The geese are with their pristine whiteness and a graceful swim, but That changes when they open their beak and then some strange spikes peek out. The images that manage to capture what is inside their beaks can be a little disturbing and lead us to wonder, what is inside, what are the geese hiding inside their beaks.
An unexpected panorama
From a distance, the geese do not seem offensive in any way, on the contrary, they manage to convey peace when watching them swim with their charming aquatic dance. The last thing that occurs to us is that these are animals that must be taken care of, but anyone who has had the opportunity to be close to these birds knows that they must keep their distance.
An angry goose is such an uncontrollable force that in some regions they are used as guardians protecting farms from intruders. When they open their beaks, the first thing we see is a considerable amount of somewhat terrifying spikes, and finding a shape for them can be a bit difficult, since at first glance it may even seem that a completely different animal is lodged in their mouths.
But the truth is that there is no intruder, what you can see is its inner beak that has a kind of teethas happens with most mammals, but everything goes out of balance when it is observed that the tongue also has ‘teeth’.
Are they really teeth?
Although you can almost swear that these are sharp teeth that geese use to attack, the truth is that they do not fall into the category of teeth due to the material they are made of.
Teeth, like ours or those of other mammals, are made up of three hard tissues (enamel, dentin and dental cement) and although they also have a soft compound known as dental pulp, they are extremely resistant. On the other hand, those that geese have both in their beak and on their tongue, They are more of a type of spike since they are primarily made of a type of cartilage called tomium.
Biologists call these spikes conical papillae, which are found along the tongue and work in conjunction with the row of papillae arranged around the beak. Both rows, along with the structure of the beak, are designed to improve the cuts caused by their bite. And while they don’t have enamel or hard coatings like our teeth, geese’s beaks are really efficient at causing cuts on surfaces like roots, stems, or small animals.
Some species of geese additionally have quills on the back of their tongue to prevent the food they are trying to ingest from being regurgitated. More or less the same thing happens with some species of penguins that also look terrifying. Other species that also have conical papillae are ducks and ducks, nature is as beautiful as it is strange.