Yet it makes sense for fish that scrape hard surfaces, where teeth might otherwise get broken. And it turns out that some reef fish and catfish have them.
From “Bendable teeth seen for the first time” (New Scientist, 18 August 2012), we learn
“[The] teeth are very long and skinny and they have a built-in section that’s flexible. That’s absolutely mind-blowing,” says Peter Wainwright of the University of California, Davis.
Such teeth may not be unique, though. Wainwright suggests they are also found in some common reef fish that feed by scraping rocks. “I’ve personally tweaked their teeth and holy cow, they’re bendable,” he says.
Just an accident, of course, the way all this stuff just sort of happens to look like a pattern of some kind.