Human sense organs language interesting facts. Facts about human language

The sense organs are “instruments” that allow a person to interact with the outside world: to see, hear, feel aromas, tastes and touch. The information coming through them is sent to the brain in order to get a complete picture of the events taking place and respond with a certain reaction.

Much is known about the sense organs. amazing facts, but they still remain a unique, not fully explored world, in which there is still room for new discoveries and observations.

Eyes and vision

Vision gives people about 80% of information about the world around them. Blind people develop other senses better, but most perceive information with their eyes in order to navigate in space and be aware of ongoing events. In addition, there are people who are colorblind, with a congenital or acquired inability to distinguish one or more colors. Statistics recorded an amazing fact: among the world's population, 8% of men and only 0.4% of women are color blind.

It is also known about vision that:

• A person cannot sneeze without closing their eyes. This is a protective measure of the body, which avoids rupture of the eye capillaries.
• The eyes of most children are gray-blue at birth, but only by the age of 2 do they acquire their permanent shade.
• Approximately 1% of people live on the planet different color iris and only 2% of people with green eyes.
• The blue-eyed people of the entire planet have one common ancestor who lived about 7000-10000 years in the territory of modern Spain. After analyzing the remains found, scientists found that they belong to a man who is the oldest blue-eyed person known to scientists, while the rest of the people of that time were brown-eyed. This unique feature is due to a mutation in the HERC2 gene, which also determines the blue color of the eyes in modern humans.
• An adult blinks every 8 seconds, closing his eyes for 1-3 seconds.
• Lacrimal glands are able to secrete tears only after the 2nd month of life.
• The eyes cannot freeze because they lack nerve endings.
• The cornea is the only place in the human body that does not receive oxygen.
• Eyes cannot be transplanted, because in case of separation ophthalmic nerve from the brain, he will immediately die. But doctors have learned how to successfully transplant the cornea to people.
• With loss of vision at a conscious age, people continue to dream with pictures, while those who are blind from birth do not have dreams with images.

Ears and hearing

The ears are "responsible" for adequate perception sound information, which allows you to warn against dangers, identify the source of a sound, or enjoy a beautiful song. The human ear is not only a sensory organ, but also an element of the vestibular apparatus. Near auricles channels are located, which are a kind of gyroscope: they help to keep balance and navigate in space.

In addition, other, no less amazing facts are known about the ears:

• Putting a shell to your ear allows you to hear the sound not of the sea, but of your own blood circulating through the veins.

• Complete or partial hearing loss can occur at any age. This is most often associated with long-term exposure. loud sounds, otitis, viral and infectious diseases.
• After a heavy meal, hearing decreases slightly.
• Ears, like the nose, are another part of the body that grows throughout life. But they don't grow on their own. auditory ossicles, and the size of the earlobe changes.
• Hearing problems are more common in men than in women, because the stronger sex is more likely to go to work in places with increased level noise pollution.
• Favorable volume of sounds for people - up to 50 decibels (noise level during a normal conversation). Sounds exceeding this figure are classified as noise load and adversely affect metabolic processes in the body and the functioning of the immune system in particular, which can manifest itself in a reduction in the production of vital antibodies, a weakening of immunity to infectious diseases and tumor processes.

Nose and sense of smell

The nose is the most prominent part of the face and is one of the defining factors of beauty. Not surprisingly, dissatisfaction with its shape or size often forces people to resort to rhinoplasty - changing the shape of the nose. This procedure is the second most popular in plastic surgery after breast augmentation.

In addition, the nose plays an important role in the recognition of smells and tastes. To be convinced of this, it is enough to try your favorite dish with a tightly clamped nose: for sure it will seem more insipid or even tasteless.

For some people, a well-developed sense of smell provides a comfortable existence, so it becomes necessary to insure oneself against its sudden loss. For example, perfume experts sometimes insure their nose, and food experts use additional insurance in case of loss of taste sensitivity.

