Animals Without Tongues

May 23, 2024

Anteaters have small, peg-like tongues with backward-facing spines. They use these tongues to lap up ants and termites, rather than for manipulating food like other animals do with their tongues.

Anteaters

Instead of teeth, baleen whales have baleen plates in their mouths which they use to filter feed. They push water out of their mouths through these plates, trapping small fish and plankton for consumption. They have tongues, but they're not used in feeding.

Baleen Whales

These microscopic creatures have mouthparts called stylets used for piercing plant and animal cells to suck out their contents. They lack a tongue altogether.

Tardigrades (Water Bears)

Sea stars have a unique feeding mechanism where they evert their stomachs out of their mouths and into the shells of prey like mollusks, then digest them externally. They don't possess tongues in the way many other animals do.

Sea Stars (Starfish)

Jellyfish don't have tongues, as they don't possess mouths in the traditional sense. They have a simple body structure with tentacles that they use to catch prey, and their digestion occurs through a gastrovascular cavity.

Jellyfish