The video shown here clearly shows a clam "licking" a salt disc, right?

Well, not really.  Although the tongue is an impressive muscle (check out some of the videos below), what viewers of this YouTube video are actually witnessing is the clam's foot.  And the clam is using that little muscle not to amuse human beings, but to try to escape the very non-wet alien world to which it is being subjected.

The clam is real and is doing something that clams really do.  Clams dig, and people who dig clams from a culinary perspective literally have to dig them - or have others dig them - from the sandy or muddy ocean floor, often close to the shoreline during low tide in many areas.

Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife, Flickr
Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife, Flickr
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The practice has inspired a style of pants known as "clamdiggers:"

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Flickr
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Flickr
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Clams often exhibit the behavior which may be perceived as "licking" in an attempt to examine their surroundings.

Back to the clam at hand, or in hand, some have questioned the age and size of the specimen in Blanchard's video.  But clam experts says that clams can get quite large and quite old.

The oldest known clam was discovered by two Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences staffers, Paul Butler and James Scourse, during a scientific expedition off of the Icelandic coast in 2006.  By studying the annual growth lines in the clam's shell, the clam, later named "Ming," was estimated to be at least four hundred and five years old.

Now for some "Amazing Tongue Tricks," performed by an actual tongue, you may want to check out this video:

 

 

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