In our paper, we wanted to understand the role of oral afferents in contributing to the biomechanical behavior of the tongue during chewing. To do this, we altered food textures and selectively blocked oral nerves and measured tongue movements and deformations in relation to jaw movements. We show that oral afferents are essential for refining motor commands to optimize bolus management while maintaining jaw-tongue coordination. And yes, we used skunks as our model for this. Why skunks? Because they are a dietary generalist so are a good comparison with some of our other work on another dietary generalist, the pig. This paper is part of a symposium issue on muscular hydrostats. The symposium, called "Fleshing it Out: Recent Advances in Form, Function and Motor Control of Biological Hydrostats" was held at the 2025 SICB meetings in Atlanta, GA and was organized by Drs. Peishu Li and Callum F. Ross. Work in this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation (IOS-1456810).