The following amazing facts about this sense organ will tell you that the nose not only performs a number of vital functions, but also has a number of unusual features:

• The shape of a person's nose is formed only by the age of 10, and it continues to grow throughout life.
• AT calm state a person breathes “at a speed” of 2.4 km / h, and during a sneeze, the speed of air ejection from the nasal passage reaches 160 km / h. The style of sneezing idiosyncrasy each person, but it can sometimes coincide with family members.
• A person distinguishes up to 10,000 different odors, while it is believed that women recognize odors better than men.
• In 2% of the world's population, the sense of smell is completely absent. This disorder is called anosmia.
• Dropping of the tip of the nose (gravitational ptosis) is one of the signs of aging. The process is due to the weakening of the ligaments that hold the nasal cartilage, and a decrease in skin elasticity due to the breakdown of collagen and elastin in it.
• Among the favorite smells, people usually name the aroma of freshly cut grass, pastries and coffee. The last two are often used in stores as these scents encourage shopping.
• There are about 12 million olfactory receptors in the nose. With age, their number decreases, so older people distinguish less aromas. At the same time, the expression “smell like a dog” in relation to a person will not be entirely fair. In these animals, the number of receptors responsible for smell reaches 14 billion.
• The sense of smell is sometimes called the organ of memory, since smells can remind a person of even the most distant events.
• The human nose does not smell some life-threatening substances, for example, natural gas. In order to be able to hear the leak, special compounds are added to the gas, providing it with a characteristic smell.
• Most people pick their nose index finger, and this one bad habit there is scientific name- rhinotillexomania.

Language and tastes

The main organ responsible for the sense of taste is the tongue. This is an important element of the digestive system, which takes part in the process of chewing food, mixing it and moving it into the throat. The tongue is covered with special papillae that transmit information in the form of nerve impulses into the brain to identify sour, sweet, salty or spicy foods. To determine them, the lingual surface must necessarily be wet, that is, moistened with saliva. If you put the product on a dry tongue, the brain will not receive any signal about its taste.

Language is also an indispensable part speech apparatus, without which a person simply cannot speak normally. In addition, it is the most flexible and mobile muscle in human body. It is fixed on only one side and can take a variety of forms, but only some people are able to roll the tongue into a “tube” shape. At the same time, this ability is observed much less frequently in men than in women.

Here are some more amazing facts about the tongue as one of the main organs responsible for the sense of taste:

• If you eat a few fruits of the Magic Fruit (a plant native to West Africa), for the next few hours, all sour foods will be perceived as sweet, and sweet ones will be completely tasteless.
• Spicy foods do not irritate the taste buds, but the pain buds that are connected to the nerves.
• The human tongue will sense sugar dissolved in water if the proportion is 1 to 200.
• The owner of the longest tongue in the world among women is Chanel Tapper (9.75 cm), among men - Stephen Taylor (9.8 cm).
• Taste buds on the tongue are renewed every 7-10 days, so foods with the same taste can cause different sensations if you try them with an interval of 2 weeks.

Skin and touch

If a person's vision deteriorates, he turns to an ophthalmologist, hearing is impaired - to an otolaryngologist. But who to turn to when the ability to perceive the world correctly is impaired? A therapist, dermatologist, neurologist or neurosurgeon can help with this problem. The nature of the disorders may vary, but there is no doctor who specializes exclusively in touch. Long time scientists have paid little attention to this sense and the skin responsible for it - the largest organ of the human body. Its average area is about 1.5-2 m², and the average weight is 4 kg. During life, it is impossible to accurately weigh it, but the approximate mass can be calculated using the formula: divide its own weight by 16.

Skin thickness varies different areas body: most thin layer is on the ages and eardrum(0.5 mm), and the thickest - on the soles of the feet (0.5 cm). Skin covering covered with a unique pattern of lines, triangles and rhombuses, forming a kind of grid. It is best seen on the soles and palms. The purpose of microgrooves in the form of fingerprints is still a mystery. Some scientists believe that they reduce the sensitivity of the fingers so that the brain can concentrate on more important tasks. Others, on the contrary, believe that the embossed skin on the fingers makes it possible to enhance the tactile perception of the surface being examined.

