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Science 7 November 1997:
Vol. 278. no. 5340, p. 989
DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5340.989g
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For endotherms such as whales to flourish in richly productive high-latitude waters, they must have overcome a considerable potential constraint--loss of heat through the tongue. The tongues of baleen whales can be particularly large and, unlike the skin, cannot be insulated by a thick blubber layer. Heyning and Mead (p. 1138) show that the tongues of gray whales contain a large countercurrent heat exchanger. Temperature measurements at the oral cavity of a live gray whale suggest that this heat exchanger can considerably reduce such heat loss when the whale feeds in cold polar and subpolar waters.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)