Since first evolving 350 million years ago, the tongue has taken myriad forms, unlocking new niches and boosting the diversity of life. LongReads
Twice, quarterback Patrick Mahomes has led the Kansas City Chiefs to victory in the Super Bowl, the pinnacle of U.S. football. Although most fans have their eyes on the ball as Mahomes prepares to throw, his tongue does something just as interesting. Just as basketball star Michael Jordan did as he went up for a dunk, and dart players often do as they take aim for a bull’s-eye, Mahomes prepares to pass by sticking out his tongue. That may be more than a silly quirk, some scientists say.
, a functional morphologist at the University of Antwerp. Like other soft tissues, tongues are rarely preserved in fossils. Hidden inside the mouth, they defy easy observation. In the past decade, however, new technologies have begun to reveal tongues in action in different groups of animals. That work is beginning to yield new insights about the tongue’s evolutionary trajectories, and how its specializations fueled further diversification.
That’s because fish don’t need tongues like ours to swallow their food. They can rely on suction. They open their jaws wide, expand their throats, and pump water through their gill slits to create currents that sweep in food. Schwarz and his team found that before newts transform into full-fledged adults, they develop a tonguelike appendage that presses food against sharp, needlelike “teeth” on the roof of their mouth.
, David Hu, a biomechanics researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his colleagues reported in 2017.
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