and even you and I have them: canines.

Those long, pointy front teeth,

they're actually the longest teeth in the human mouth.

So what are these long, sharp teeth

doing among our short, stubby ones?

Well, contrary to popular belief,

it's not for tearing and ripping meat.

The real reason is actually much more romantic than that.

Human men today have 10% longer canines than women,

and this difference isn't unique to our species.

Our close relatives, gorillas, have

it as well to an even larger extent.

Males' canines are twice as long as females'.

That's because in gorilla society,

males compete for exclusive mating rights to

the entire female troop, and the male

with the longest, most intimidating

set of fangs usually wins.

Over time, gorillas have evolved increasingly longer canines,

but when it comes to humans, our teeth

took a different evolutionary path.

Our canines have actually become shorter over time.

Just look at the canines on the first human,

Ardipithecus ramidus,

or Australopithecus anamensis versus modern humans.

In fact, our canines today are the shortest

they've ever been, and the difference

between male and female canines

got less pronounced as well.

That's because unlike modern gorillas

who take after our shared ancient ancestors,

human men eventually stopped fighting

with their teeth somewhere along the way.

Now, scientists aren't entirely sure why this happened,

but one possibility is that our babies

grew increasingly defenseless, so males

had to spend more time on childcare

and less time on winning a mate.

As a result, all that's left in our mouths today

is the memory of a more slobbery method

of one-upping our peers.

That's right, those canines you carry

around today aren't particularly useful.

For one thing, they're not long enough

to grab and hold on to prey the way lions use them,

and they're not big enough to intimidate

predators' arrivals the way hippos use them.

Instead, they help us bite into food. That's it.

Turns out, evolution isn't always useful,

but while the truth about our canines

might be disappointing, those teeth

are still pretty amazing because

anthropologists use canine size and shape

to help track when humanlike ancestors evolved.

So in a way, our tiny canines make us who we are.