No, men do not have more teeth than women. Adults of both sexes develop the same 32 permanent teeth, including eight incisors, four canines, eight premolars, and twelve molars (counting wisdom teeth). This idea has circulated since at least Aristotle, who claimed men had more teeth than women, but it’s simply wrong. The number of teeth a person grows is determined by human biology, not sex.
That said, there are real differences between male and female teeth. They just have nothing to do with how many you get.
Why Tooth Count Is the Same
The genetic blueprint for tooth development works identically in men and women. Every person gets two sets: 20 baby teeth starting around six months of age, followed by 32 permanent teeth that finish coming in by the late teens or early twenties. No gene on the X or Y chromosome adds or subtracts a tooth from either set.
Where Aristotle likely went wrong is simple: he probably observed women who had already lost teeth due to pregnancy-related complications, poor nutrition, or gum disease, and assumed the difference was natural. It’s a reminder that counting would have cleared things up.
Tooth Size Differs Between Sexes
While the count is identical, male teeth are measurably larger. Research published in the Journal of Forensic Dental Sciences found that men’s teeth are roughly 3 to 4 percent wider than women’s across most tooth types. The difference is consistent enough that forensic scientists use tooth dimensions to help identify skeletal remains when other clues are unavailable.
Canine teeth show some of the most reliable size differences. In one study, the average width of male canines was 7.63 mm compared to 7.29 mm in females. That’s a small gap in absolute terms, but it’s statistically significant and holds up across populations. Men also tend to have larger dental arches, meaning the overall curve of the jaw where the teeth sit is wider, a difference that’s largely established before puberty.
This pattern fits into a broader evolutionary picture. Among great apes, canine teeth show the most dramatic sex-based size differences, particularly in gorillas and orangutans, where male canines are far larger than female ones. In humans, these differences have shrunk considerably but haven’t disappeared entirely.
Missing and Extra Teeth by Sex
Not everyone ends up with a full set of 32. Some people are born missing one or more permanent teeth, a condition called hypodontia. This is actually slightly more common in women: about 8 percent of females versus 6.5 percent of males are affected, with the pattern holding across nearly all tooth types. Wisdom teeth are the most commonly absent, but the rates there are nearly equal between sexes, around 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women.
On the flip side, some people develop extra teeth beyond the standard 32. Several large studies have found this occurs roughly twice as often in males as in females, though the overall rates are low, typically under 2 percent of the population. So if anything, men are slightly more likely to have extra teeth, but this is an uncommon dental anomaly, not a normal biological difference.
Girls Get Their Permanent Teeth First
One of the more practical differences is timing. Girls tend to get their permanent teeth one to five months earlier than boys, depending on the specific tooth. The difference is most noticeable with the upper first premolars and lower canines, where girls show statistically earlier eruption.
The sequence can also differ. In girls, the upper canine typically comes in before the second premolar about 71 percent of the time. In boys, that order is reversed, with only 22 percent getting the canine first. These timing differences matter mostly to orthodontists planning treatment, but they also mean that at any given age during childhood, a girl is more likely to have a full set of adult teeth than a boy the same age. This could easily contribute to the old misconception: if you compared a 12-year-old boy and girl, the girl might visibly have more erupted permanent teeth, even though both will end up with 32.
Women Lose More Teeth Over a Lifetime
The real gap between men and women isn’t how many teeth they start with but how many they keep. Global data from 2021 shows that women experience complete tooth loss at significantly higher rates than men. The prevalence of total edentulism in women is about 5,216 per 100,000 people compared to 3,736 per 100,000 in men. Women account for roughly 58 percent of all people worldwide who have lost every tooth.
Several factors drive this disparity. Hormonal changes during pregnancy, menstruation, and menopause can increase gum inflammation and bone loss around the teeth. Women also tend to live longer, giving more years for dental disease to accumulate. In many parts of the world, women historically had less access to dental care. The result is that while men and women start life with the same number of teeth, women are more likely to end up with fewer.
This pattern reinforces why the myth has been so persistent. At a population level, older women do tend to have fewer teeth than older men of the same age, not because they grew fewer, but because of biological and social factors that accelerate tooth loss over decades.