True Facts: Snake and Lizard Tongues

bob there's something outside the window no, i'm not making this up bob it's, can you come here bob bob let's back up a little bit? Do you like languages? Well, if so, you would like the work of Dr. Kurt Schwenk. That's a good scientific name. schweink now dr schwenk is not a run-of-the-mill language aficionado you might meet in a bar no dr schwink goes deeper he's been studying languages ​​for decades no jerry it's not a fetish if a scientist does it's an area of ​​interest in En In particular, Dr. Schwenk has been fascinated by reptiles of the order squamata.

This includes all the Jerrys. Do we have a different opportunity? This includes all

lizard

s. All

snake

s. Jerry. That's not a

snake

. I know it's upside down, but it has legs. Jerry. Alright. Includes all

lizard

s. all the snakes and the enphys caps, the worm lizards, which is apparently one thing, all of these animals arose from a common ancestor, but as they evolved, not everyone agreed on what exactly the tongue should be used for, now The primitive tongue was sort of a basic swallowing aid, but the squamates' ancestors asked evolution if there was time for a modification. Evolution said, "Oh yeah, there's time," so they said we'd like to wait for him to sniff with his tongue, cough, all right, we'll figure it out. but the ancestor of the snake put evolution aside and said: I will give an arm in the leg to be the best at it and that was the beginning of the negotiation, but in the end the snake had a tongue that was 100 percent committed with a kind of smell wait, how do I swallow the snake? said evolution winked at me oh you'll get the hang of it so snakes evolved a tongue that is long, thin and smooth, deeply forked and tapering to a microscopic tip that may or may not look like a sex toy.

Stone Age, some lizards like the monitor lizard developed a very similar language but with a very interesting difference that we will get to in a minute. Now we say that these animals smell with their

tongues

, but that's something like that. It's like saying that people think their penises take you to the stage of an intended pun, but it's actually not

true

. Like most scaly

tongues

, these tongues are used to sample molecules on the ground in front of them, but these forked tongues have the advantage of barbs. They separate and allow you to try two different points, one to the left and one to the right in a single movement, you can feel the difference between these two points, this allows you to feel the edges of a path that you are following, it is as if I can smell in stereo, this is the thing, although these tongues are more like fingernails, they don't feel anything directly, they have to transport these molecules to two small holes in the palate that lead to the nasal vomerus organs.

Now I know what you do. You're thinking, little smartass nipple, how the little molecules at the bottom of your tongue barbs get little mouth holes at the top and how they do it while keeping the two signals separate so you can smell in stereo and here it is The other thing. When they open their mouth, you might wonder where the hell their tongue went, it disappears into a hidden hole, like a dog's erection, it's not that big hole, it's the glottis, a tube that allows them to breathe when they swallow deeply. A squirrel's butt here you can see one of the teeth sticking out of the case and yes, that's Dr.

Schwenk's blood. He's a tough guy, so that's how they do it. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? It looks like one of those ink plots that the brain the witches make you look at and say there is no right answer but it's always a demon with horns they can't fool me brainwitch anyway here is the tip of the tongue above are the ducts that They lead to the vomeronasal organ and underneath are the salivary glands and you can see that the tips rest in these little grooves here is a slightly more simplified version there are grooves at the bottom of the mouth lined with salivary glands the teeth rest in these grooves and when The mouth closes creates two separate channels.

An additional crush forces the saliva in each of the channels upward and into its own passage, but in that process the saliva washes the barbs and releases the molecules that must be detected and this is how They can smell in stereo. Now snakes do something that other fork-tongued lizards don't do. Do they move their tongues in the air in a repeated up and down swinging motion? Try moving your tongue up and down very quickly when humans do this. It's called an hour violation, but why the snake? Does Dr. Schwenk know why they seem to have it?