There are many more amazing facts about this largest sense organ:

• Skin color is directly proportional to the amount of melanin produced. People who do not have it at all are called albinos, which occurs in 1 in 110,000 cases.
• The skin of an adult is completely renewed within a month, and in newborns this process takes 72 hours.
• Burning from pepper or chill from mint is not an influence of tastes, but of touch. These foods irritate the receptors responsible for the sensation of temperature.
• It is believed that women feel better with their hands than men. But this is due not so much to the floor, but to the size of the hand. The number of nerve endings is approximately the same for everyone, but with small size their hands are located more tightly, which increases sensitivity.
• Round wounds take much longer to heal compared to other wounds. This amazing fact was noticed by the ancient Greeks and they often changed the shape of wounds for their faster healing.
• According to scientists, when a person's face turns red from embarrassment or physical activity, at the same time the mucous membrane of the stomach turns red.

The role of each of the sense organs is important not only individually, but also in interaction with the others. Only their joint work allows you to fully enjoy the picture of the world and all its shades.

Through the senses, people can interact with the outside world. Many facts about the human senses have remained unexplored, but many of them have been studied by modern scientists. Even people have such sense organs that no one knows about.

40 facts about eyes (vision)

1. Brown eyes are actually blue, but this is not visible due to the presence of brown pigment in them.

2. With open eyes, a person will not be able to sneeze.

3. When a person looks at the one he loves, his pupils dilate by 45%.

4.Eyes can only see 3 colors: green, red and blue.

5. Almost 95% of animals have eyes.

6. The muscles that control the eyes are the most active in the human body.

7. Approximately 24 million images a person sees throughout his life.

8. Human eyes are capable of processing approximately 36,000 pieces of information per hour.

9. Approximately 17 times per minute, a person's eyes blink.

10. A person sees not with his eyes, but with his brain. That is why vision problems are associated with brain activity.

11. There is no blind spot in the eyes of an octopus.

12. If a person in a photo with a flash sees only one eye red, then he may have a tumor.

13. Johnny Depp is blind in one eye.

14. There are hairs in the eyes of bees.

15. Most cats with Blue eyes are considered deaf.

16. Many predators sleep with one open eye to hunt game.

17. About 80% of the information received from the outside passes through the eyes.

18. In strong daylight or cold, the shade of a person's eyes changes.

19. A resident of Brazil could protrude his eyes by 10 mm.

20.About 6 eye muscles help to turn a person's eyes.

21. The lens of the eye is much faster than a photographic lens.

22. Eyes are considered fully formed at the age of 7.

23. The eye cornea is the only part of the human body that is not supplied with oxygen.

24. The corneas of human and shark eyes are very similar.

25. Eyes do not grow, they remain the same size as at birth.

26. There are people who have different colored eyes.

27. Eyes more than other sense organs load the brain with work.

28. Cosmetics do the most harm to the eyes.

29. The most rare color the eye is green.

30. Representatives of the weaker sex blink 2 times more often than men.

31. The eyes of a whale weigh no more than 1 kilogram, but their vision is poor even at a distance.

32. Human eyes are not able to freeze, this is due to the lack of nerve endings.

33. All newborns have gray-blue eyes.

34. In about 60-80 minutes, the eyes are able to get used to the darkness.

35. Color blindness affects males more than women.

36. Pigeons have the highest viewing angle.

37. People who have blue eyes see better in the dark than those who have brown eyes.

38. The human eye weighs about 8 grams.

39. Eye transplantation is unrealistic, because it is impossible to separate optic nerve from the brain.

40. Eye proteins are present only in humans.

25 facts about ears (hearing)

1. Hearing is more often lost by men than women.

2. Ears are a self-cleaning human organ.

3. The sound that a person hears when putting a shell to his ear is the sound of blood that runs through the veins.

4. Ears play important role in keeping the balance.

5. Children have more sensitive hearing than adults.

6.At birth, the baby manages to hear the lowest sound.

