Tongue Splitting

Tongue splitting, also known as bifurcation or forking, is a type of body modification where the tip of the tongue is cut in half to look somewhat like that of a reptile's tongue. Over the past decade it has become more prevalent in the body-mod subculture but overall is still a pretty rare thing to come across.

It is believed that the first tongue split happened sometime in the mid 90's. In 1997, an unknown Italian man e-mailed pictures to the body-modification ezine BME describing how three years earlier he had a dentist split his tongue.

Pictures of the first known tongue split. credit BME

Just prior to the Italian's pictures being posted online a Californian woman named Dustin Allor split her tongue by threading fishing line through her existing piercing and looping it so that it wrapped around the end of her tongue. For over three weeks she continually tightened the loop until it cut through, splitting her tongue in two. Dustin's split was published at the end of 1997 in the magazine Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly.

Dustin Allor

Erik Sprague, a man you would never confuse with someone else, was the third person to have their tongue split. In July of 1997 he had an oral surgeon split his tongue with a laser. Erik has since continued to modify and alter his body and is now the side show performer known as The Lizardman.

There are now a multitude of images and videos on the internet of people sharing their tongue splits. Bellow are a few of the more eye catching ones I have come across.