46 Fun Facts About Tongue

After finding umami in kelp broth in 1908, chemist Kikunae Ikeda turned his discovery into which product?

MSG, monosodium glutamate, went on sale within a year under the brand name Ajinomoto. Ikeda had traced the savory taste of seaweed stock to glutamate and patented a way to make it.

The root of the tongue is anchored to which U-shaped bone, the only one that touches no other bone?

Hyoid: the bone hangs in the front of the neck, held in place only by muscles and ligaments, and gives the tongue and the floor of the mouth something firm to pull against.

What is the average lifespan of a single taste bud?

About 10 days: taste cells are replaced constantly throughout life, which is why taste buds injured by a burn or a bite usually repair themselves.

A cat's tongue feels like sandpaper because its tiny backward-facing spines are stiffened by which protein?

Keratin, the protein of claws and hair, turns a cat's filiform papillae into a built-in hairbrush. Humans have filiform papillae too, the only kind on the tongue with no taste buds.

Which fluffy dog breed from China is known for its unusual blue-black tongue?

Chow Chow show dogs are disqualified for a pink tongue. A dark spot on another dog's tongue is often taken as proof of Chow ancestry, but tongue pigment alone cannot show that.

A Harvard psychologist's 1942 redrawing of a 1901 German study spread which myth about the tongue?

Separate taste zones were the lesson of the school 'tongue map'. Edwin Boring's graphs exaggerated the small differences in sensitivity the original paper had measured; in fact every taste can be sensed across the tongue.

Which cranial nerve, the twelfth, supplies motor fibres to almost every muscle of the tongue?

Hypoglossal means 'under the tongue', the route the nerve takes. Doctors check it by asking a patient to stick the tongue out, since the muscles it drives are the ones that push the tongue forward.

A creamy white coating on the tongue that wipes off to leave sore red patches is typical of which infection?

Oral thrush is an overgrowth of Candida, a yeast that about half of us carry in the mouth without harm; it turns troublesome mostly in babies and in older people with dentures.

The fold of tissue that tethers the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth is called what?

Frenulum: when this fold is unusually short or thick it pins the tongue down, the condition known as tongue-tie, and a small cut through it is usually enough to free the tongue.

Which artery, a branch of the external carotid, is the tongue's main blood supply?

Lingual simply means 'of the tongue'. The tissue it feeds is so rich in small vessels that a drug dissolved beneath the tongue passes straight into the bloodstream, skipping the gut and liver.

Which heart medication is routinely given under the tongue because it acts fast enough for angina?

Nitroglycerin tablets dissolve under the tongue, where a thin lining over a dense web of capillaries lets the drug reach the blood quickly without first passing through the gut and liver.

The tongue's foramen cecum is a leftover from the embryonic descent of which gland?

The thyroid starts life at the base of the tongue and migrates down the neck, leaving that tiny hole as a souvenir.

A red 'strawberry tongue' with swollen bumps is a classic sign of which childhood infection?

Scarlet fever first coats the tongue white; the coating then peels to leave it red, swollen and bumpy. Doctors also look for the strawberry sign in Kawasaki disease, which skips the white stage.

A smooth, sore, 'beefy' red tongue with worn-away papillae is a classic sign of a lack of which vitamin?

Vitamin B12 deficiency can strip the papillae away, leaving the tongue smooth, sore and beefy red. Doctors call it Hunter's glossitis, and it is a classic clue to pernicious anemia.

Which over-the-counter stomach remedy is known for temporarily turning the tongue black?

Pepto-Bismol contains bismuth, which reacts with traces of sulfur in saliva to form black bismuth sulfide. The stain looks alarming but is harmless and fades once the medicine is stopped.

Which protein in a West African berry makes lemons taste sweet?

Miraculin comes from the berry known as 'miracle fruit'. It binds to the tongue's sweet receptors and switches them on only when acid arrives, so it is sour food in particular that turns sweet.

Which tongue trick did biology classes long teach, wrongly, as a simple inherited trait?

Rolling it into a tube was suggested as a dominant trait by geneticist Alfred Sturtevant in 1940. Twin studies soon found identical twins who differed, and he later said he was embarrassed to see the claim still in print.

The 'tongues of fire' that settle on the apostles in the Book of Acts are remembered at which Christian festival?

Pentecost falls on the fiftieth day of Easter. In Acts, flames like tongues rest on the apostles, who are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in languages they had never learned.

The English word 'tongue' comes from which Old English word?

Tunge was the Old English word, a cousin of Dutch tong. By normal sound change it should now be spelled 'tung'; the '-ue' ending was apparently a fourteenth-century attempt to show how the g was pronounced.

What is the technical term for 'speaking in tongues' in religious practice?

Glossolalia joins the Greek for 'tongue' and 'talking'. Linguists hear fluent syllables with no meaning they can decode, whereas xenoglossy is the claim to speak a real language never learned.

Where is sticking out your tongue a traditional greeting rather than an insult?

Tibet treats a show of the tongue as a greeting. In New Zealand the same gesture sends a fiercer message: the men performing a Māori haka thrust out their tongues.

Which Hindu goddess, shown with a lolling tongue, did Mick Jagger suggest as inspiration for the Rolling Stones' logo?

Kali's out-thrust tongue was Jagger's suggestion. The designer kept the tongue but dropped the Indian look, fearing it would date, and the logo first reached record buyers on Sticky Fingers in 1971.

The Rolling Stones' tongue logo arrived with Sticky Fingers, whose zipper sleeve was conceived by which pop artist?

Andy Warhol conceived the working-zip cover, but the tongue was not his: it was drawn by John Pasche, a London art student Jagger had spotted at a degree show.

