Manhattan new home to animal tooth lab

[...] there's a good chance that most of those teeth -- pulled by wildlife agencies, hunters and biologists at game check stations or through live trapping programs (they pull the smallest, least-important tooth they can) -- pass through a lab here that analyzes them to determine each animal's age.

The lab is able to analyze teeth for age by looking at layers of cementum deposited each year as a wild animal grows -- not unlike counting the rings of a tree, though a bit more complicated and dependent on the harsh swings of living in the wild, Nistler said.

The 16-step process starts with a heated cleaning and includes taking micro-thin cross-sections of the roots -- where the layers are generally undisturbed -- that eventually are dyed and placed on slides to be examined under a microscope to calculate the age of the tooth's owner.

While most of the work is for state and federal wildlife agencies, Nistler's lab also ages teeth for university research projects and even for hunters just curious about how old their game was.

Humans started eating the bats relatively recently, so the project collected teeth from bats that died before the dietary change to measure whether the animals lived longer than they do now that they are a food source.

Nistler, who earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in biology and animal and range sciences, respectively, from Montana State University, was working as a wildlife habitat consultant when she stumbled across an ad offering an unnamed wildlife lab in Missoula for sale, she said.

About 10 percent of the lab's work involves checking teeth under a special light for tetracyclene, which is used as a marker in raccoon rabies vaccines tests in the east and for black bear populations in Oregon, Nistler said.