> My co-worker asked me to explain why our teeth do not appear more like a
> "carnivore's".  I was discussing why I eat only meat with limited greens
> and some fruits.  She said if we were meant to eat meat, we would have
> teeth more like a carnivore.  I asked her what she envisioned, and she
> stated something more like a wolf or big cat - teeth made for shredding
> and stripping bones rather than the small teeth we have.  I am not a
> scientist or anthropologist, so I couldn't explain...

It's a Frequently Asked Question, and the answer is simple enough.  Our
evolutionary path was different from the wolf's.  Although our ape
ancestors no doubt ate some meat, as modern apes do, our path was to go
from that low-meat diet to a meat-dominated diet, and instead of using our
teeth for the job, we used our hands: tools.  The record of hominid
remains shows increasing use of stone tools to kill and butcher animals,
crack open their bones, and so on.  In short, we carried our "fangs" in
our hands.  This, incidentally, may have been driven by the need to use
our mouths for something more specialized: speech.  That's speculative, of
course, but there's no question that language would have made hunting in
groups much more effective, because language enables the communication of
plans.

Note that hominids, and then humans, have been using tools in this way for
at least 2.5 million years.  See Craig Stanford's book _The Hunting Ape_.

Todd Moody