Animal Nature

I was thinking one day recently about things humans have to manage because we no longer live the lives our bodies adapted to live.

For example, we have to try not to eat too many sweet foods. Eating sweet things is a weakness of  mine and I know that evolutionarily, the drive to scarf down calorie-laden goodies made sense. In the harsh wild world you never knew when your next meal was coming, so if you found something good to eat, you had to eat it and eat as much of it as possible.

Unfortunately, in our brave new world, I could have access to a near-endless supply of ice cream, so my natural desire to hoover it is not serving me as well as it would have my prehistoric ancestors (if they had had ice cream).

This got me wondering what would have happened if another animal had become the dominant "intelligent" life-form on the planet. How would their lifestyle be incongruous with their body?

Like rats, for example. Rats have incisors that grow indefinitely. In the wild their teeth are worn down by gnawing.

But what if there were, like, rat-people. Rats that now live in civilized societies. Rats whose relatively easy lives do not naturally wear down their teeth. These refined and sophisticated rats still have to keep their tooth-growth in check. What would they do?

Would there be special places they would go to get their teeth trimmed, just like we go to barber shops and salons? Would the teeth be trimmed into different styles - angled, pointed, serrated (why not, they grow out)? Would some rats choose to have their teeth pulled and replaced with falsies that would have less long-term maintenance? Would some rats still grind their teeth down the old fashioned way - maybe hippie rats? And would some grow their teeth out because they have such lives of luxury that the physical difficulties caused by long teeth are no big deal ("It's okay, someone else chews my food.")?

Do you have more ideas? I'd love to hear them - on rat teeth or on other animals-as-people.