7. Ears are an organ that can grow throughout life.

8. If a person eats a lot, then his hearing may deteriorate.

9. Even when a person falls asleep, his ears work, and he hears everything well.

11. The main cause of hearing loss is frequent noise.

12. Elephants can hear not only with their ears, but also with their legs and trunk.

13. Each human ear hears sounds in its own way.

14. Giraffes clean their ears with their tongues.

15. Crickets and grasshoppers hear not with their ears, but with their paws.

16. A person is able to distinguish between about 3-4 thousand sounds of different frequencies.

17. There are about 25,000 cells in the human ear.

18. The sound of a baby crying is louder than a car horn.

20. Every 10th person in the world has a bad hearing.

21. The tympanic eardrum in frogs is located behind the eyes.

22. A deaf person can have a good ear for music.

23. The roar that tigers make can be heard from a distance of 3 kilometers.

24. With frequent wearing of headphones, the phenomenon of "ear congestion" may occur.

25. Beethoven was deaf.

25 facts about tongue (taste)

1. Language is the most flexible part of a person.

2. Language is the only organ human body capable of distinguishing tastes.

3. Each person has a unique language.

4. People who smoke cigarettes get worse taste.

5. Language is that muscle of the human body that is not attached on both sides.

6. There are approximately 5,000 taste buds on the human tongue.

7. The first human tongue transplant was performed in 2003.

8. The human tongue distinguishes only 4 tastes.

9. The tongue consists of 16 muscles, and therefore this sense organ is considered the weakest.

10. The fingerprint of each language is considered unique, just like a fingerprint.

11. Sweet taste is better distinguished by girls than boys.

12. Breast milk is sucked by newborns with the help of the tongue.

13. The organ of taste affects human digestion.

14.On human language live anaerobic bacteria.

15. The tongue heals much faster than other organs.

16. The tongue is the most mobile muscle in the body of every person.

17. Some people are able to roll their own tongue into a tube. This is due to differences in the structure of this organ.

18. At the tip of the woodpecker's tongue there are horny spines that help him get the larvae hidden in the wood.

19. Taste buds, which are on the human tongue, live for about 7-10 days, after which they die, being replaced by new ones.

20. The taste of food is determined not only by the mouth, but also by the nose.

21. Good taste abilities begin to form even before birth.

22. Every person different amount taste buds.

23. The desire to try something sweet may indicate a lack of self-control.

24. The more papillae are on the tongue, the less often a person experiences hunger.

25. The color of the tongue can be said about human health.

40 facts about the nose (smell)

1. There are approximately 11 million olfactory cells in the human nose.

2. Scientists have identified 14 shapes of people's noses.

3. The nose is considered the most protruding part of a person.

4. The shape of the human nose is fully formed only by the age of 10.

5. The nose grows throughout life, but this happens at a slow pace.

6. Although the nose is receptive, it cannot smell natural gas.

7. In newborns, the sense of smell is much more developed than in adults.

8. Only three out of ten people are able to dilate their nostrils.

9. People who have lost their sense of smell will also lose their sexual desire.

10. Each of the human nostrils perceives odors in its own way: the left one evaluates them, the right one selects the most pleasant of them.

11. A nose with a hump, in ancient times, was only among the leaders.

12. Familiar smells that you once had to feel are able to renew past memories.

13. It is assumed that women who find their man's face attractive smell better than other females.

14. Smell is the first thing that will deteriorate with age.

15. In the first year of life of newborns, the sharpness of smell is lost by 50%.

16. By the tip of the nose, you can tell about the age of people, because it is in this place that elastin and collagen proteins break down.

