Highest risk of part of tongue being torn off is with temps between -5° and -15° C (23° to 5 °F).
Credit: MGM/UA Entertainment
We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting his tongue stuck to the surface. It’s practically a childhood rite of passage. A 1996 case study coined the term “tundra tongue” to describe the phenomenon. But how dangerous is it, really? And what’s the best way to free one’s tongue with minimal damage?
Anders Hagen Jarmund, a graduate student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), experienced tundra tongue firsthand in his youth and had the same questions. So he decided to investigate the underlying science as part of his master’s thesis, recruiting several colleagues to the project. This turned into two separate papers: one published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology and the other in the journal Head & Face Medicine.
“I’m from a small place called Hattfjelldal, which is quite cold in the winter,” Jarmund said of the rationale for undertaking the project. “I don’t remember if it was a signpost or a lamppost behind the school, but I remember licking it, and my tongue got stuck. This was an experience that my friends had also had, actually, and then we were wondering if it was actually dangerous, getting your tongue stuck to a lamppost or railing.” (Their experience was common, it seems; Norway actually passed legislation in 1998 to prohibit any bare metal in playground equipment.)
The first step was to conduct a thorough review of historical newspaper accounts. Jarmund et al. identified 113 unique cases of tundra tongue in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The earliest case they found was in 1845, when a French schoolboy froze his tongue to a metal bridge; he lost some skin on the tongue and lips when he pulled away.
Example of tongue tissue damage following detachment
Example of tongue tissue damage following detachment Credit: Anders Hagen Jarmund et al., 2026
Cases of tundra tongue peaked in the 1950s, and there were several cases that resulted from children reading a story about getting one’s tongue stuck and deciding to put this to the test—no doubt on a “triple dog dare,” just like Flick in A Christmas Story. Nearly all the cases involved children between the ages of 1 and 16 years—60 percent of them boys—and nearly all occurred outside, except for two instances: one involving an indoor refrigeration system and another where kids were served ice cream that had been stored on dry ice that subsequently caused lacerations on their tongues. (The authors wryly described the latter as a “mass casualty event.”)
One of the most memorable cases was a young child whose tongue got stuck to a metal railway line; fortunately, the approaching train was able to switch to another track in time, and the boy eventually came unstuck. This incident was reminiscent of an urban myth that circulated around 1927 about a man whose tongue got stuck to a rail line in Indiana and who was decapitated by an oncoming train.
Most of the remedies deployed in these cases involved the application of water (usually warmed), but people also resorted to glycerol, coffee, whiskey, a penknife, a car cigarette lighter, and hot denatured alcohol, as well as frequently calling the police or fire department. In general, victims suffered mild bleeding and some pain, but there were more serious cases that required hospital care, resulting in sutures, risk of infection, face scarring, and even potential tongue amputation.
A sticky situation
When Jarmund reviewed the medical literature, however, he found very little experimental research on the actual dangers of tundra tongue. It’s known that a tongue sticks to a cold metal surface because the saliva and moisture on the tongue freeze, forming an “ice bridge” between the two surfaces. But how much force is required to detach a tongue? Is there an optimal temperature at which the risks of tundra tongue are greatest?
Experimentation was in order to answer these and other questions. Jarmund et al. certainly didn’t want to sacrifice their own tongues, and it would have been unethical to use other human subjects. So they collected 84 fresh pig tongues from a local licensed slaughterhouse for the purpose.
They mounted the tongues by the base to a force sensor, and Jormund and his collaborators contributed their own saliva to lubricate the tongues before pressing them against a cold metal surface with the same basic characteristics as a Norwegian streetlight pole. They used dry ice to cool the metal surface. They detached the stuck tongues either by rapidly pulling them off manually or by gradually detaching them at varying speeds via a stepper motor. The team used an infrared camera to monitor the temperature of both the pig tongues and the metal surface.
Jarmund et al. conducted 164 iterations of the experiments under four different conditions over three days last March. The results were illuminating. Fully 54 percent of the time, parts of the tongue were torn during detachment, corresponding to the degree of force applied: the harder a tongue was pulled, the likelier a piece would be torn off. The greatest risk for tundra tongue was when temperatures were between minus-5° and minus-15° Celsius (23° to 5° Fahrenheit). But there is a point where the metal becomes so cold, there is significantly less risk of losing a piece of the tongue—perhaps because the tongue itself becomes sufficiently frozen to prevent it.
The best advice? “Try not to panic,” said Jarmund. “I remember the panic, you’re standing there and your tongue is stuck to metal. But above all else: Don’t pull your tongue off too fast.”
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2026.112740 (About DOIs).
Head & Face Medicine, 2026. DOI: 10.1186/s13005-025-00581-y.
Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
