Professional fighters, newborn babies, and the supporting cast of Deliverance aside, pretty much everyone has a mouthful of teeth. We use our ivories on a daily basis, mashing up food and smiling at friends, but we often take our thirty-two teeth for granted. And that's just too bad. As it turns out, the human tooth is incredibly strange and is surrounded by weird and wild facts like…
除了职业拳击手、新生儿，以及电影Deliverance的配角外，几乎每个人都有一口完整的牙齿。我们每天都在使用我们的牙齿，咀嚼食物和对朋友微笑，但是我们常常把32颗牙齿看成理所当然的存在。那实在是太糟糕了。事实证明，人类的牙齿非常奇怪，有关牙齿的趣闻有很多，比如……
10.演员们的牙齿
There are quite a few actors out there who lose or gain a few pounds for a role, but that's nothing compared to the stars who attack their teeth. For the 1999 classic Fight Club, Brad Pitt knew he needed to radically alter his appearance to play anarchist Tyler Durden. After all, if you start up an underground boxing club, you probably won't end up with a movie star smile. Pitt paid a dentist to chip away at his chompers, giving Durden a much edgier look.
不少演员失去或者得到一些小角色，但和演员们对自己的牙齿下手相比，这些都不算什么。为了演好1999年的电影《搏击俱乐部》中的无政府主义者泰勒·歌顿，布拉德·皮特清楚他必须彻底改变自己的形象。毕竟，如果是以一个地下搏击俱乐部的成员开演，那么影片结束时很可能不是以一个明星的微笑而结束。皮特请牙医敲掉了他门牙的一部分，以此使得泰勒看起来更暴烈些。
But you don't need to be an A-lister to go all method on your mouth. For his role as Stu Price in The Hangover, comedian Ed Helms also made a quick trip to the dentist. If you've seen the film, you know Stu pulls out his own tooth on a bet. Of course, the actor wasn't willing to go quite that far in real life. But Helms was a man literally born to play the part of Stu. Helms was born missing a tooth, and at the age of fifteen he filled the gap with an implant. When it came time to star in The Hangover he simply removed the fake. The process was probably a bit painful, as it involved unscrewing the implant and screwing a plug into the gap in his gum.
但是你不必为成为一名一线演员而在你的嘴巴里费尽心思。喜剧演员艾德·赫尔姆斯为了演好他在电影《宿醉》里的形象，他也在短时间内去了牙医那里。如果你看过这部电影，你该知道西德在一次打赌时失去了一颗牙齿。当然，在真实生活里演员可不希望自己长时间缺颗牙齿。但是赫尔姆斯真是一个生来就该演西德的人。赫尔姆斯出生的时候就少了一颗牙， 15岁时他补了颗假牙。当他参演《宿醉》时，他毫不犹豫地摘掉了假牙。这个过程有点痛苦，因为在拧开植入片后还要在牙槽缺口上拧进一个塞子。
9.The Norwegian Tooth Bank
9.挪威牙库
There are all kinds of bizarre biological banks, from sperm banks to blood banks to banks full of eyeballs. But in Norway scientists are busy working on an even stranger special facility just for storing milk teeth.
世上有很多稀奇古怪的生物库，从精子库到血库到眼球库。但是在挪威，科学家们正在努力忙于建造一个乳牙库。
Also known as deciduous teeth, milk teeth are the extras we lose as children, and researchers from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) hope parents will donate these little incisors and bicuspids to their ever-growing tooth bank. Scientists are currently working with 100,000 children in the hopes of building the largest tooth bank in the world. But why would anyone want milk teeth in the first place? It turns out that these temporary teeth are excellent indicators of what pollutants are in the environment. By studying them, along with blood and urine samples from the parents, MoBa researchers can learn how environmental contaminants affect a child and mother's health. As of 2013 the bank had 17,000 teeth, all kept in envelopes and locked away in the University of Bergen where no tooth fairy can ever find them.
乳牙充当了人幼儿时期牙齿的临时角色，会在儿童期脱落。来自挪威母亲与儿童的队列研究的研究者们希望父母们可以捐赠这些乳牙以帮助建立正在发展中的牙库。目前，科学家们正致力于10万个儿童的研究工作以期建立世界上最大的牙库。为什么有人想在第一时间获得这些乳牙呢？这是因为这些临时的牙齿能很好地反映环境中的污染物。通过对它们的研究，追踪来自父母的血液和尿液样本，研究者们可以得知环境污染物是如何影响孩子和母亲健康的。截止2013年，这个牙库已经拥有了17000颗牙齿，所有的牙齿都被装进信封锁在卑尔根大学，连牙仙都找不到这些牙齿。
8.牙纹身
They might sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, but teeth tattoos are actually quite popular these days. Applied to a cap or crown, these images are permanent and come in all shapes and sizes, from pictures of George Washington to sail boats to phrases like "Bite Me."
牙纹身听起来像是科幻小说里的东西，但是它们在近些日子确实很流行。这些纹身是永久的，而且可以纹成任何形状或尺寸，从乔治·华盛顿的画像到帆船到诸如"咬我"之类的短语。
Scientists at Princeton and Tufts are taking teeth tattoos in a completely different direction. Instead of ink, they're using graphene, and it isn't for art's sake. These tattoos are actually electronic sensors, and they're a bacterium's worst nightmare. Imprinted on silk, the tattoos are placed onto a tooth, and after water washes the silk away the graphene remains and monitors the mouth for bacteria. Powered by electrodes and an inductive coil, the tattoo uses antimicrobial peptides to latch onto germs. Thanks to the electricity in a bacterium's cell membrane, a signal is sent to a nearby antenna which scientists use to determine what kind of bacteria is crawling around inside your mouth. You still need to brush, though.