I figured out how to sample molecules in the air in a way that still allows you to feel the difference between the concentrations on the left and right. If you farted in an elevator with a bunch of snakes, they would all turn towards you. He didn't smell any of this. The molecules in the air are all mixed up, sorry, but the molecules in the air are all mixed up, so Dr. Schwenk wanted to know how they did it. He had a snake swing his tongue through a bunch of floating particles illuminated by laser light during this. little rave snake noticed two pairs of vortices, small pockets of air that rotate, two at the top, two at the bottom, they rotate in such a way that they suck in air from the left and the right and then shoot it up or down. down between the vortices.

It creates two distinct columns of air through which the tines move. These air currents allow the quills to collect molecules from the left and right in concentrations that can be felt, so the snake has that going for it now, meanwhile, there was a bit of a fuss about the skinks the skinks have lovely tongues a little wider, not forked and its surface is covered with overlapping scale-like papillae, which makes it very soft, good at detecting and tracking prey, but also swallowing a good balance, but there was a punk that always I was sucking. on the cheerful blue raspberry ranchers until it became permanent, let that be a warning, she wanted more help catching food because let's face it, those little hands are useless, so the blue-tongued skink evolved a tongue that has the ability to deform into a kind of prey mitten.

It also produces thick mucus to make the smooth surface stickier, think of a sinus infection, but in your mouth the new viewers are gone, but now, when word got out that you could use your tongue this way, Iguanians wanted to go all out, Iguanians include iguanas, but also many other species of lizards, all of which have developed highly specialized tongues for capturing prey. They still use the tips of their tongue to feel the world by licking it like it's a postage stamp from the '80s, but when it's time to eat. They roll that part back and underneath it exposes an area of ​​the tongue that is a marvel of engineering instead of being scaly and smooth, it's bumpy and looks a bit like a snowman's baby maker.

They are covered by a forest of finger-shaped papillae and the tips of the papillae are covered by the hairy carpet of feather cells, but this is a hairy carpet of doom. These papillae can adhere to prey through wet adhesion. You've probably experienced some wet adhesion. It's not like that, pervert, you've experienced this, yes. Have you tried to separate two surfaces with a thin layer of liquid between them, pervert, I know what you're thinking, naughty bun, why do you have so many, why not just have a single giant papilla, well, this is because the resistance to being separated has to do with the tendency of liquids to form this curve or meniscus around the outside of the contact area, therefore, the resistance is proportional to the circumference and not the contact area.

It's a pretty convincing graph, doesn't it give you a lot of little taste buds? more girth in total and therefore more resistance now, once contact is made, the prey recoils incredibly quickly, although it is totally, the prey has inertia in its side, which resists sudden acceleration, the papillae stretch and absorb part of this force before its adhesion is broken, but there is a backup plan, a special, watery and fibrous mucus that becomes stiffer under tension, retains the prey through the violent snapping and because of all this, very You rarely fail now this cricket already thinks he's having a shitty day, it gets worse, wait until they tell you.

You, in the same way that the snake went all out with the sensory tongue, there is an iguanian that took tongue precapture to the extreme. The chameleon has a tongue that acts like something between a slingshot and a grip, popping a watermelon seed between the finger and thumb. Before firing, a series of muscles tighten the collagen fibers and, like stretching a rubber band, this stores potential energy which is then released in a tongue explosion. Chameleons can sense the distance to their prey so accurately that a dimple forms just before contact. in their tongue ball, although they are equipped with iguanian papillon mucus to hold the prey, they also make use of this tongue glove to wrap and hold it, this is necessary because on the way back things get a little loose, It's like when you pull out a tape measure too far or take half a Viagra, so if someone tries to impress you by tying a cherry stem in a knot, you just say a big deal, what else can your tongue do?

No, that's suggestive, isn't that a big deal? How fast can you move it? No, how about you call me when that thing is covered in mucus? That's good. No, I told them I was working on something called flavor, but they wanted to smell it. No, I heard you, it's crazy. Oh, and I forgot. tell you about the gecko, you know what he said, he said he wanted to lick his own damn eyeballs so I asked him why and he said he didn't want eyelids anymore, do you know how long it took me to make them, I mean sometimes I don't make them.

I don't even know why I'm making all this effort, lick your eyes, why don't you go ahead and lick? I mean, at least our languages ​​are normal, not like all those languages ​​you