Which animals have the longest tongue? Who has the longest tongue in the world? A mammal with a long tongue eats ants.

Who has the longest tongue?

Who has the most unusual language?
10th place: A full-fledged language first appeared in reptiles, namely lizards and snakes. And it is one of the most complex in nature, since it is a real chemical laboratory. The snake, having touched the object lying in front of it and thus taking a “sample”, then retracts its tongue and applies its tips to the sensitive pits located on the inner surface of the mouth. The smallest amount of a substance from the outside is enough for the reptile to do a “microchemical analysis” and take the trace of the victim, find a partner during the mating season, or find its way to a source of water.

9th place: The chameleon's tongue is a skillful trapping device with a sticky trap at the end.

8th place: Some ducks, which obtain food by filtering water and bottom silt, have a fringe along the edges of their tongues, which helps retain crustaceans, insect larvae and small fish. The hummingbird's tongue curls into a tube and helps pump out flower nectar.

7th place: The tongue of parrots with a hard horny coating is an ideal tool for crushing small nuts: taking a seed into its mouth, the bird presses on it with its tongue, pressing it firmly against the inside of its beak until the shell cracks. Lorikeet parrots have a tongue at the end with a brush, with which they collect the juice of fruits crushed by their beak.

6th place: A cat's tongue is a real grater that allows them to rip meat from the bones of the victim.

5th place: Ruminants use their tongues like we use our hands. Cows and giraffes tightly wrap their tongues around tufts of grass, leaves or branches in the same way as a person would do with their hands, and then, tearing them off, send the food into their mouths for chewing.

4th place: The anteater's tongue has turned into a sticky rod up to 60 cm long, which it either launches into the anthill or pulls into its mouth with a frequency of 160 times per minute.

3rd place: You can use your tongue as a spoon. Most mammals drink by lapping, that is, scooping up small portions of water with the tip of their tongue. Analysis of frames of accelerated filming showed that the dog at the same time turns its end up, and the cat, on the contrary, bends it down.

2nd place: In humans, the tongue is the main taster. Each tongue contains 300 - 5,000 taste buds. They are short-lived, living only 10 days: new ones grow to replace the old ones. The root part of the tongue is responsible for the perception of bitter, the front edges of the tongue react to salty taste, the deep edges react to sour, and only its end reacts to sweet. Therefore, you should not stuff sweets deeply or stuff your mouth full with them: the pleasure from this will not be greater.

1st place: Woodpeckers have the most amazing language. Looking for insects in the bark and trunks of trees, the woodpecker hollows out a hole with its beak, but the beak is not long enough to reach the larvae hidden in the wood. Here a flexible tongue with horny hooks at the tip comes to the rescue: the woodpecker launches it into a tree passage and, having groped for prey, deftly picks it up. The tongue, already long, can also be extended from the oral cavity with the help of a long ribbon that goes around the entire skull and is attached to the nostril.

The tongue is an organ that almost all vertebrates have, and they can do completely different things with it. Here are 10 of the most unusual languages ​​in the animal kingdom.

Language Blue whale, or blue whale(lat. Balaenoptera musculus)
This organ weighs up to three tons, but there are specimens twice as heavy. It is by far the largest tongue in the animal kingdom. And at the same time, its relative size is very small in comparison with the size and weight of a whale, which reaches 70 tons. This grandiose animal uses its tongue like a ladle, scooping up water and filtering food (plankton) from it. By the way, fifty people can fit on the tongue of a blue whale!

The most famous language in the animal world is the language. The chameleon has the longest tongue - in some individuals it can reach the length of the body along with the tail. In addition, this is a very fast language, it takes 40 milliseconds to “shoot”, and half a second to “reload”. The chameleon's tongue is a long tube with a sticky ball at the end, consisting of a special secretion secreted by special glands. When folded, the tongue is folded around a special bone in the chameleon's mouth called the Processus entoglossus. To fire, the chameleon must relax the longitudinal muscles that hold the tongue and act like a spring. Some chameleons can be up to 70 cm in length, and can catch not only insects, but even small birds and small rodents on their tongues.

