A Guide to Dental Care for Exotic Pets

With Rodents, Get to the Root of the Matter

Rabbits and rodents, such as guinea pigs and chinchillas, also need dental care. Unlike many other mammals, these animals have "open-rooted" teeth, which means they grow continuously throughout the animal’s lifetime. This can lead to a host of dental problems that do not occur in animals whose teeth are "closed rooted" and stop growing. In the wild, rabbits and rodents chew on rough, fibrous grasses and shrubbery that help keep their teeth worn down. In captivity, however, pet rabbits and rodents typically don’t consume these same foods but instead eat processed pelleted diets and soft vegetables, leading to inadequate tooth wear. Decreased tooth wear predisposes these animals to forming sharp spurs on their teeth, as well as to tooth root impaction from overgrown teeth hitting each other inside their mouths and having nowhere to grow. Sharp spurs can cut into the gums and tongue, leading to pain, inflammation and sometimes serious infections and abscesses that must be treated surgically.