6 Weird Facts About Your Tongue

1 Your Tongue Has the Most Flexible Muscles in Your Body

A common misconception often repeated is that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body. This is not the case. The strongest muscle is generally considered to be the heart. However, the tongue is one of the most sensitive muscles we have in our bodies.

Drinking a sip of hot coffee or eating too-hot food can prove that to you, as the tongue is extremely sensitive to high temperatures. The tongue also has the most flexible muscles in our bodies. Think about how your tongue can move up, down, back, and forth; your tongue can even find small pieces of food between your teeth and dislodge them.

Many people (about 80 percent of the population) can curl their tongues into a tube, as you likely learned from your friends in kindergarten. However, even if you can’t roll your tongue, your tongue is still the most flexible muscle in your body. You definitely shouldn’t try rolling any of your other muscles! The tongue’s extreme flexibility is just the first weird fact on our list about our wiggling, tasting mouth muscles (tongues).

2 Your Tongue Cannot Taste without Saliva

As amazing as your tongue is, without saliva (spit), you would not be able to taste much. Your mouth secretes saliva via your salivary glands, activating your tongue’s taste buds. You can test this right now!

Simply dry off your tongue using a paper towel or napkin. Then, try to eat something dry, like a pretzel or a corn chip. You won’t taste much! Then, try the experiment again without drying your tongue (have a drink of water). Now, that is more like it! For an even better example, try experimenting with something sour, like a lemon or lime. You may not be able to tell it is sour until your salivary glands activate and your taste buds start working again. Amazing!

In most cases, with a dry mouth, the first thing you will taste is salt. This is because salt dissolves quickly and easily in water (or saliva). As amazing as the human tongue is, without saliva, we would not taste almost anything!

3 You Cannot See Taste Buds with the Naked Eye

Most people associate taste buds with the tongue. This makes sense because most people have between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds on their tongues. However, there are also taste buds in other places, including the back of your throat, nose, and upper esophagus.

Taste buds cannot be seen with the naked eye either; they are too small. Small bumps on your tongue are often mistakenly thought to be taste buds. These are actually papillae. A typical tongue has somewhere between 200 and 400 papillae, mostly on the sides and tip of the tongue. Papillae usually have between three and six taste buds just below them. Despite their importance to our enjoyment of food, taste buds cannot be seen using just the naked eye.

4 Everyone Has a Unique “Tongue Print”

How are human tongues like snowflakes? The next weird tongue fact on our list is that no two tongues are alike! Like snowflakes and fingerprints, “tongue prints” are unique. Every person has a unique alignment and number of papillae and taste buds, as well as differences in size, shape, and flexibility.

Because of this unique quality, scientists and researchers are developing ways to incorporate a “tongue print” into a biometric identity verification tool. Instead of scanning a fingerprint to identify yourself, you would be able to scan your tongue. Hopefully, they are working to develop a way to keep it sanitary, too… In the future, there is the potential that you will not stick out your tongue to be rude, but instead, you will stick it out to be identified for work, access your bank account, vote, and more.

5 About 25% of the World Are “Super Tasters”

Scientists have determined that about one out of every four people is considered a “super taster.” A supertaster is just what it sounds like: people who have a stronger sense of taste. This “superpower” shows up most often when eating especially bitter foods. Specifically, a compound called 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) can be tasted by super tasters.

However, there are also a group of people that cannot taste PROP. This group is also about a quarter of the population and is sometimes referred to as “non-tasters” (though they can still taste). Whether you are a “supertaster,” a “nontaster,” or neither, your tongue is still a pretty remarkable muscle.

6 The Average Tongue Is About 3 Inches Long

Tongues are unique to the individual, so there can be significant variations in tongue size. On average, men have longer tongues than women. An average male tongue is about 8.4 centimeters (3.3 inches) long, while an average female tongue is just 7.9 centimeters (3.1 inches).

By comparison, a chameleon’s tongue can extend twice the length of its body, and a giraffe’s tongue is almost 61 centimeters (24 inches) long on average. To measure a human tongue (not recommended), an official measurement is taken from the tip of the tongue to the epiglottis (the flap of cartilage at the back of a tongue).

Obviously, not everyone has their tongue length measured. However, of those who have, the longest tongue in the world belongs to an American, Nick Stoeberl. Stoeberl’s tongue was determined to be nearly four inches) long, almost a full inch over the global average. The final measurement for Stoeberl was 10.08 centimeters (3.97 inches). I wonder if he is a “super taster” as well.