Uploaded November 2014 | Updated September 2026, 12 hours ago

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Animals with incomplete cheeks (i.e. dogs and cats) need to move fluid against gravity into the body by means other than suction. They do this by lapping fluid with their tongue. So when a dog drinks, it curls its tongue posteriorly while plunging it into the fluid and then quickly withdraws its tongue back into the mouth. During this fast retraction fluid sticks to the ventral part of the curled tongue and is drawn into the mouth due to inertia.

Read the full story here: discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-dogs-drink-revealed-in-super-slo-mo-video

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Credit: Sean Gart, Virginia Tech; Jake Socha, Virginia Tech; Pavlos Vlachos, Purdue University; and Sunghwan Jung, Virginia Tech.

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