Species of carnivorans that eat bone are believed to break teeth more
often than those eating mainly meat. Two predictions that arise from t
his hypothesis are that bats, which do not eat bone, will have a lower
incidence of broken teeth than carnivorans and that smaller carnivora
ns, which often feed heavily on arthropods and other insects, will exh
ibit less tooth damage than larger carnivorans. We found no difference
between bats and carnivorans in the proportion of skulls with broken
or missing teeth in a sample including 10 species of carnivorans from
ermines to bears, and 13 species of bats including some that eat insec
ts, fruit, nectar and pollen, and blood. When the sample is expanded t
o include larger carnivorans studied by Van Valkenburgh (1988), there
is a significant difference in the incidence of tooth breakage, indica
ting that the selection of species in the sample affects the results.
Tooth breakage was strongly influenced by body size in carnivorans but
not in bats. This evidence suggests that factors other than diet infl
uence tooth breakage in mammals. We propose that lifespan, which incre
ases with body size in carnivorans but not in bats, is a better predic
tor of tooth breakage than diet.