The bird with the longest tongue. Which bird has the longest tongue

It starts in the right nostril, then divides into two halves, wraps around the entire head, including the neck, passes through the opening of the beak, and then becomes one again - sounds creepy, doesn't it? But this is exactly the structure of the language of the bird, which has the longest tongue in the world.

Exclusive language

All of us, if not seen, then certainly heard how a woodpecker rhythmically taps on a tree trunk. In an attempt to get food, this bird has to expose a tree trunk, then gouge a hole in the wood, and then use its long tongue, which, due to its unique structure and length, is able to get larvae and insects from the depths.

The thin and sticky tongue of a woodpecker will easily get a treat even from ant passages. Thanks to the nerve endings located on the tongue, the woodpecker does not make mistakes with prey that you have to catch by touch.

In most feathered creatures, the tongue is held on the back of the beak and is located in the oral cavity. In a woodpecker, pay attention to the picture, the tongue begins its growth from the right nostril! At the woodpecker, when he is not engaged in the extraction of food, the tongue is in a folded form. It is located in the nostril and under the skin that protects the skull.

Evolution or intelligent design?

Many people still remember from the school biology course about natural selection and mutations, during which those individuals who have managed to adapt to the world around them continue their life path and development. But what advantage does a bird gain if its tongue moves from its usual place to the right nostril, and even begins to grow backwards? Further developments would show that such a bird simply starved to death.

The woodpecker took advantage when its tongue made a full circle around its head, and settled into its usual place in its beak. Despite the fact that the woodpecker has a unique structure of language, evolutionists have no doubt that this bird is descended from other birds with a standard language. But they say that the tongue of a woodpecker is the result of intelligent design.

Woodpecker food

The bird, which has the longest tongue in the world, has the finest hearing. The quietest sound made by insects eating wood will not go unnoticed. Woodpeckers feed on what they find in the bark, under the bark, inside the bark, in the wood.

Some of the woodpeckers hunt not only in wood, anthills and stumps are used to search for food. Some individuals are looking for larvae in the earth's thickness. Typically, a bird's diet consists of bugs, larvae, ants, worms and caterpillars. Northern brothers are not averse to eating nuts.

woodpecker family

Woodpeckers are monogamous, they are faithful to their partner all season long. Birds breed a couple of times a year. Every year, woodpeckers hollow out a new home for themselves; they do not use other people's buildings. Woodpeckers prefer to use trees with soft wood to build a dwelling. It happens that the length of such a dwelling reaches half a meter. Woodpeckers use sawdust as bedding.

woodpeckers in nature

Dyatlov, for active pest control, was nicknamed "forest nurses". They are of obvious help in forests that have stood for years and are full of old trees. But in the young from woodpeckers, harm is more likely than good. The abundance of hollows spoils the structure of a young tree. If the same tree is regularly hollowed out for three or four years, as sucking woodpeckers like to do, then it will die.

In zoos, these birds are rare, but they get used to people quickly enough. We figured out a little with the question of which bird has the longest tongue, it's time to pay attention to other representatives of the vertebrate world.

Bat

In the world of mammals, the recently discovered bat in Ecuador has become the champion in the length of the tongue. The length of this organ is 3.5 times the length of the owner's body and is 8.5 cm. It was possible to measure the tongue of this charmer when she was treated to sugared water in a narrow and long test tube.

Australian echidna

An egg-laying mammal has an elongated nose. At the end of which both the nose and mouth are placed, inside there is a very thin and long tongue. If the animal sticks out its tongue, then we will see 18 centimeters of a tongue covered with a sticky liquid.

Chameleons

This lizard's tongue reaches half a meter. The length of this organ depends on the size of the chameleon, the larger the animal, the longer its tongue. This representative of the squamous order straightens his tongue for hundredths of a second - an elusive movement can only be seen with the help of slow motion.

Ant-eater

Anteater is a toothless animal, although with a 60 cm sticky tongue, no teeth are needed. Ants and termites are eaten. In one minute, an anteater can stick out and retract the tongue more than one and a half hundred times.

Giraffe

The tallest mammal on Earth sometimes lacks its own height. The animal compensates for this shortcoming with its long tongue. With the help of a 45-centimeter tongue, the animal obtains its livelihood, consisting of the leaves of trees and shrubs.

It starts in the right nostril, then divides into two halves, wraps around the entire head, including the neck, passes through the opening of the beak, and then becomes one again - sounds creepy, doesn't it? But this is exactly the structure of the language of the bird, which has the longest tongue in the world.

Exclusive language

All of us, if not seen, then certainly heard how a woodpecker rhythmically taps on a tree trunk. In an attempt to get food, this bird has to expose a tree trunk, then gouge a hole in the wood, and then use its long tongue, which, due to its unique structure and length, is able to get larvae and insects from the depths.