17. The nose of a person is simply not able to distinguish some smells.

18. Before mummifying an Egyptian, his brain was pulled out through his nostrils.

19. There is an area around the human nose that releases pheromones that attract the opposite sex.

20. At a particular moment in time, a person can breathe with only one nostril.

21. Often people insure their nose.

22. Approximately half a liter of mucus is produced daily in the nose of every healthy person.

23. The nose can work like a pump: pump from 6 to 10 liters of air.

24. Approximately 50 thousand smells are remembered by the human nose.

25. About 50% of people don't like their nose.

26. Slugs have 4 noses.

27. Each nose has a "favorite" smell.

28. The nose is closely connected with the center of emotions and memory.

29. Throughout life, the human nose changes.

30. It is the nose that influences the manifestation of sensuality.

31. The nose is the least studied human organ.

32. Pleasant smells relax nervous system a person, and unpleasant ones cause antipathy.

33. The sense of smell is the most ancient sense.

34. With the help of smells, autism can be diagnosed.

36. Smell is an irresistible element.

37. It is very difficult to control a person's sense of smell.

38. There are about 230 million olfactory cells in a dog's nose. In the human organ of smell, there are only 10 million of these cells.

39. There are anomalies of smell.

40. Dogs can often look for the same smell.

30 facts about the skin (touch).

1. In human skin there is an enzyme - melanin, which is responsible for its color.

2. About a million cells can be seen on the skin under a microscope.

3.Round wounds on human skin take longer to heal.

4. From 20 to 100 moles can be on human skin.

5. Skin is the largest organ of the human body.

6.Women's skin is much thinner than men's.

7. Insects most often bite the skin of the legs.

8. The smoothness of the skin can be determined by the amount of collagen.

9. Human skin consists of 3 layers.

10. Approximately 26-30 days in an adult, the skin is completely renewed. If we talk about newborns, then their skin is updated in 72 hours.

11. Human skin is capable of producing antibacterial chemicals that prevent germs from multiplying.

12. Africans and Europeans have a lot more sweat glands on their skin than Asians.

13. Throughout life, a person sheds about 18 kilograms of skin.

14. More than 1 liter of sweat per day produces human skin.

15. The feet have the thickest skin.

16. Approximately 70% of human skin is water, and 30% is proteins.

17. Freckles on human skin can appear in adolescence and disappear by the age of 30.

18. When stretched, human skin resists.

19. There are approximately 150 nerve endings on human skin.

20. Dust in the room occurs due to keratinization of the skin.

21. The thickness of the baby's skin is 1 millimeter.

22. When carrying a child, a woman's skin becomes more sensitive to sunbeams, which can cause burns.

23. The science that studies the sense of touch is called haptics.

24. There were cases when a person created works of art with the help of touch.

25. A person's heart rate will slow down slightly if you touch his hands.

26. Touch receptors are located not only in the skin, but also in the mucous membranes, joints and muscles.

27. The sense of touch in a person appears first, and is lost last.

28. White skin arose only 20-50 thousand years ago.

29. People can be born with total absence melanin, and they are called albinos.

The human senses are the five functions of the body that allow us to cognize the world and respond in the most appropriate way. The eyes are responsible for sight, the ears are responsible for hearing, the nose is responsible for smell, the tongue is responsible for taste, and the skin is responsible for touch. Thanks to them, we receive information about the world around us, which is then analyzed and interpreted by the brain. Usually our reaction is to prolong pleasant sensations or to stop unpleasant ones.

Interesting facts about the human senses.

People receive information about the surrounding space with the help of six senses: ears, eyes, skin, tongue, nose and vestibular apparatus. The data received by each of them enters the nervous system.

More than half of the inhabitants of the Earth have diseases associated with the organs of vision.

It is believed that overeating adversely affects hearing.

Humans only taste solid food after it has interacted with saliva.

Women distinguish shades of odors better than men. In addition, the beautiful half of humanity hears much better than their defenders.

Approximately 2% of the world's population has no sense of smell.

The human memory is capable of storing memories of about 50,000 scents.

Loud noise provokes pupil dilation.

Each person has his own, unique smell - focusing on it, babies accurately determine their mother, and adults can find a suitable partner for them.

