The tongue is part of what makes these videos possible. Without it, we couldn’t speak! It is also what allows us to enjoy the taste of our favourite foods, and helps us get the occasional pesky bit of food out from between our teeth.

Now, the tongue is essentially a mass of muscles covered by a mucous membrane, which can contract and relax quickly, allowing the tongue to assume many shapes and positions.

This is what makes the tongue ideal for speaking by aiding sound formation. The tongue is also involved in taste via taste receptors; it pushes food into the oropharynx during swallowing; it helps with mastication by moving food closer to our teeth; and in oral cleansing.

Looking at things in more detail, the tongue takes up much more space in the mouth than you might realize. It consists of a root, a body and an apex, with the last two being highly mobile.

The root of the tongue is posterior and slightly vertical, forming the posterior one third of the tongue. It extends from the hyoid, epiglottis, and soft palate, to the mandible.

The body forms the anterior ⅔ of the tongue, and the apex of the tongue is the most anterior end of the body.

The entirety of the tongue rests on the mouth’s floor both in the oral cavity and into the oropharynx, with the apex pressing against the lower incisors.

The tongue also has two surfaces, supero-posterior and inferior, which are separated by the margin of the tongue.

The supero-posterior surface is the larger of the two and it literally represents the “top” or dorsum of the tongue. The inferior surface or “underside” rests against the floor of the mouth.

The dorsum of the tongue is characterized by a V-shaped groove called the terminal sulcus.

The sulcus divides the top of the tongue transversely into a presulcal anterior part in the oral cavity and a postsulcal posterior part situated in the oropharynx.

The V’s tip points posteriorly to something called the foramen cecum, which represents the remnant of part of the embryonic thyroglossal duct, from which the thyroid gland developed.

The dorsum also presents a central groove called the median lingual sulcus, which separates the anterior part of the tongue into a right and left division.