Fire salamander.

The longest tongue, relative to the length of the body, has a small salamander, measuring only 6 cm in length. Her tongue reaches 7 centimeters! In general, salamanders are amazing creatures. In addition to the long tongue, they have several other interesting features. For example, some of their species are not afraid of direct exposure to open fire for several seconds. at the same time, their skin begins to secrete a special substance in large quantities, which protects the animal from high temperatures, making it possible to simply escape. So the legends about non-flammable lizards have a basis.

Giant's tongue pangolin with a body length of 1 meter it is up to 80 cm in length. But this is not its main feature. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that the muscles that move the tongue are unusually developed and run along the entire body, attaching to the bone almost near the tail. This feature gives the animal the opportunity to deal with a large number of termites, which he loves to eat (eat)

Language giraffe is more than half a meter in length, being the strongest and longest among ungulates. The giraffe's tongue and palate are so developed and rough that it can easily handle the most thorny plants, such as acacia. Have you ever tried chewing or licking an acacia tree? That's just a piece of cake for a giraffe.

In many languages ​​of the world there is an expression “tongue without bones.” We know that there really are no bones in the tongue. But there are animals that, oddly enough, have bones in their tongues. For example, these are fish of the Osteoglossiformes family. In fact, their name in Latin means “bony tongue.” The most significant representatives of this family are giant arapaima, which are found in the Amazon. The length of these sprat is up to 4 and a half meters, and their weight is up to 200 kilograms.

Round-lipped bat found in the mountains of Ecuador. Its size is the same. like an ordinary field mouse, but the tongue is 9 centimeters long. For some reason, such mice are considered vampires, although they feed on flower nectar, like hummingbirds. The relative size of the tongue of this mouse is second only to that of the chameleon, and holds the lead among all mammals. This bat has many hairs on its tongue that absorb nectar and carry pollen from tree to tree.

U shellfish There is also a semblance of a tongue, it is called a radula (grater). The common garden snail has about 15 thousand teeth on its tongue. Terrible beast!

On the tip of the tongue snapping turtle there is a process, it looks like a large red worm, with the help of which it lures prey. To do this, the turtle lies down on the bottom, opens its mouth and begins to wave its bait tongue. The fish, attracted by this, swims straight into the turtle’s mouth, and it has no choice but to close it and eat the poor fellow.

And finally, a little bit of spice. There is such a bird - flamingo. So it has a special language. Flamingos hunt in shallow water by lowering their heads into the water, waving their tongues and shaking their heads, acting as a pump with their tongues, driving algae and small crustaceans into their beaks. But the most interesting thing about this whole process is that the tongue behaves like a penis in this process. It becomes larger thanks to the special tissues of which it is composed. After a few seconds of this “fishing”, the tongue becomes hard and more effectively drives water into the center of the beak, where it is filtered and discharged along its sides. This is such a mysterious bird - flamingo. No one else in the animal world has such a feature - variable tongue hardness within wide limits.

Can you imagine a tongue 50 centimeters long? Half a meter! Its owner can easily grab your hand and pull you towards him with satisfaction. And he is the only one on the planet who can pick his tongue in his ear!!! What is it like?!

The owner of this treasure, as you probably already guessed, is a giraffe. It is the giraffe that has the longest and most advanced tongue of all animals. Well, the fact that he is an unreal cutie is needless to say!

Photos and text Sergei Anashkevich

By the way, a giraffe is almost a deer, well, at least 15 million years ago it was exactly like that, and then each of them went their own evolutionary path.

It is believed that the first giraffe was brought to Europe by Julius Caesar. The word “giraffe” itself is of Arabic origin - zarafa, which means “decorated”, which is what these animals were called for a long time. By the way, the word became feminine in the Russian language and remained so until the reform of 1918. The scientific name, of course, remained with the Romans. And since it reminded them of a mixture of a camel and a leopard, the whole family received the name Giraffa camelopardalis.

