15 Things You Didn't Know About The Tongue

15 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT TONGUE Stick it out, roll it, lick a cone, taste something sweet, touch your nose. Is that all you can do with your tongue? This underappreciated organ has many talents that will have you drooling. The longest tongue on record is 3.86 inches from tip to the back. The widest tongue was 3.1 inches at its widest point. Women have shorter tongues than men. The longest female tongue was 2.76 inches long Thomas Blackstone holds the record for the strongest tongue. He lifted a 24 lb Boz. weight that was hooked through his tongue. 24 LBS The blue whale has the largest tongue in the animal kingdom. It is the size of an elephant and weighs 5,400 lbs. 5,400 LBS Tongue cleaning with a tongue scraper is proven to help prevent heart attacks, pneumonia, premature births, diabetes, osteoporosis and infertility in men. The five known tastes detected by taste buds are: Bitter Sour Salty Sweet and Umami. Umami was identified in 1908 by a Japanese researcher and che chemical responsible for it is monosodium glutamate. The saying "cat got your tongue" originated 2500 years ago in ancient Assyria where conquered soldiers and criminals had their tongues cut out and fed to the king's cats. WHISKERS i haz urz tonguez. Because it comes in different %D shapes and can have a variable number of taste buds, the human tongue imprint is as unique as a fingerprint. The hardest tongue twister in the English language (according to Guinness World Records) is "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick." It takes 25,000 more molecules to determine the taste of something than it does to smell it. Taste buds only react to chemicals that dissolve in water. This is why we get salty tastes first because salt dissolves rapidly. 10,000 TASTE BUDS There are more than 600 different types of bacteria in the mouth and a milliliter of saliva contains The average person has 10,000 taste buds with 2,000 of those under the tongue, inside the cheeks, on the roof of the mouth and on the lips. 1,000,000 of them. %3D A single taste bud contains 50-100 taste cells. While one cell can have multiple types of sensors for tastes, no single cell can identify both sweet and bitter. Contrary to popular belief, tests on identical twins have proven that the ability to roll one's tongue into a tube shape is not a genetic trait. SOURCES: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/human_body/extreme_bodies/longest_tongue.aspx http://www.worldslongesttongue.com/ http://www.askmen.com/dating/dzimmer 100/138b_love_answers.html http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Fastest-Muscle-in-the-World-48857.shtml http://www.epilepsy-cf.org/epilepsy_myths.htm http://udel.edu/-mcdonald/mythtongueroll.html http://www.olympusdolls.com/humor/phrases/Cat-Related%20Phrases%20andx20their%200rigin.htm http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/584034/taste-bud http://news.softpedia.com/news/16-Things-You-Did-not-Know-about-Smell-and-Taste-68066.shtmil http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/45935.aspx MEDICAL mns Design and Illustration by Ellie Koning