The forked tongue of a snake is thought to be disturbing by many people. The snake waves it about quickly every now and again, then retracts it. For centuries, people have suggested theories to explain why snakes have split tongues. It gave snakes “a twofold pleasure from savors, their gustatory sensibility being as if twice,” according to Aristotle.

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Snake tongues were supposed to be used to clear dirt out of snakes’ noses by Italian astronomer Giovanni Hodierna. Snakes were said to grasp flies or other animals between the prongs of their tongues, which they used as forceps, according to certain 17th-century writers. Snakes can sting you with their mouths, according to popular belief. None of these theories, however, are likely.

The tongues of most animals are used for tasting, cleaning themselves or others, and capturing or manipulating their prey. Humans are among those who use them to make noises. Snakes don’t do any of these things with their tongues. Kurt Schwenk, an evolutionary scientist at the University of Connecticut, has been studying the function of snake tongues for the past 20 years, and the closest description of what snakes accomplish with their tongues is “smelling.”

Snakes acquire substances from the air or the ground via their mouths. Taste and smell receptors do not exist on the tongue. These receptors are found in the vomeronasal organ, also known as Jacobson’s Organ, which is located in the roof of the mouth. Distinct compounds elicit different electrical signals in Jacobson’s Organ, which are then communicated to the brain.

Because its tongue is forked, a snake’s tongue may acquire chemical information from two different locations at the same time, even if they are rather near together by human standards. The space between the tips of snakes’ tongues can be twice as broad as their heads when they spread their tongues apart. The use of their tongues to find chemical gradients from the surroundings, which gives the idea of location In other words, snakes use their split tongues to help them smell in 3 dimensions. Owls hear in three dimensions using their asymmetrical ears in this way.

Snakes and owls both use similar brain circuitry to analyze signal strength from either side of the body and pinpoint the source of a smell or sound. Humans, on the other hand, can do the same thing with their hearing, but not as successfully.

This allows them to trace the footprints of their prey or potential mates. German researcher Herman Kahmann experimented with removing the forked part of snakes’ tongues in the 1930s, before there were tougher regulations on the ethical use of animals in research, and discovered that they could still sense but couldn’t follow scent trails. These discoveries were developed and proven throughout the 1970s.

Snake researcher Neil Ford of the University of Texas at Tyler saw male garter snakes using their tongues to follow chemical trails created by females in the 1980s. The snake proceeded to slither directly ahead if both points of the male snake’s tongue landed within the breadth of the trail, he observed. When one of the tips strayed beyond the trail’s edge, the snake’s head turned away from that tip and back toward the pheromone trail, and his body followed. The snakes were able to exhibit accurate and guided trail-following behavior by following this basic guideline.