
The Red Squirrels teeth are very,
very powerful tools!
They have a total of 20 teeth.
Besides the 4 grinding teeth,
they also have 8 smaller teeth
in the back of their mouth.
The 4 grinding teeth
have separate muscles
attacked to them,
meaning that they can open and
close them together independently.
Or, spread them and unify them.
This is practical when they eat
soft items such as greens,
flowers, moss, lichen and such.
They can basically use both upper
and lower grinding teeth, as scissors.
However,
when it comes to hard objects,
such as a nut shell, they unify them,
so they look to be 2 solid teeth.
This makes their teeth
10x stronger as they lock together
like pieces in a puzzle.
In fact, combined
with their powerful jaw muscles,
they can produce enough force
to crush human finger bones
like toothpicks, pun intended.