SNAPSHOT: Cat Tongues Have Hollow Spines, and It Helps Keep Them Cool

Each lick of a cat tongue releases one tenth an eyedropper of saliva from hollow, scoop-shaped cones called papillae. That’s one of the findings from a study released today in the journal PNAS that examines the cat tongue in unprecedented detail.While the sharp rasp of a cat’s lick is no mystery, the hollow nature of some of the cones on the tongue surface is new to science. The two Georgia Institute of Technology researchers who conducted the study are calling them cavo papilla