The thin and sticky tongue of a woodpecker will easily get a treat even from ant passages. Thanks to the nerve endings located on the tongue, the woodpecker does not make mistakes with prey that you have to catch by touch.

In most feathered creatures, the tongue is held on the back of the beak and is located in the oral cavity. In a woodpecker, pay attention to the picture, the tongue begins its growth from the right nostril! At the woodpecker, when he is not engaged in the extraction of food, the tongue is in a folded form. It is located in the nostril and under the skin that protects the skull.

Evolution or intelligent design?

Many people still remember from the school biology course about natural selection and mutations, during which those individuals who have managed to adapt to the world around them continue their life path and development. But what advantage does a bird gain if its tongue moves from its usual place to the right nostril, and even begins to grow backwards? Further developments would show that such a bird simply starved to death.

The woodpecker took advantage when its tongue made a full circle around its head, and settled into its usual place in its beak. Despite the fact that the woodpecker has a unique structure of language, evolutionists have no doubt that this bird is descended from other birds with a standard language. But they say that the tongue of a woodpecker is the result of intelligent design.

Woodpecker food

The bird, which has the longest tongue in the world, has the finest hearing. The quietest sound made by insects eating wood will not go unnoticed. Woodpeckers feed on what they find in the bark, under the bark, inside the bark, in the wood.

Some of the woodpeckers hunt not only in wood, anthills and stumps are used to search for food. Some individuals are looking for larvae in the earth's thickness. Typically, a bird's diet consists of bugs, larvae, ants, worms and caterpillars. Northern brothers are not averse to eating nuts.

woodpecker family

Woodpeckers are monogamous, they are faithful to their partner all season long. Birds breed a couple of times a year. Every year, woodpeckers hollow out a new home for themselves; they do not use other people's buildings. Woodpeckers prefer to use trees with soft wood to build a dwelling. It happens that the length of such a dwelling reaches half a meter. Woodpeckers use sawdust as bedding.

woodpeckers in nature

Dyatlov, for active pest control, was nicknamed "forest nurses". They are of obvious help in forests that have stood for years and are full of old trees. But in the young from woodpeckers, harm is more likely than good. The abundance of hollows spoils the structure of a young tree. If the same tree is regularly hollowed out for three or four years, as sucking woodpeckers like to do, then it will die.

In zoos, these birds are rare, but they get used to people quickly enough. We figured out a little with the question of which bird has the longest tongue, it's time to pay attention to other representatives of the vertebrate world.

Bat

In the world of mammals, the recently discovered bat in Ecuador has become the champion in the length of the tongue. The length of this organ is 3.5 times the length of the owner's body and is 8.5 cm. It was possible to measure the tongue of this charmer when she was treated to sugared water in a narrow and long test tube.

Australian echidna

An egg-laying mammal has an elongated nose. At the end of which both the nose and mouth are placed, inside there is a very thin and long tongue. If the animal sticks out its tongue, then we will see 18 centimeters of a tongue covered with a sticky liquid.

Chameleons

This lizard's tongue reaches half a meter. The length of this organ depends on the size of the chameleon, the larger the animal, the longer its tongue. This representative of the squamous order straightens his tongue for hundredths of a second - an elusive movement can only be seen with the help of slow motion.

Ant-eater

Anteater is a toothless animal, although with a 60 cm sticky tongue, no teeth are needed. Ants and termites are eaten. In one minute, an anteater can stick out and retract the tongue more than one and a half hundred times.

Giraffe

The tallest mammal on Earth sometimes lacks its own height. The animal compensates for this shortcoming with its long tongue. With the help of a 45-centimeter tongue, the animal obtains its livelihood, consisting of the leaves of trees and shrubs.

Language is an organ that almost all vertebrates have, and they can do completely different things with it. Here are 10 of the most unusual languages ​​in the animal kingdom.

Language blue whale, or blue whale(lat. Balaenoptera musculus)
This organ weighs up to three tons, but there are specimens twice as heavy. It is by far the largest language in the animal world. And at the same time, its relative size is very small in comparison with the size and weight of the whale, which reaches 70 tons. This grandiose animal uses its tongue like a ladle, scooping up water and filtering food (plankton) from it. By the way, fifty people can fit on the tongue of a blue whale!

The most famous language in the animal world is language. The chameleon has the longest tongue - in some individuals it can reach the length of the body along with the tail. In addition, this is a very fast language, it takes 40 milliseconds to “shot”, and half a second to “reload”. The tongue of a chameleon is a long tube with a sticky ball at the end, consisting of a special secret that is secreted by special glands. When folded, the tongue is folded around a special bone in the chameleon's mouth called the Processus entoglossus. To shoot, the chameleon must relax the longitudinal muscles that hold the tongue and act like a spring. Some chameleons can be up to 70 cm long, and can catch not only insects, but even small birds and small rodents with their tongues.

