Adult human beings have 32 permanent teeth – and let’s be honest, most of us only have 28, because wisdom teeth rarely cooperate.

Which is to say, we’re not going to even make a top 10 list of animals with the most teeth.

If you had to guess, what would you think would top that list? Sharks? Alligators? Some kind of weird fish?

The answer – which is a snail – definitely surprised me.

The mammal with the most teeth goes to the giant armadillo, who sports 100, and the vertebrate who takes the top prize is the common leaf-tailed gecko of Madagascar, who has a whopping 317.

That’s a lot of teeth on a little gecko!

Sharks are contenders, with the great white coming in at around 300 at any one time (though they can have tens of thousands over their lifespan), but fellow ocean-dweller Pacific lingcod has far more – around 555 at once.

The top prize across ecosystems and species, though, is the humble snail – at least, it is if you agree that denticles (teeth-like structures made from chitin) count as teeth.

Most scientists do, and at 14,000, it’s pretty wild to imagine that many teeth, no matter what they’re made of, can fit in the mouth of a snail. Tom White, senior curator of non-insect invertebrates at the Natural History Museum in London, explains how they use them in conjunction with its radula, a tongue-like organ.

“The radula is used by both carnivorous and herbivorous molluscs to rasp fragments of food into their mouth – hence the Latin name ‘radula’ [which means] ‘little scraper.’ Essentially, animals with radulae extend them – a bit like sticking out their tongue – and scrape at whatever they are feeding from.”

Lots of teeth run in the snail family tree, too; the sea-dwelling umbrella slug have nearly 1500 denticles lining their radula.

Kind of changes your perspective on snails, don’t you think?

Thought that was fascinating? Here’s another story you might like: Why You’ll Never See A Great White Shark In An Aquarium