2. Their tongue is black and almost 50 cm long; it is so mobile that a giraffe can pick its ear with the tip of its tongue.

3. And giraffes are the only animals that cannot yawn. For a long time it was believed that they were voiceless (hissing, growling and whistling do not count), but it turned out that they communicate with each other at frequencies below 20 Hz, which humans cannot hear.

4. The neck can reach 2 m and consists of only 7 vertebrae.

5. The eyes are set so that the animal can see in all directions without turning its head. Giraffes also have color vision.

6. Giraffes love raw onions. It takes them from 16 to 20 hours a day to eat.

7. Rest sessions (on your feet) last no more than 10 minutes, sleeping while lying on the ground with your front legs tucked under you and your head bent back lasts no more than 1 hour.

8. Weapon of defense - hooves, the diameter of the front ones reaches 23 cm. Giraffes never use heavy weapons against their fellow tribesmen - a chopping blow from top to bottom with their front legs. The only predator that dares to hunt them is the lion. It is known that giraffes even killed attacking lions with a blow of their hooves.

9. And now the most unusual thing. And again about the language. To pick up something from the floor or drink water from a river, a giraffe has to kneel or spread its front legs wide apart.

But how can water get into the stomach if it is located above the mouth? It turns out that giraffes, like many ruminants such as cows and sheep, use their tongue as a piston to pump water into their esophagus.

A kind of typical piston pump in action. By plunging its lips into the water, the giraffe retracts its jaw and water is sucked into its mouth. Then the lips close, the epiglottis relaxes, and the jaw pushes water into the esophagus at a speed of 3 m/s - quite enough to withstand the pressure of the water already accumulated in the esophagus. Once the giraffe decides that it has pumped enough, it lifts its neck and gravity forces the water into its stomach.

The main function of the tongue is to help chew and swallow food. However, there are animals whose language is not limited to this. For example, it can be used to catch prey, regulate the body's thermoregulation, or comb fur. We invite you to get acquainted with the animals that have the longest tongues. So who has the biggest tongue?

Nectar bat

They need a long tongue so that they can obtain nectar from flowers with deep calyxes. Its length is about 9 cm, while the total length of the bat’s body is only 5 cm.

Woodpecker

Everyone knows that the woodpecker has a very strong beak, with which it makes holes in the bark of trees to get food for itself. But few people know that this bird has the largest tongue. There are specimens with a tongue longer than 10 cm. In order to accommodate it, nature has endowed woodpeckers with a special section of the skull. And at the end of the woodpecker’s tongue there is a small hook, with which it captures small insects hiding under the bark.

Australian echidna

The length of the echidna's tongue is 18 cm. On top it is covered with a sticky liquid produced in the mouth by the salivary glands. This liquid is necessary for the animal to capture and hold various insects.

Snake

This reptile's tongue is used to feel the area around it. To explore the space around it, the snake captures small particles that are in the air or on the ground with its tongue. This way they can detect traces of their future victim, find water or a partner. The average length of a snake's tongue is 25 cm.

Cow

The length of the tongue of this mammal is approximately 40 cm and depends on the breed of the cow and how old the animal is. With its help, the cow grabs grass while eating.

Giraffe

Although the giraffe is the tallest animal on the planet, even he sometimes has to contrive to reach the juicy leaves on the treetops. The length of the tongue of this ungulate can reach 50 cm. The animal can easily tear off even thorny and thick branches. The giraffe can eat such food due to the special structure of its oral cavity.

Chameleon

Chameleons are rightly called the most unusual lizards. The length of their tongue is usually equal to the length of the body. And the longer the chameleon itself, the larger its tongue, the average length of which is 50 cm. They need the tongue for hunting. It is impossible to observe this without special equipment, since it acts with lightning speed. A chameleon needs only 3 seconds to recognize and catch up to 4 insects.

