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Do birds have tongues?
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Hi missmoody!
Have just been trawling through my bird book because to be honest I have never thought about this before. It made interesting reading.
Have just come across info re the woodpecker which i had no idea about. Apparently they can extend their tongues four times the length of the upper beak - once they have tapped into the tree bark, they can feast on insects 5" in by licking and hooking the meal out with backward pointing barbs on their tongues.
Im just reading more here! It says that the tongue is the end portion of a flexible system of bones and tissue known as the hyoid - that wraps up and around the woodpeckers head and is anchored near its right nostril.
Thank you for asking this question - think i would like to learn more on the subject. Hope to see more answers, I would be very interested. :o)
Have just been trawling through my bird book because to be honest I have never thought about this before. It made interesting reading.
Have just come across info re the woodpecker which i had no idea about. Apparently they can extend their tongues four times the length of the upper beak - once they have tapped into the tree bark, they can feast on insects 5" in by licking and hooking the meal out with backward pointing barbs on their tongues.
Im just reading more here! It says that the tongue is the end portion of a flexible system of bones and tissue known as the hyoid - that wraps up and around the woodpeckers head and is anchored near its right nostril.
Thank you for asking this question - think i would like to learn more on the subject. Hope to see more answers, I would be very interested. :o)
Of course birds have tongues.. However, in those birds that are able to be taught to mimic sounds, such as parrots, etc., the enabling mechanism for them to produce recognizable sounds is the difference between their tongues and those of other birds. Parrot's tongues are much more similar to ours than to other birds as far as thickness, supporting sturcture and texture are concerned. It is not clear, however, if all their vocalizations are caused solely by the tongue structure. Bird's tongues are supported by a cartilage-and-bone skeleton rather than musculature structures as in humans (and parrots)...
Bird's are believed by those that research such things, to have a very poor sense of taste, since they can be observed "chewing" on plastic or other inorganic containers that once held food. It's also believed, as an aside, that most birds have a very poor sense of smell. Some, however, such as various species of carrion feeding birds, (Eagles, vultures, some hawks, etc.) appear to be able to smell things at great distances. Debate about the connection between smell and taste in birds is ongoing...
Bird's are believed by those that research such things, to have a very poor sense of taste, since they can be observed "chewing" on plastic or other inorganic containers that once held food. It's also believed, as an aside, that most birds have a very poor sense of smell. Some, however, such as various species of carrion feeding birds, (Eagles, vultures, some hawks, etc.) appear to be able to smell things at great distances. Debate about the connection between smell and taste in birds is ongoing...
On this very rare occasion I need to vehemently disagree with clanad.
All birds have a tongue and the shape is related to the shape of the beak (bill) and its usual diet. Most are pointed arrow-like in shape and are used to hold the seed while the lower beak slices through the seed husk. The back of the tongue is raised to hold the kernel back while it is swallowed. Parrots have a more rounded tongue to coincide with the shape of the beak. The bird species that eat nectar like Lorikeets and honey birds have a brushlike tongue to lap up their liquid food. The woodpecker's tongue has already been mentioned and another unusual one is one of the galapagos finches which has also has a long strong pointed tongue and uses that to pierces grubs inside tree branches through the hole which it has chiselled. The tongue shape has nothing to do with its ability to mimic human sounds as Mynah birds and the exotic starlings can 'talk' just as good as parrots and definitely have a pointed tongue. Unlike us, birds make their sound in an organ called the syrinx which is located way down the chest - not below the throat. The syrinx resembles a double barreled windpipe which accounts for birds ability to have such a varied call/song.
The excellent eyesight of birds of prey enables them to spot likely food from a long way off, not their sense of smell which is very poor as it is not needed. This has been confirmed many times over by necropsy of their olfactory organ. Often vultures even wait in a nearby tree for an ailing animal to die before they dig in. The only bird that comes anywhere close to our (relatively poor) sense of smell is the kiwi which has its nostrils on the end of its beak, so it can smell the insects and worms while it is probing the ground.
All birds have a tongue and the shape is related to the shape of the beak (bill) and its usual diet. Most are pointed arrow-like in shape and are used to hold the seed while the lower beak slices through the seed husk. The back of the tongue is raised to hold the kernel back while it is swallowed. Parrots have a more rounded tongue to coincide with the shape of the beak. The bird species that eat nectar like Lorikeets and honey birds have a brushlike tongue to lap up their liquid food. The woodpecker's tongue has already been mentioned and another unusual one is one of the galapagos finches which has also has a long strong pointed tongue and uses that to pierces grubs inside tree branches through the hole which it has chiselled. The tongue shape has nothing to do with its ability to mimic human sounds as Mynah birds and the exotic starlings can 'talk' just as good as parrots and definitely have a pointed tongue. Unlike us, birds make their sound in an organ called the syrinx which is located way down the chest - not below the throat. The syrinx resembles a double barreled windpipe which accounts for birds ability to have such a varied call/song.
