Mondo Knows Facts
A woodpecker's tongue wraps around its skull
The long tongue is stored in a sheath that loops over the back of the head The arrangement lets the tongue reach deep into a hole while staying anchored. Woodpeckers also have reinforced skull bone and a third eyelid that closes before impact. Their pecking reaches around 20 times a second. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
A chameleon's tongue fires like a catapultIt reaches prey in about a twentieth of a secondA snake swallows by walking its jawsThe two halves of the lower jaw move independently to draw prey inwardInsects breathe through holes in their sidesAir enters spiracles and travels through tubes called tracheaeKoala fingerprints are nearly identical to human fingerprintsEven under electron microscopes, koala print loops are hard to distinguish.Sea urchins scrape rocks using a five-toothed jaw mechanismAristotle lantern apparatus features five self-sharpening teeth.An octopus has three hearts and blue bloodTwo hearts pump through the gills and one serves the body
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Tags: birds, tongue, anatomy
A woodpecker's tongue wraps around its skull: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The long tongue is stored in a sheath that loops over the back of the head. The figure is taken from Cornell Lab, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.