Your tongue isn’t a single muscle. It’s actually a team of eight muscles, all working together to produce the absurdly flexible thing in your mouth. Four of them connect the tongue to nearby bones in your skull and jaw, anchoring it in place. The other four are entirely internal, weaving through the tongue itself in different directions to let it change shape any way it needs to.
Most muscles in your body work by pulling against a bone. The tongue has no bones inside it at all. Instead, it’s called a muscular hydrostat - a fancy name for “a muscle that works by squeezing fluid in any direction.” Octopus tentacles work the same way. Elephant trunks too. They can move in directions that bone-and-joint systems can’t.
The tongue is also remarkably tough. It heals faster than almost any other muscle in your body - partly because of all the blood vessels in it, and partly because saliva contains substances that speed up healing. A bitten tongue is back to normal in days.