Fire salamander.

The longest tongue, relative to body length, has a small salamander, measuring only 6 cm in length. Her tongue at the same time reaches 7 centimeters! In general, salamanders are amazing creatures. In addition to the long tongue, they have several other interesting features. For example, some of their species are not afraid of direct exposure to open fire for several seconds. at the same time, their skin begins to secrete a special substance in large quantities, which protects the animal from heat, making it possible to simply run away. So the legends about non-combustible lizards have a basis.

Giant's tongue pangolin with a body length of 1 meter is up to 80 cm in length. But this is not its main feature. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that the muscles that set the tongue in motion are unusually developed and run along the entire body, attaching to the bone almost near the tail. This feature gives the animal the ability to manage with a large number of termites, which he loves very much (to eat)

Language giraffe is more than half a meter long, being the strongest and longest among ungulates. The giraffe's tongue and palate are so developed and rough that it can easily handle even the most thorny plants, such as the acacia. Have you ever tried chewing or licking an acacia tree? That's the same. A giraffe is just a spit.

In many languages ​​of the world there is an expression "tongue without bones". We know that there really are no bones in the language. But there are animals that, oddly enough, have bones in their language. For example, these are fish of the Osteoglossiformes family. In general, their name in Latin is what it means - "bony tongue." The most significant members of this family are giant arapaima, that are found in the Amazon. The length of these sprats is up to 4 and a half meters, and the weight is up to 200 kilograms.

Round-lipped bat found in the mountains of Ecuador. Its size is the same. like a common field mouse, but the tongue is 9 centimeters long. For some reason, such mice are considered vampires, although they feed on flower nectar, like hummingbirds. The relative size of the tongue of this mouse is second only to that of a chameleon, and holds the lead among all mammals. This bat has many hairs on its tongue that absorb nectar and carry pollen from tree to tree.

At shellfish there is also a semblance of a language, it is called a radula (grater). The common garden snail has about 15,000 teeth on its tongue. Terrible beast!

On the tip of the tongue caiman turtle there is a process, it looks like a big red worm, with which it lures prey. To do this, the turtle lies down on the bottom, opens its mouth and starts waving its bait tongue. The fish, attracted by this, swims right into the turtle's mouth, and she has no choice but to close it and eat the poor fellow.

And finally, a little piquancy. There is a bird flamingos. So she has a special language. Flamingos hunt in shallow water, lowering their heads into the water, waving their tongues and shaking their heads, acting as a pump with their tongues, driving algae and small crustaceans into their beaks. But the most interesting thing about this whole process is that the tongue in this process behaves like a penis. It becomes larger due to the special tissues of which it is composed. After a few seconds of this “catch”, the tongue hardens and more effectively drives the water into the center of the beak, where it is filtered and expelled along the sides of the beak. Here is such a mysterious bird - a flamingo. No one else in the animal world has such a feature - a variable hardness of the tongue over a wide range.

To the question Which bird has the longest tongue? given by the author Mila the best answer is The woodpecker has the longest, most amazing tongue. 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 the oral cavity with the help of a long ribbon that goes around the entire skull and is attached to the nostril. The tongue of a woodpecker is often longer than the body of a bird (10-15 cm). Can you imagine the tongue being bigger than the length of the body? Even chameleons and frogs cannot boast of such a language, and they are recognized champions in this matter.
The tongue is round in cross section, hard at the end and with tiny denticles along the edges. In the beak, the tongue is twisted like a spring. With a long thin snake, he famously “creeps” into all the nooks and crannies of the tree hollowed out and eaten by bark beetles.
It is sticky, spiked at the end, and very long; a green woodpecker, for example, is able to stick it out of its mouth by 10 centimeters. All birds, except the woodpecker, have their tongues in their mouths, just like you and me. But for a woodpecker this is unacceptable: it is impossible to “store” such a tongue in the mouth - it will get confused and turn into a ball. In order for such an insect-grinding device to fit in the throat, the evolution that created the woodpecker had to remove the tendon base of the tongue from the oral cavity and wrap it around the skull with a loop! His extra-long tongue "grows" from his right nostril and, passing right under the skin, wraps his entire head! Everything is very neat and comfortable.

Well, let's say that the woodpecker keeps the tongue in the mouth. And what grows from the nostrils are the lingual horns, the muscles that support the tongue.

"The hyoid apparatus consists of an elongated body that supports the base of the tongue, and long horns. In some birds, such as woodpeckers, very long horns go around the entire skull. When the hyoid muscles contract, the horns slide along the connective tissue bed, and the tongue protrudes from the oral cavity almost to the length of the beak ".