A bundle of muscles
Your tongue is a group of eight muscles working together. Most muscles pull on bones, but some of your tongue's muscles aren't attached to any bone at all. That's how it can bend, curl, stretch and twist every which way.
Your tongue helps you talk. Say 'la la la,' then 'ta ta ta,' then 'ka ka ka.' Feel how your tongue moves to a different spot each time?
While you chew, your tongue pushes food onto your teeth and mixes it with spit. Then it rolls the food into a soft ball and pushes it to the back of your mouth to swallow.
Some people can roll their tongue into a tube and some can't. Scientists once thought this came only from your family, but it turns out to be more complicated than that.
Taste buds
The little bumps on your tongue are called papillae (puh-PIL-ee). Many of the bigger bumps hold taste buds, tiny clusters of cells that sense taste. The tiniest bumps help your tongue grip food.
Most people have a few thousand taste buds, somewhere between about 2,000 and 10,000. Kids usually have more than grown-ups. You also have some on the roof of your mouth and in your throat.
Taste cells don't last long. They get replaced about every one to two weeks. So if you burn your tongue on hot cocoa, your taste comes back soon.
Five tastes
Your taste buds sense five basic tastes: sweet, like strawberries; salty, like pretzels; sour, like lemons; bitter, like some leafy greens; and umami (oo-MAH-mee), a savory, brothy taste, like in cheese, mushrooms and tomatoes.
Spicy isn't a taste at all! The burn from hot peppers comes from sensors that feel heat and pain, not from taste buds.
Your brain mixes tastes with smells, plus how hot, cold, crunchy or creamy food is, to make flavor.
Tastes often change as you grow. A food you don't like now might become a favorite later, so keep trying!
Myth: the tongue map
You may have seen a tongue map, with sweet at the tip, bitter at the back, and salty and sour along the sides.
Truth: that map is wrong! Every part of your tongue that has taste buds can sense all five tastes. The map came from a mix-up about an old science paper.
Try it: dip a clean finger in a little sugar and touch it to the side of your tongue. You'll taste sweet right away, even though the map says sweet only lives at the tip.