Shingleback

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Cold-Blooded:
Reptile Tongues:
Eastern Shingleback (Tiliqua rugosa ssp aspera)

Retired Professor of Anatomy, Ian Gibbins, has kindly shared his thoughts with us to help people learn:

Goannas use their tongue tips to sample their chemical environment (air, substrate, etc). The tongue tips take the sample to small organs on the roof of the mouth where they are "tasted". Snakes do something similar. We do too in strange sort of way. Most of what we "taste", we actually smell, with the chewing / mashing of food by our teeth and tongue releasing volatile chemicals that reach the upper part of our nose via the back of our throat. This part of the nose is probably evolutionary related to the same structures that the goanna use.

Ian Gibbins