It has long been thought that snakes flick their tongues in order to “smell” their environments. However, is this the only reason for the seemingly-constant snake tonguing? To see what else snakes might be up to with all that lingual action, these biologists recorded snake tongues with four high-speed video cameras and reconstructed a 3D model of the tongue in motion. This detailed investigation revealed that the snakes actually perform two types of tongue flick: one for smelling things in the air, and another that seems optimized for tasting objects on the ground.
The function of oscillatory tongue-flicks in snakes: insights from kinematics of tongue-flicking in the banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata).
“Tongue-flicking is an important sensory behavior unique to squamate reptiles in which chemical stimuli gathered by the tongue are delivered the vomeronasal organ situated in the roof of the mouth. Because tongue-flick numbers can easily be quantified, this ...
