giant Pacific octopus

Sponges are among the most primitive of all animals. They are immobile, and live by filtering detritus from the water. They have no brains or, for that matter, any neurons, organs or even tissues.

Sponges lack a nervous system, but somehow are still able to sense external stimuli and organize coherent behaviors. The largest group of sponges, demosponges, “sneeze” in response to mechanical stimuli. This response, much like our own sneezes, allows them to remove unwanted materials from their bodies.

Sponges have unspecialized cells that can transform into other types and that often migrate between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems.

The key piece of evidence that sponges have lost their brains comes from phylogenetics: the attempt to figure out how all the different animal groups are related to each other. Sponges were long thought to be the sister group to all other living animals, having branched off early on.

anteater

Other animals naturally have no tongues, such as sea stars, sea urchins and other echinoderms, as well as crustaceans, says Chris Mah via email. Mah is a marine invertebrate zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has discovered numerous species of sea stars.

She and Wang have been looking into isolated congenital aglossia, the rare condition in which a person is born without a tongue. Rogers, their test case, is one of 11 people recorded in medical literature since 1718 to have the condition, and there are fewer than 10 in the world today who have it, McMicken said.

The bone’s making the right sort of movements, even if there’s no muscular organ attached to it. PS: Fish do have “tongues” but the term is a loose parallel; unlike our muscular organs, these tongues (usually) can’t stick out of the mouth, and they don’t help with swallowing.

exigua severs the blood vessels in the fish’s tongue, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish’s tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. exigua replaces the tongue, some feed on the host’s blood and many others feed on fish mucus.

Other animals As a consequence most vertebrate animals—amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals—have tongues.

Their tongues are not free, but held in place by a membrane that limits movement; as a result, crocodiles are unable to stick out their tongues. Crocodiles have smooth skin on their bellies and sides, while their dorsal surfaces are armoured with large osteoderms.

The two species with the most well-known and documented reputation for preying on humans are the Nile crocodile and saltwater crocodile, and these are the perpetrators of the vast majority of both fatal and non-fatal crocodilian attacks.

Workers were documented repeatedly shooting alligators with a captive bolt gun and crudely stabbing the animals to try to dislocate their vertebrae. Alligators are sensitive and experience pain just as we do.

The Crocodile Tongues are supporting characters in James and the Giant Peach. They are long, slimy creatures who are seen when the Magic Man gives James Henry Trotter themselves and cause a giant peach to grow.