Bodily Oddities

Tongue folding

Also called: Inward tongue fold · Tongue flip

Folding the tip of the tongue backward over itself inside the mouth. Between 14% and 27.5% of people can do it.

Mouth and throat Muscle Trick Voluntary
Try it Learnable Party trick

How common

14–27.5% Common · 10–50%

Can you do this?

These are answers from visitors, not a study.

How it works

Tongue folding means bending the front of the tongue back over the top of itself. The tip lifts, curls backward, and rests upside down on the top surface of the tongue. Some people do the fold the other way and tuck the tip underneath.

The muscles on the upper surface of the tongue shorten to curl the tip back2. The fold is limited by the frenulum, the thin band of tissue under the tongue that joins it to the floor of the mouth3. A short or tight frenulum stops the tip from lifting far enough. This is why people with a tongue-tie often cannot do it.

Between 14% and 27.5% of people can fold their tongue1. The range is wide because studies use different definitions of a complete fold. Like tongue rolling, folding is partly learned. Some people find the movement after practice.

Try it

  1. Open your mouth and lift the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth.
  2. Keep the back of the tongue still. Pull the tip backward, as if trying to touch the top of the tongue with its own underside.
  3. Let the tip drop down onto the top of the tongue. It should sit there upside down.
  4. Check in a mirror. A full fold shows the underside of the tip facing up.

If the tip stops short, the frenulum may be the limit. No safe way exists to change that at home.

Sources and further material

  1. Encyclopedia Tongue rolling Prevalence figures for folding and related tongue shapes.
  2. Encyclopedia Tongue
  3. Encyclopedia Frenulum of tongue The band of tissue under the tongue that limits how far the tip can move.
Mouth Trick

Tongue rolling

Between 65% and 84% of people can curl the sides of the tongue up into a tube. For decades it was taught as a simple one-gene trait. It is not.

65–84% of people
Mouth Trick

Cloverleaf tongue

Folding the tongue into three lobes, like a clover leaf. Between 10% and 15% of people in Western samples can do it. It is usually called the hardest tongue shape.

10–15% (Western samples)
Mouth Trick

Tongue twisting

Turning the tongue on its side so the edges face up and down, or all the way over. Between 12% and 36% of people can twist it at least halfway.

12–36%
Mouth Variation

Tongue tie

A short or tight band of tissue under the tongue that holds the tip down, present in about 1 in 20 babies. Some cannot breastfeed well, but many grow up with no trouble at all.

About 5% of babies