spawned this question; why do teeth have nerves inside them? the above question doesnt really make alot of sense realy until i explain it.

My point is that "what is the point of having nerves in your teeth", teeth arent really used to feel anything and the only purpose that the nerves serve is to cause people pain when teeth are decayed.
I mean i know the nerves are in the gums and all that, but at least part of the nerve lies in the tooth (if i remember biology correctly).

Help - 'cause im really confused and curious. Its peeked my imagination.

Clench your teeth. Feel that? Teeth do sense things. They sense the hardness and pressure exerted. They also react to heat and cold.

Think of them like fingernails, the working part is dead, but it's connected to a nervous tissue so you can extend your senses outward.

You can get an idea of how this works by 'feeling' stuff while blindfolded with a pencil. The texture and other properties of what you touch with the pencil only will extend back through your hand to your mind. It's weird, but it happens. And it happens with teeth too.

Here is a Diagram of the inside of a tooth


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None of the nerves lie in the teeth. It is just the aching and dull sensation of the gums which make it feel like the teeth are aching, unless your teeth are rotting it is just your gum nerves.

I have often wondered this too. Until very very recently (evolutionarily speaking) there is absolutely nothing we could do about the agonizing, crippling pain of a toothache, so what purpose does this pain serve?

Sure, it may act as a warning device, letting you know that a tooth is decayed or weak so that you don't put too much pressure on it, but then why is the pain so intense and WHY IS THERE NO OFF SWITCH??

An alarm that you can't shut off doesn't seem to be terribly useful.

You would think that any organism that could shut off their pain receptors to chronic pain would have a better chance of survival than an organism that is crippled in agony, but since no organism seems to have evolved that shut off switch, perhaps there is indeed an evolutionary advantage to a species for taking injured animals out of action.

I can't think what that advantage would be though.