This photo confirms that your tongue is basically a microbe party
Our tongues are teeming with bacteria. (STEVEN WILBERT AND GARY BORISY, THE FORSYTH INSTITUTE/)The human tongue is an essential component of our daily lives. After all, we wouldn’t be able to eat, taste, talk, sip, swallow, or even spit with the same level of precision as we do now without this organ. Despite this, our mouth’s main muscle remains somewhat of a mystery to scientists. Only recently have researchers begun to understand that there’s a whole ecosystem of bacteria—known as a microbiome—that call our mouths home. Now, researchers have been able to photograph this teeming microscopic community in more detail than ever before.“Bacteria on the tongue are a lot more than just a random pile. They are more like an organ of our bodies,” says Gary Borisy, a researcher at the Forsyth Institute and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in a release about the new image. He recently published...