The excellent eyesight of birds of prey enables them to spot likely food from a long way off, not their sense of smell which is very poor as it is not needed. This has been confirmed many times over by necropsy of their olfactory organ. Often vultures even wait in a nearby tree for an ailing animal to die before they dig in. The only bird that comes anywhere close to our (relatively poor) sense of smell is the kiwi which has its nostrils on the end of its beak, so it can smell the insects and worms while it is probing the ground.
You may well be right, wildwood... I lay no claim to orinthology, other than an interest generated by the many birds near our home. However, I believe I qualified each statement in my post just because of the disagreement among those more schooled in bird study. For example, Roderick Suthers of Indiana University at Bloomington states in World of Science the following: "Control of tongue movements is an important part of [parrot] communication, just as it is in humans"... further "...Most birds were previously thought to rely only on a sound-making organ called the sirinx, above the lungs, to produce sound. Researchers and bird enthusiasts have long noticed that parrots bob their tongues back and forth while they vocalize, but it wasn't known whether the tongue motions contributed significantly to sound-making.
The report by Suthers and biologists Gabriel Beckers and Brian Nelson in the Sept. 7 issue of the research journal Current Biology shows that even tiny changes in the position of a parrot's tongue can lead to big differences in sound. " Lastly, "... "Song is something that has to be learned, and it can only be learned by listening. Very specific areas of the bird's brain aid song and imitation. Humans have language centers. Before, we used to think all the complexity of parrot communication was because of the syrinx. Now we think it's likely the tongue is involved, just like with human speech."
Gabriel Beckers, the study's lead author, is now a research fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Additionally, a recent report will appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has this:
Contd.
The report by Suthers and biologists Gabriel Beckers and Brian Nelson in the Sept. 7 issue of the research journal Current Biology shows that even tiny changes in the position of a parrot's tongue can lead to big differences in sound. " Lastly, "... "Song is something that has to be learned, and it can only be learned by listening. Very specific areas of the bird's brain aid song and imitation. Humans have language centers. Before, we used to think all the complexity of parrot communication was because of the syrinx. Now we think it's likely the tongue is involved, just like with human speech."
Gabriel Beckers, the study's lead author, is now a research fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Additionally, a recent report will appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has this:
Contd.
Contd.
"We show that songbirds adjust the size and shape of their vocal tract to 'fit' the changing frequency of their song," IU neurobiologist Roderick Suthers said. "This enables the bird to produce a more whistle-like, pure-tone song." "...The finding supports a growing consensus that birds and humans make sound in much the same way -- although it is presumed these processes evolved independently of each other in birds and hominids. In 2004, Suthers reported in the journal Current Biology that monk parakeets use their tongues to shape sound. Other studies have implicated beaks, especially beak gape, in shaping the sound that birds produce. Similarly, humans move their tongues, alter the shape of their upper vocal tracts, and change the shape of their mouths when they sing, laugh, talk and groan.
"The bird's vocal tract, like the human vocal tract in speech, acts as a resonance filter that can control the sound coming from the mouth," Suthers said. "
As to birds of carrrion, "American Vultures can smell, but African vultures cannot. The Turkey Vulture has the best sense of smell of the American vultures. Vultures have excellent eyesight, but, like all other birds, they have poor vision in the dark. American vultures find food both with their eyesight and sense of smell. Turkey vultures are attracted to the smell of mercaptan, a gas produced by the beginnings of decay" (Source: Turkey Vulture Society... no, really!).
Thanks for your response!
"We show that songbirds adjust the size and shape of their vocal tract to 'fit' the changing frequency of their song," IU neurobiologist Roderick Suthers said. "This enables the bird to produce a more whistle-like, pure-tone song." "...The finding supports a growing consensus that birds and humans make sound in much the same way -- although it is presumed these processes evolved independently of each other in birds and hominids. In 2004, Suthers reported in the journal Current Biology that monk parakeets use their tongues to shape sound. Other studies have implicated beaks, especially beak gape, in shaping the sound that birds produce. Similarly, humans move their tongues, alter the shape of their upper vocal tracts, and change the shape of their mouths when they sing, laugh, talk and groan.
"The bird's vocal tract, like the human vocal tract in speech, acts as a resonance filter that can control the sound coming from the mouth," Suthers said. "
As to birds of carrrion, "American Vultures can smell, but African vultures cannot. The Turkey Vulture has the best sense of smell of the American vultures. Vultures have excellent eyesight, but, like all other birds, they have poor vision in the dark. American vultures find food both with their eyesight and sense of smell. Turkey vultures are attracted to the smell of mercaptan, a gas produced by the beginnings of decay" (Source: Turkey Vulture Society... no, really!).
Thanks for your response!
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