07/16/2025
🐴 Anatomy of an Incisor – What’s Inside the Tooth?
When your horse bites into grass, those front teeth — the incisors — are doing more than you might realise.
Each tooth may look like a hard white block, but it’s actually a complex, living structure, carefully built to withstand the stresses of biting, pulling, and grazing.
Here’s a closer look at what they’re made of 👇
🧱 What’s a tooth made of?
�Just like in people, each horse tooth has three main structural layers.
Each incisor has three special dental tissues that work together to form the tooth:
• At the centre is a strong, living material called dentine
• This is surrounded by a hard outer shell of enamel, which gives the tooth its cutting edge
• The enamel is coated with a thin outer layer of cementum, which helps protect the surface and anchor the tooth in the jaw
These three layers give the tooth both strength and resilience — perfect for a lifetime of grazing and biting!
🔍 Horse incisors have a strong layer of equine enamel, folded and layered to resist the repeated slicing forces of grazing. Compared to cheek teeth, which crush and grind, incisor enamel is arranged to handle sharp, clean cutting movements.
🧑⚕️ In humans, the structure is similar — but our teeth don’t grow continuously. Once they erupt, they’re meant to last a lifetime without replacement. In contrast, a horse’s teeth erupt gradually over years, compensating for the heavy wear caused by constant grazing.
❤️ Teeth Are Alive – In Horses and Humans
Inside every tooth is a pulp canal — a core filled with nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics and living tissue.
This pulp keeps the tooth alive, helps it grow, and senses pain.
If you've ever had toothache, you've felt this living tissue in action. Horses feel pain too — especially when decay, cracks, or trauma affect the pulp.
Horse teeth are larger and deeper than human teeth, but the core principle is the same: injury or infection can be extremely painful and harmful if left untreated.
The Living Pulp Canal
Did you know that every horse incisor contains a vital, living core called the pulp canal?
This structure runs down the centre of the tooth and contains nerves and blood vessels — and it plays a key role in keeping the tooth alive and healthy.
Thanks to incredible research (especially by Prof. Carsten Staszyk’s team in Germany), advanced micro-CT scans have shown us exactly how the pulp canal is shaped and how close it comes to the surface — sometimes just 1 mm beneath the chewing surface!
At a young age, tiny pulp branches extend upward toward the surface of the incisor. These are protected by a layer of secondary dentine, which seals and shields this sensitive tissue from damage or infection.
🛠️ This is crucial information when we perform corrective dental work — because disturbing this pulp can cause serious pain or even tooth death.
🧠 Swipe through the images to see CT scans of real horse incisors — the red areas show where the living pulp travels from the crown right down to the root tip (apex).
📖 Image credit: Schrock et al., 2013 – an excellent study on incisor pulp anatomy using 3D imaging.
🪢 Anchored by Ligaments – The Periodontal Cushion
Each horse tooth is suspended in its socket by the periodontal ligament — a specialised structure that acts like a shock absorber.
It holds the tooth firmly in place.
• It cushions the force of biting and chewing.
It contains blood vessels and nerves, helping the tooth stay healthy.
But if this ligament becomes inflamed — a condition called periodontitis — it can cause pain, tooth loosening, or food trapping. We'll explore this more when we talk about dental disease in horses later in the series.
🌱 How Does a Tooth Form?
Tooth development starts before a foal is born.
It begins as a tiny cluster of cells called a dental bud, which grows into a dental sac. This sac forms the enamel, dentine, and pulp of the tooth — layer by layer.
Over time, the tooth pushes up through the gum and into the mouth, where it begins its job of biting, chewing, and (for incisors) slicing through forage.
Check out the x-ray images of a young horse less than 2 years old. See how the adult central incisors are developing from the dental sac - incredible!!
🧬 Your horse’s teeth are a remarkable blend of engineering and biology — made to cut, slice, and hold up to a lifetime of chewing.
Thanks for reading …. If you are enjoying these informative posts please share with your friends.
