Top 3 Weird Tongues!

Basically, tongue is an organ specific to the vertebrates. And they can do a lot of things with their tongues. So, here we go guys! Check this out...

1. A blue whale weighing 60-70 tons (and the largest blue whales can double this weight) has a 3 tons tongue. It is by far the largest tongue in the animal world. And the whale tongue is not large because of the overall size of the animal; right whales have extremely oversized tongues for their bodies, because they use their tongues like scoops while filtering the food in their huge mouths. 50 people could stand on the tongue of a blue whale.

2. The most famous tongue of the animal world is that of the chameleon. It is the longest in the world, comparing with the body length – in most species it is as long as the body and tail together. The tongue is launched and put back in a fraction of a second (0.04 s the launch (!), 0.5 s the put back). No wonder a chameleon can catch 4 flies in 3 seconds...

The tongue is like a long tube finished in a sticky bulb, due to the mucus secreted by glands located in its tip. The resting tongue is folded like an accordion around a bone called Processus entoglossus. For stretching the tongue during the hunt, the animal must relax longitudinal muscles that act like a spring.

3. But the technique of the chameleon is not specific to it. Exactly the same method of catching the prey is employed by a group of salamanders from the Americas, belonging to the Plethodontidae family. Species of 6 cm (2.4 in) have 5 cm (2 in) long tongues, the longest in the world of the amphibians.

Moreover, the giant palm salamander of Central America (Bolitoglossa dofleini) shoots out its tongue with the fastest speed developed by any known muscle in the vertebrates. The species can shoot out its tongue at 18,000 watts of power per muscular kilogram.

Bolitoglossa extends its tongue (which measures more than half of its body length) in about 7 milliseconds, 50 times faster than an eye blink.

The fact that the tongue is propelled outward much faster than by sheer muscle contraction shows that there must be an unknown elastic tissue connected to the salamander’s tongue, which stores up the energy amounts required by the explosive projection. The trajectory is sustained by cartilages integrated in the structure of the tongue. The process can be compared to the stretching and shooting of a rubber band: the recoil occurs faster than the act of releasing a rubber band pulled taut: the amount of energy doesn’t change; it’s just released faster.