The sense of smell of dogs is almost a million times stronger than that of humans.

The ears are not only an organ of hearing, but also an important element of the vestibular system - simply, they help a person maintain balance.

A noise level of 45-50 decibels is considered favorable for human hearing - calm conversations are conducted at such a volume. Any sounds above this limit adversely affect the human body, including immune system.

The conventional wisdom about the benefits of carrots for vision is not entirely true - orange fruits do contain a lot of vitamin A, beneficial for the eyes, but eating carrots and excellent vision are not directly interconnected.

Most children are born with gray-blue eyes, which only after 2 years acquire their true shade.

The rarest eye color in humans is green (only 2% of the inhabitants of the Earth are green-eyed).

All blue-eyed people descended from the same ancestor, in whose body a mutated gene arose about 6,000 years ago.

Approximately 1% of people have a different color of the iris in each eye.

Human eyes can distinguish up to 10 million color variations.

Perfumes are considered ideal for a person, the smell of which he does not feel.

The pattern of the iris of each person is no less unique than fingerprints or the shape of the auricles.

The human brain takes time to process signals from the senses, so everything that people feel at a certain moment actually refers to the previous moment of their life. The perception delay is about 100 milliseconds, but the brain somehow manages to compensate for it - the essence of this mechanism is not yet clear to scientists.

Signals from different sense organs enter the brain at different speeds, so that later the brain creates a single picture from them.

Scary events are sometimes perceived by people as a movie in slow motion, although in fact, frightening phenomena are simply recorded in more detail by the brain.

People who are blind from birth and become sighted only at a conscious age can perceive many things with distortion - since their brain does not know how to dispose of information unusual for it, former blind people see people moving away from them as decreasing in size figures.

If you wear glasses that turn space upside down for some time, then the brain adapts to this image. When a person takes off his glasses, the world will seem upside down for some time.

Incredible Facts

Taste is not only one of the most pleasant, but also a rather complex sensation that science is only beginning to understand.

Here are some amazing facts about your ability to taste.

Taste sensations

1. Each of us has a different number of taste buds.

We have several thousand taste buds in our mouths, but this number varies from person to person. different people from 2000 to 10,000. Taste buds are located not only on the tongue, but also on the palate and walls of the mouth, throat and esophagus. Taste buds become less sensitive as you age, which probably explains why foods you didn't like as a child become palatable as adults.

2. You taste with your brain

When you bite into a piece of cake, it seems that your mouth is filled with taste sensations. But most of these sensations originate in your brain.

The cranial nerves and taste buds send food molecules to the olfactory nerve endings in the nose. These molecules send signals to an area of ​​the brain known as the primary taste cortex.

These messages, combined with the smell messages, give the sensation of taste.

Why do people taste the same taste differently?

Why

loss of taste

3. You can't taste good if you can't smell.

Most taste sensations are smells that are transmitted to the olfactory receptors in your brain. Inability to smell due to colds, smoking, some side effects medications can affect the olfactory receptors in the brain, making it difficult for you to taste.

4. Sweet foods make food memorable.

A new study has shown that centers associated with episodic memory in the brain are activated when we eat sweets. Episodic memory is a type of memory that helps you remember what you experienced at a certain time in a certain place. Episodic memory can help control eating behavior, for example, to make a decision depending on the memories of what and when we eat.

5. Taste can be turned off

Scientists have learned to stimulate and silence the neurons in the brain responsible for the main taste sensations: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. So, for example, in an experiment on mice, when they stimulated a bitter taste, the mice winced.

6. You can change your own taste sensations

Taste buds are sensitive to certain compounds in foods and medicines, which can change your ability to perceive basic taste sensations.

For example, sodium lauryl sulfate in most toothpastes temporarily inhibits sweetness receptors, causing orange juice, drunk immediately after brushing your teeth, will feel like unsweetened lemon juice. Also, the compound cynarine in artichokes can temporarily block sweet receptors.

