A tongue is not always what you think it might be

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Have you ever been told to ‘hold your tongue’? And have you ever thought how the tongues of different animal species differ? Cats and dogs have different tongues but there are also other types of tongues. Prehensile tongues are most developed in the giraffe and okapi. Both have very long, blue tongues which are quite muscular, enabling them to pluck leaves and shoots from thorny shrubs with getting pricked. They can also clean out their nostrils and even their ears. How handy would that be? The giraffe's tongue is a massive 45cms long and is pointed and sticky. The okapi tongue is about 35cm. A cow's tongue is long enough to wrap around a clump of grass and pull it into the mouth. They often eat out a paddock before sheep are put on as sheep prefer shorter grass. If you let a calf suck your fingers, it feels almost like sandpaper. The blue-tongued lizard has a bright pink mouth and blue tongue. By exposing these and hissing, it is able to scare off predators. Animals that eat ants or termites often have long, sticky tongues. The tongue is poked into an ant or termite nest, the insects stick to the tongue which is then withdrawn back into the mouth. The giant anteater's tongue is ½ an inch wide but perhaps 2 feet in length and can take in several thousand insects at once. The tongue is attached deep in the thorax. The tongue of the nectar bat is one and a half times the length of its body and covered with tiny hairs. At the risk of boring you, I’ll save the rest for another post. I have a photo of a blue-tongued lizard with its tongue out but couldn’t resist using a Wikimedia photo of a cow with its tongue up its nostril. I do hope you’re not eating. Photo courtesy Christine [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]