PAUL NICHOLSON, SPECIAL TO
POSTMEDIA NEWS
Published:March 16, 2018
Updated:March 16, 2018 5:53 PM
PDT
Bird’s tongues have adapted
remarkably and reflect the diet of each species. This great blue heron’s
specialized tongue helps it to consume fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals.
If you were asked about what a
bird’s tongue was like, you might imagine a tongue such as your own. The truth
is, birds’ tongues can be rather different. They serve a range of specialized
purposes.
In his book Extreme Birds,
Dominic Couzens keys in on woodpeckers. “A woodpecker’s tongue is capable of
independent movement at the tip, which makes it a formidable weapon for lapping
up prey hidden away in holes.”
There also are bones that
constitute part of a hyoid apparatus in birds’ tongues.
To accommodate a tongue many
times longer than its bill, the woodpecker’s tongue is anchored in its right
nostril and extends over its scull and out the beak, and thus is capable of
extending more than half the bird’s body length.
Some grubs and other prey can be
impaled on the tongue. There are barbs or hooks on the tip of some woodpeckers’
tongues to facilitate catching prey, and there is a sticky glandular secretion
that also helps these birds catch insects.
Sapsuckers have hair-like
bristles that help them ingest sap. Of our woodpeckers, the Northern flicker
has the longest tongue and it has a barbed tip. This is a legitimately extreme
family of birds.
Like woodpeckers, hummingbirds
have tongues that extend past the end of their beak. This helps them consume
nectar from trumpet-shaped flowers.
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