Tooth ablation

There are numerous reasons for performing tooth ablation, including group identification, ornamentation, and rites of passage such as coming of age, marriage and mourning.

In Sudan, fish hooks and metal wires were used to remove deciduous tooth germs before an infant reached one month.

The Nuer people of South Sudan still practice an extractive technique whereby a fine blade is used to loosen the teeth alongside the root, which takes place without anesthetic and the individual is not allowed to show emotion or pain.

[2] The evulsion of the lower teeth would have resulted in a highly visible change to the individual's facial characteristics and would also have affected the pronunciation of language and other sounds.

In West Africa the custom of extraction is rather uncommon, but it was found among the Ashanti who broke teeth out of their war prisoners, and a few tribes in Cameroon, Ghana, Togo and Liberia.

In South Sudan, lower incisors (and sometimes also the canines), are extracted shortly after their eruption, as a rite of passage, for beauty, to allow the emission of specific linguistic sounds and to facilitate oral sex.

South African Coloureds are known for removing their anterior teeth, which is popularly believed to be a facilitation for oral sex, called a "passion gap" or "Cape Flats Smile".

[4][needs update] In Asia, tooth extraction and mutilation have been recorded in Central Sulawesi, eastern Guizhou, French Indochina and Sumatra, and also in Northern Formosa.