To do this, cuttlefish and octopus use papillae, muscly balloon-like skin structures that can expand into various shapes and sizes. Here’s a close-up of a papilla in action: “Something that’s really ...

But as they grow, pigments from food, drinks, and possibly the bacteria or yeast themselves get caught in the papillae, dyeing the tongue a color. Most often that color is black, hence the name.

Larger, dome-shaped vallate papillae sit toward the back of the tongue and, like foliate papillae, can house as many as 250 taste buds each. A fourth type—filiform papillae—is the smallest and ...

When defective desquamation occurs, the filiform papillae that are normally less than 1 mm in length can reach lengths of 12 to 18 mm. And the thick tangle of tongue fibers that forms ends up ...

A cat's tongue is covered in hundreds of tiny, backward-facing spines called papillae that help to keep the animal clean. Researchers have discovered that papillae are scoop-shaped and hollow ...