普林斯顿和塔夫斯大学的科学家们从完全不同的角度来看待牙纹身。他们用石墨烯代替墨水，他们目的也不是为了艺术审美。这些纹身实际上是电子传感器，它们是细菌的天敌。纹身被印在丝绸上放置于人类牙齿上，当水冲走丝绸时，电子记录仪被遗留在牙齿上，监视嘴巴里的细菌。这种牙纹身由电极和感应线圈提供动力，以抗微生物肽吸附在微生物表面。多亏细菌胞膜上的电流信号传递到附近的电极上，科学家们可以借此探测到哪种细菌正在你的嘴巴里横行。尽管如此，你仍然需要刷牙。
7.The Fake Braces of Asia
7.亚洲的假牙套
In the west, most people think of braces as geeky, ugly and kind of uncomfortable. But beauty is relative, and in Asian countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, braces are considered super cool… and super illegal, thanks to the rich kids.
在西方，大部分人认为戴牙套令人生厌，影响美观，而且感觉难受。但是美丽是相对而言的，像在泰国、印度尼西亚和马来西亚等亚洲国家，戴牙套则被认为是一件很酷以及非法的事，这要归功于富人家的孩子。
In cities like Bangkok braces can run up to $1,200, which is a little expensive for most Thai kids. But like everything else owned by the rich and powerful, braces suddenly have an air of wealth and status about them. That's where fashion braces, or kawat gigi untuk gaya, come in. Running about $100, these braces are sold in markets, beauty salons, and online, and can be customized in all sorts of styles like Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty. You don't even need a dentist to wear fashion braces. Do-It-Yourself kits are extremely popular, despite the fact that they're against the law in Thailand. In 2012, two teenagers developed deadly infections thanks to fashion braces. Authorities were also worried about the amount of lead found in the wires and were concerned kids might choke on loose pieces. Wanting to prevent any further deaths, the Thai government outlawed the practice, threatening to punish producers with up to six months behind bars. But that only gave rise to a thriving black market for braces.
像在曼谷这样的城市里，牙套的价格高达1200美元，对于大部分泰国孩子来说显得有些贵。但是就像任何其他东西，一旦被有钱有势的人拥有，牙套顿时就变成了财富和地位的象征。这就是为什么时尚假牙套（也叫kswat gigi untuk gaya）会出现的原因。在市场、美容所、网上等，这些假牙套以100美元左右的价格被出售，它们也可以被定制，做成像米老鼠、kitty猫等各种样子。您不必去牙医那里清洗这些时尚假牙套，现在十分流行自己动手，尽管这是违反泰国法律的。2012年，有两个少年由于佩戴时尚假牙套而发展致命的感染。权威部门同样担心线圈中的铅含量，担心孩子们会由于松散的碎片发生窒息。为了防止进一步的死亡，泰国政府取缔了这种行为，威胁对那些生产者要处以6个月的拘役。但是这仅仅是助长了牙套黑市的发展。
6.佛牙
When most people think about relics, they generally picture Christian artifacts like the Holy Grail, the True Cross and the Shroud of Turin. But Buddhism has its share of holy objects as well — many are from the Buddha's own body, including quite a few plucked out of his mouth.
大多数人想到文物时，脑海中大多会浮现出基督教的物件，比如圣杯、十字架、都灵裹尸布等。但是佛家同样有类似神圣的东西——许多出自佛陀自身，包括一些从他嘴里出来的东西。
If you ever visit Sri Lanka be sure to drop by the city of Kandy, where you'll find the sage's left canine on display in the Temple of the Tooth. After the Buddha's cremation, the tooth became a symbol of power. Whoever owned the canine had the right to rule Sri Lanka, and it was passed down from monarch to monarch. As you might expect, quite a few people squabbled over the tooth, and holy men were forced to hide it from time to time until it finally ended up in Kandy for all the world to see. On your next trip you can stop by the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum in Singapore, where you can admire another one of the philosopher's pearly whites surrounded by prayer rooms and ornate dragons. However, the weirdest of all the Buddha's teeth is without a doubt the one in Rosemead, California. Worshippers claim the two-inch molar is actually still growing and even possesses miraculous healing powers.
如果您要去斯里兰卡旅游，记得一定要去康提市，在那里您会看到展出在佛牙寺的圣人释迦牟尼的左犬牙。在佛祖火化后，他的牙齿就成了权利的象征。不管谁拥有了那颗犬牙他就有权领导斯里兰卡，它从代代君王那里传承下来。如您所料，很多人争夺过这颗牙齿，善良的信徒们被迫将这颗牙齿一次次地藏起来，直到最后在康提将其展示给全世界看。您的下一次旅游可以驻足在新加坡的佛牙寺和博物馆，在那里您可以欣赏另一位伟大哲人的珍珠般的白牙，它被展出在祈祷室里，纹以雕龙。然而最奇特的佛牙毫无疑问是在美国加州洛杉矶的那一颗。信徒们声称这颗两英寸的磨牙实际上还在生长，而且具有神奇的治愈能力。
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