smaller ones between them and a mouth opening in the middle.

But the thing is that the plates are believed to have been pretty fragile, so the animal probably didn’t use them to chew anything. That said, scientists have found fossils with W-shaped bite marks that somehow match the Anomalocaris’ oral cone.

Yet, its mouth is probably the least outlandish thing about the Anomalocaris. We could dedicate a whole article to this freak of nature.

7. Helicoprion

Earlier, we compared the cookiecutter shark’s teeth to bandsaw. The Helicoprion, however, had a buzzsaw.

Inside the jaws of this huge ancient shark was what’s known as a tooth whirl. If you don’t know what that is, imagine a circular saw blade made entirely out of teeth.

Once again, this shark’s mouth is so out there that there’s no consensus on how on earth it managed to eat. It may have sliced off chunks of meat during a high-speed ambush, or possibly used its facial buzzsaw to crush the shells of mollusks and cephalopods.

8. Conodont

Conodont were ancient jawless vertebrates that swam in the oceans with the Anomalicaris. It’s kind of funny that they’re jawless, because they sure had teeth for days.

While different conodont species had differently sized teeth, most of them were long, curving, horrendous-looking things. What’s more, they’re the sharpest known teeth of any animal, being sharper than a modern surgical knife.

Researchers believe that the teeth may have been independently movable. The conodonts are assumed to have caught prey with their sharp fangs before using them to push their victim back toward the more regular, smaller set of teeth deeper in their mouths.

Essentially, if you got eaten by a conodont, you’d get skewered and then shoved into a blender.