Most mammal tongues are anchored by a hyoid bone near the base of the skull. The Sunda pangolin's tongue instead runs back through the chest and attaches near the pelvis and the last pair of ribs, with no bony connection to the jaw at all. This unusual arrangement lets the tongue slide in and out of a sheath deep in the body, extending far beyond the mouth to reach into ant and termite galleries.
Reported extension lengths for pangolin tongues generally fall between 25 and 40 centimetres, depending on the individual and species, on an animal whose body typically measures 40 to 65 centimetres. The tongue is coated in sticky saliva produced by enlarged salivary glands, allowing it to gather large numbers of insects in a single sweep before retracting.
The anatomy is frequently summarised in popular accounts as the tongue being 'attached to the stomach,' which overstates the connection; anatomical descriptions place the anchoring tissue near the pelvic region and posterior ribs, not the stomach organ itself. Pangolins and anteaters evolved similarly elongated tongues independently, and researchers still debate finer details of how the retraction mechanism compares across species.