Twisty Tongues

Can you stick your tongue out and roll it into a tube? If you can, than you’re one of 85% of people who can do it!

A lot of people think that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body, but that’s not quite true; your tongue is actually made up of sixteen muscles all working together! They’re the only muscle group in your body that’s not attached at both ends.

Stick out your tongue again and see if you can see the bumps covering it (you can use a mirror if you need to!) These bumps not only help move your food around when you’re chewing, they also contain all your taste buds! Without them, you wouldn’t be able to taste anything. You probably have close to 10,000 taste buds, but by the time you grow up, you may have only 5,000! That’s why some foods taste stronger to kids than to grownups.

Sometimes you come across a sentence that’s really hard to say: this is called a tongue twister. The hardest tongue twister in the world is: “the sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick.” Can you say it without tripping over your tongue? Give it a try!

Here’s one final tongue challenge: most people believe it’s impossible to lick your elbow with your tongue, but the Guiness Book of Records gets calls every day from people who say they can do it. Are you one of those lucky few people? Try it and see!