Tongue

The tongue is a strong, unpaired, median muscular appendage, carried by the floor of the mouth and covered with a specialized papillary mucosa. Attached to the hyoid bone and the mandible, and connected to the larynx, pharynx, and soft palate, it rests on the sling formed by the two mylohyoid muscles.

At rest, it covers the entire sublingual floor and fills the oral cavity when the jaws are closed. It plays an important role in the prehension and mastication of food. It is also the organ of taste. Finally, it takes part in swallowing and, in animals only very secondarily, in phonation.

The tongue thus presents a free, rostral part and a much larger fixed part. The first constitutes the apex of the tongue. In the second, one can distinguish a thick portion, which occupies the middle region of the organ and forms the body, and a caudal portion or root, which extends back to the epiglottis.

Like the face and the oral cavity itself, the tongue is short and wide in humans and cats, but narrow and elongated in herbivores.