Komodo dragon

Adult monitor lizards grow up to 3 m in length and weigh about 70 km. Moreover, the lizard has a 70-centimeter tongue, with which they can easily kill a large bull. But for this they do not need to attack their victim and fight with her in a duel. It is enough for a monitor lizard to sting its victim with its tongue, and then everything will be done by its saliva. It turns out that the Komodo dragon’s saliva contains a huge amount of decay products, which, when they enter the victim’s blood, infect it. And the monitor lizard can only wait for the moment when the toxic substances begin to act.

Ant-eater

This animal has no teeth at all. But since it feeds exclusively on ants and termites, therefore, it does not need them at all. But for hunting, he deftly uses his long tongue, which often reaches 60 cm in length. The top of its tongue is covered with a substance to which prey easily sticks.

Blue whale

This mammal is not only the largest and heaviest animal on the planet. Its features include the longest tongue. This organ in a blue whale can reach 3 meters. The whale uses this organ to filter tons of water that enters its mouth from shrimp and other food.

It turns out that for every living creature, the tongue plays its own special role, helping them not only in the process of eating.

Just look at these languages!

Our selection includes the longest, most dexterous and even the fastest languages!

The chameleon's tongue is recognized as the "fastest" in the animal kingdom. Its speed can reach up to 100 km per hour. During a hunt, a chameleon sits motionless on a tree branch for a long time and rotates its huge bulging eyes, tracking down its prey. Having noticed a fly or grasshopper, it quickly throws out its tongue and captures the victim, immediately putting its tongue back into its mouth. Thus, this organ appears in all its glory and length only for a fraction of a second, and it can only be seen well in slow motion.

In three seconds, a chameleon can catch up to 4 insects! Also, the tongue of this unusual lizard is incredibly large: its length often exceeds the length of the chameleon’s body.

A characteristic feature of this “cute” reptile from Australia is its cobalt blue tongue.

Scientists have discovered an incredibly long tongue in a species of bat from Ecuador. With its help, the animal manages to obtain nectar from a flower called Centropogon nigricans, which has a very long corolla. The animal and the plant seem to have been created specifically for each other. No one else from the kingdom of animals and insects is able to feast on the nectar of this flower!

Since the giraffe is the tallest animal on the planet, it is not surprising that its tongue is one of the longest - up to 50 cm! In addition, this organ is distinguished by extraordinary strength and dexterity. With its help, the giraffe easily plucks leaves from trees; and the stratum corneum of the skin, which reliably protects the tongue, allows the animal to feast on acacia leaves without fear of being injured by the sharp thorns of this plant.

The woodpecker extracts prey in the following way: first, it uses its beak to gouge holes in the bark of trees, and then, with its long and sticky tongue, fishes out insects from these holes.

The long and thin tongue of this animal looks like a worm and is covered with a sticky liquid. In the giant anteater, this organ is even longer than in the giraffe and reaches 60 cm! The anteater uses it, like a fishing rod, to catch ants from the anthill.

Okapi is a cloven-hoofed animal that lives in the Congo and is similar to both a giraffe and a zebra. The okapi's tongue is so large and long that the animal licks its eyes with it!

With its forked tongue, the snake collects particles from the environment and sends them “for analysis” to the oral cavity. This procedure allows her to track prey and sense danger. The tongue is in motion all the time, constantly providing the snake with information about what is happening around. This is where the slang expression “to drive with a sting” comes from.

The tongue of these miniature birds is curled into a long tube. When a hummingbird lowers its tongue into the neck of a flower to drink nectar, its sides straighten and curl again into a tube before returning to its beak.

The frog's tongue is well adapted for catching insects. The frog can throw it forward a few centimeters and cover its prey with it, and to prevent the prey from getting out, it is also covered with a sticky substance.

The role of the fly's tongue is played by the proboscis, which at the end is divided into two tubes. Through them the insect absorbs food.

The Malayan bear, which lives in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, has a long and thin tongue. With its help, this cute bear gets his favorite termites out of hard-to-reach corners.