Do Chickens Have Tongues?

Contrary to what some may believe, it is true that chickens like most living creatures do have tongues. In fact a chicken’s tongue is oddly shaped like an elongated arrowhead, with the pointy bit located at the front, this is quite unique. A chicken’s tongue like many animals, and also including humans, is the same color as the rest of the inside of their mouth.

Despite what many used to believe before the 1950’s, chickens do have a sense of taste and even have been found to have thirty to seventy different taste buds. These taste buds are found on the base of their tongue and floor of the pharynx, however whether or not these taste buds are their only form of taste receptors is still up for debate. Little is known about a chicken’s taste buds and receptors even though we have been doing research about it and arguing about it for decades.

One thing that has been found is that chickens have been known to avoid saccharine and sweet flavors such as honey and strawberry, though nobody really knows why. They have also been found to only prefer sucrose and butter type flavors such as those found in popcorn. Since most research on the subject of a chicken’s tongue and their tastes have been conducted by adding flavoring to their drinking water, some have argued and considered the findings of these research experiments to be of little to no value. Humans have 9,000 taste receptors, and cows have 25,000. Due to this astounding fact, the chicken’s ability to taste would still be considered to be limited while others argue that some chickens lack the sense of taste at all and have often been referred to by people as being “chickens who are taste blind”.