Which Kiss bassist, famous for his long tongue, launched a men's magazine in 2002 actually called "Tongue"?

Gene Simmons played Kiss's 'Demon', a fire-breathing, blood-spitting stage persona whose long tongue became a trademark; in 2002 he put it in the title of his own magazine, Gene Simmons Tongue.

On what occasion did Arthur Sasse take the famous photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue?

His 72nd birthday, in March 1951, had been one long round of smiling for cameras, so when a photographer asked for one more smile Einstein stuck out his tongue. He liked the result enough to order nine prints.

In the 1952 film Singin' in the Rain, Gene Kelly's character drills tongue twisters for what reason?

To learn diction for talkies: once The Jazz Singer is a hit, the studio sends its silent stars to elocution coaches, and Don's lesson collapses into the song-and-dance number 'Moses Supposes'.

Which 1986 Run-D.M.C. song is named after a classic tongue twister?

Peter Piper opens the album Raising Hell and shared a single with My Adidas. Its beat loops the bells from Bob James's 'Take Me to the Mardi Gras', one of hip-hop's most borrowed breaks.

What supplies the extra power that launches a chameleon's tongue at over 3,000 watts per kilogram?

Elastic recoil: muscles slowly stretch springy tissue in the tongue, which then snaps back all at once. Because a spring barely slows in the cold, a chilly chameleon can still shoot at almost full speed.

Which chameleons fire their tongues farthest for their size, to more than twice their body length?

The smallest species win: their tongue apparatus is proportionately bigger, so a tiny chameleon can reach about two and a half body lengths, outshooting its larger cousins.

Which toothless South American mammal flicks its sticky tongue more than twice a second to lap up insects?

Giant anteater: with no teeth to chew with, it crushes its catch against the roof of its mouth and leaves a very muscular stomach to grind up the rest.

About how long is a giraffe's tongue?

45 cm (18 in) or a little more: the tongue can grasp twigs and pick leaves from between acacia thorns, and its black colour is thought to protect it from sunburn.

Which forest relative of the giraffe uses its long black tongue to groom its own ears and eyes?

Okapi: despite the zebra stripes on its legs, it is the giraffe's only living relative, and it shares the long, dark tongue that both animals use to strip leaves from branches.

Textbooks said capillarity fills a hummingbird's tongue with nectar, but high-speed cameras showed which mechanism instead?

A pump action: the bill squeezes the tongue's grooves flat, and they spring open again inside the nectar and fill at once, around ten times faster than capillary action could manage.

Which bird's tongue bone is so long that it wraps right around the back of its skull?

Woodpecker tongues need the extra length: once the bill has drilled a hole, the long, sticky tongue reaches deep inside to pull out insects and larvae.

Cats have only a few hundred taste buds, and a gene mutation leaves them unable to detect which taste?

Sweet: house cats and big cats alike carry a broken gene for the sweet receptor, so sugar means nothing to them, a loss that fits a diet made up almost entirely of meat.

A snake's forked tongue delivers scent particles to which structure in the roof of its mouth?

Jacobson's organ is not only a reptile's tool. Many mammals have one too, and the lip-curling grimace some make at a new scent, the flehmen response, draws the odour onto it.

Which tongueless frog was once widely used in pregnancy tests?

African clawed frog: like the rest of its family it is tongueless, so it relies on a special pump to suck food into its mouth. It has no vocal cords either, yet males still call, clicking with muscles in the throat.

A frog's tongue is attached at which part of its mouth?

The front: hinged at the lip, the tongue is flipped out and pulled back at great speed. It is extremely soft, and its saliva turns runny on impact and then thick again, which is what grips the prey.

Australia's blue-tongued skinks flash their bright blue tongues for what purpose?

To bluff predators: a disturbed skink gapes, thrusts out the blue tongue, puffs up its body and hisses, a show that makes a slow lizard look bigger and far less appetising than it is.

Gyutan, grilled beef tongue, is the signature dish of Sendai, a city in which country?

Japan: the name joins gyu, 'cow', to the borrowed English word 'tongue'. The dish was first served in Sendai in 1948 and still comes there with barley rice and oxtail soup.

Fried tongues of which fish are a traditional part of fish meals in Norway and Newfoundland?

Cod 'tongues' are not really tongues at all but a fleshy cut from under the fish's jaw, saved along with the cheeks so that nothing from the head goes to waste.

The Roman emperor Vitellius had a giant platter filled with pike livers, pheasant brains and the tongues of which bird?

Flamingo tongues went into the dish he named the Shield of Minerva, its ingredients fetched by warships from Parthia to the Spanish straits. In ancient Rome flamingo tongue was a rare delicacy.

Which of these is, like the tongue, a 'muscular hydrostat': packed muscle that moves with no skeleton?

An elephant's trunk, like the tongue and an octopus arm, is almost solid muscle. Muscle cannot be compressed, so squeezing it in one direction makes it lengthen or bend in another.

Which reptile lies open-mouthed on the riverbed, wiggling a worm-like lure on its tongue to draw fish in?

Alligator snapping turtle: it lies motionless with its jaws agape while the red, worm-shaped tip of its tongue wriggles, and any fish or frog that comes to investigate is snapped up.

The nerve carrying taste from the front of the tongue passes through which unlikely place?

The middle ear: the chorda tympani crosses just behind the eardrum on its way to the brain, which is why damage to it during ear surgery can leave a patient's sense of taste dulled or distorted.

A panting dog cools itself by evaporation from its tongue, because it sweats mainly through which part of its body?

Its paw pads hold the sweat glands that work like ours, far too few to cool a whole dog. Panting does the rest: moisture evaporating from the tongue and airways carries the heat away.