Why do snakes flick their tongues?

When William Shakespeare warned of the venomous touch of a serpent’s forked tongue, he was quite off the mark. It would take almost two more centuries before a more plausible explanation of why snakes flick their tongues was proposed. The 18th-century French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested that the forked tongue of snakes aids in sensory perception, helping them feel objects in their surroundings. Although his theory came remarkably close to the truth, there are nuances...