Taste perception

7. The smell of ham gives food salty taste

There is an entire industry out there that creates the taste of the food you buy in the store. Such a phenomenon as "phantom aroma" makes us associate foods with a certain taste. So, for example, by adding the smell of ham to food, your brain will perceive it as more salty than it actually is, since we associate ham with salt. And by adding vanilla to food, you will perceive the product as sweeter.

8. We prefer spicy food during the flight.

Noisy environments, such as when you're on an airplane, can change your sense of taste. The study showed that in an airplane, people have suppressed sweet receptors and enhanced receptors for the "fifth taste" - umami. For this reason, food with a strong taste is more often ordered on the plane. German airline Lufthansa has confirmed that passengers are booking tomato juice as often as beer.

9. If you are a picky eater, you may be a "super taster"

If you can't stand the taste of eggplant or are sensitive to even the slightest presence of onions in your food, you may be one of the 25 percent of people called "supertasters" who have more taste buds on their tongues, which increases taste sensitivity.

The tongue is one of the most complex organs in nature, as it is a real chemical laboratory. A full-fledged language first appeared in reptiles, namely lizards and snakes. The snake, touching an object lying in front of it and thus taking a “sample”, then draws in the 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 make a “microchemical analysis” and take the trail of the victim, find a partner during the mating season, or find a way to a water source.

The vulture tortoise almost does not need to work for food. It burrows into the silt at the bottom of the reservoir and, with its mouth wide open, sticks out a thin, worm-shaped tip of its tongue, painted in bright pink. This serves as an excellent bait for fish that try to grab the "worm" and immediately fall into the turtle's mouth.

The tongue of frogs and chameleons is a skillful hunting device with a sticky trap at the end. They just spit it out at the victim.

Some ducks, which get food by filtering water and bottom silt, have a fringe along the edges of the tongue, which helps to trap crustaceans, insect larvae and small fish. In hummingbirds, the tongue rolls up into a tube and helps pump out flower nectar.

The language of parrots with a hard horn coating is an ideal tool for crushing small nuts: taking a seed in its mouth, the bird presses on it with its tongue, pressing it strongly against inside beak until the shell cracks. In lorikeet parrots, the tongue at the end is equipped with a brush, with which they collect the juice of fruits crushed by their beak.

The tongue of a cat is a real grater that allows them to strip the meat from the bones of the victim.

Ruminants use their tongues as we use our hands. Cows and giraffes tightly wrap their tongue around bunches of grass, leaves, or branches, just as a person would do with a hand, and then, tearing off, send food to their mouths for chewing.

In the anteater, the tongue has turned into a sticky fishing rod up to 60 cm long, which it then launches into the anthill, then draws into the mouth at a frequency of 160 times per minute.

The tongue can be used like a spoon. Most mammals drink by lapping, that is, scooping up small portions of water with the tip of their tongue. An analysis of the frames of accelerated filming showed that the dog turns its end up, while the cat, on the contrary, bends it down.

In humans, the tongue is the main taster. Each tongue has up to 5,000 taste buds. They are short-lived, live only 10 days: new ones grow to replace the old ones. The basal part of the tongue is responsible for the perception of bitter, the front edges of the tongue react to the salty taste, the deep edges to the sour, and only its end to the sweet. Therefore, you should not shove candies deep or fill your mouth full with them: the pleasure from this will not become great. The human tongue is the only muscle not attached on both sides and is considered the most flexible and mobile part of the body.

Chanel Tapper is a Guinness World Record holder for the world's longest tongue among women. Chanel's tongue reaches 9.75 cm in length (these measurements are usually taken from the tip of the tongue to the upper lip).

Most amazing language- at woodpeckers. Looking for insects in the bark and trunks of trees, the woodpecker hollows out a hole with its beak, but the length of the beak is not enough to get the larvae hidden in the wood. Here a flexible tongue with horn hooks at the tip comes to the rescue: the woodpecker launches it into the tree passage and, having found the prey, deftly picks it up. The tongue, already long, can also protrude from oral cavity with a long ribbon