6 Fun Facts About Your Tongue
Here are 6 Fun Facts About Your Tongue that you didn’t know!
The tongue is one of the few organs that we can see. It is the large fleshy lump of pink muscle that rests in your mouth, protected by your teeth. The tongue has a number of different responsibilities and is known best for holding our sense of taste and making us able to do things like breathe, eat and talk.
Here are five fun facts about tongues you probably didn’t know:
- On average a human tongue has between 3000 and 10000 taste buds that are not visible to the human eye. There is a myth that says that different areas of the tongue let us taste different things. This is not true, taste buds are all over the tongue and you can taste anything, anywhere on your tongue.
- Your tongue can get fat! If you are putting on weight, then the amount of fat on your tongue also increases.
- The average tongue length for males is 8.5cm and females usually have slightly shorter tongues, averaging on 7.9cm. The Guinness
record holder for the longest tongue is a young man who has a tongue that is 10.1cm long.
- Tongues can tell a lot about your health. For example, if your tongue is red it could indicate a folic acid deficiency or even scarlet fever. Or if your tongue has a whitish layer, this could be an indicator of oral thrush; similarly, a dark or hairy tongue could mean excessive bacterial growth or may even indicate cancer.
- The tongue is not really the strongest muscle you have; in fact, it is made up of eight different muscles and these are the only muscles in the body that work independently of a skeleton to form movements.
- Your tongue, much like your fingers, has a print that is unique to you and researchers are working to create a system that uses the tongue print as a biometric authenticator
The tongue is an incredible part of the body, full of fascinating mysteries, but its best asset by far is allowing us to fully appreciate delicious foods and yummy treats.
