Worried about tooth length

[kwal]

Hi guys,

I've had my two rats since November (they were about 5-6 months old when I adopted them from someone who didn't want to look after them anymore). Recently, I've noticed that Daphne's bottom teeth seem to getting a bit on the long side and they have a couple of millimetres on her slightly larger-all-around sister. Her mouth is a bit more open lately and the teeth have a small gap. They don't look anywhere near as bad as some of the horrific pictures on Google Images luckily. At the same time, I don't want to just ignore it and have it develop into a problem.

They have all kinds of chews (wood blocks, lava blocks, composites, luffa, willow and apple wood sticks) but they don't really seem to chew anything besides their food (which is Oxbow adult rat food and some fresh veggies). What can I do to encourage more chewing or be proactive about Daphne's teeth?

 

[lilspaz68]

Length of teeth is never the issue...its the even-ness across the top which is vital. A rat naturally grinds down its teeth by bruxxing. This grinds the opposing incisors together and keep them even and ground down. Some rats teeth are longer than others but as I said if they are pretty even across the tops you're fine. The chewing stuff is not so much to keep her teeth down but to keep her engaged and happy as rats love to chew.

As for the gap between her teeth, look to see if it comes and goes. There's a natural splay to bottom teeth only as the bottom mandible of the jaw is only connected at the front with ligaments not rigid bone. This allows for a rats teeth to splay out on the bottom...its better for them to grip and drag food items. When stressed (for eg. when you are forcing their mouth open to take a look, and they are squirming) those teeth will splay, but normally they are back together...make sure the gap is not because of this

Here was Mattie's normal splay...

 

[Joanne]

I agree with Lilspaz. If your girl can take a hard piece of food and munch it down with her incisors and then molars, then her teeth are fine.
When I rescued Petunia, I quickly discovered she had a problem with her bite. But I could see that she couldn't close her mouth all the way. That was the big tip-off. And the incisors were very uneven. Usually if the incisors are even, then that indicates that the top and bottom teeth are lining up just fine.