Does the Tooth fairy also take chimps teeth?

In the same group as humans, chimps, and the rest of apes have the same dentition pattern, which means all of them have 20 teeth, in the same order across the board. But, as well as humans, apes have  “milk teeth” that are lost when the individual became an adult. 

Contrary to scientists’ beliefs, the age at which a chimpanzee gets its first permanent molar tooth doesn’t predict when the ape will stop being care by their parents and start eating solid foods. The finding could alter the way anthropologists think about how ancient hominid infants matured.

In many primate species, when they start eating solid food the first tooth marks begin to appear. Experts have claim that this is common in chimpanzees and closest humans’ relatives. To support that Harvard University’s Tanya Smith and colleagues photographed the gaping mouths of five wild infant chimpanzees in Uganda between August 2011 and December 2012. Each chimp’s lower first molar emerged by age 3.3, but all of the infants continued to suckle after the tooth erupted — some beyond age 4, the team observed. Due to that, scientists might need to rethink using the presence of the first molar in a hominid fossil as a sign of weaning, the researchers report online January 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many primates are born with teeth already erupted and only great apes and humans typically remain toothless after a month of postnatal life. Indeed, eruption of teeth offers an excellent method to gauge both the matura- tion of individuals and to compare the life histories of species.

The least-known fact that emerged from the literature survey was that many, perhaps most, primates have teeth already emerged at birth and almost all will have erupted teeth within two weeks. But in lumurs’ family all individuals observed to date appear to have teeth erupted at birth. Although day-of-birth records are not yet available at least 16 teeth were emerged in a 9-day-old, so it is highly likely that teeth are present at birth in this species also. 

Summing up, the conclusion is that, as our far cousins, apes have “milk teeth” and receive the visit of the tooth fairy when they are young.