My readers: "Is he seriously going to post about Toothless's saliva/tongue again?
Me: "You betcha! We've got new info!"
Funny enough, this post will mostly be based off of a conversation I had with a fellow dragon fan concerning Hiccup's use of Toothless's drool in the thirty second clip. It is kind of an expansion on my last post about his saliva. That one was mostly about the healing properties, this one will deal more with it's consistency.
In the clip, we see Hiccup get Toothless to lick a small piece of parchment that Hiccup then attaches to his ever growing map. The fact that me and the fellow fan discussed was, is Toothless's saliva actually sticky? Why does it work as an adhesive to hold a map together. I tried to put a little thought into it, and I came up with some interesting conclusions concerning the drool of that darling dragon.
First off, I don't think Toothless's drool is sticky. If you stuck your hand in his mouth or if he licked your face, I don't think it would feel anything like sap or glue or other strongly adhesive liquids. My reasons for thinking this come from the actual visuals we have gotten of the drool (from both HTTYD, GotNF and HTTYD2 clips) and simple reptile biology. In GotNF, we see a lot of it get dumped onto Hiccup's head, and it looks remotely watery. In the trailer for HTTYD2, when Toothless begins his merciless licky onslaught you can see drips of it breaking loose and shooting at the camera. All of this makes me think that the drool is not particularly sticky. More importantly, if Toothless's saliva was actually very glue like, it would be a physical disadvantage. The only reptiles with very thick, sticky saliva use that saliva to hunt with (like chameleons and other lizards that predate with their tongues). It is clear that Toothless does not do that. As far as we have seen, Toothless is happy eating fish. He doesn't chew them (though he may slice them up), so he is forced to swallow his food whole. Reptiles that do that have slick saliva. They have to! You need the prey item to go down your throat without much drag and certainly without getting stuck. So, as a predator who mostly eats fish and certainly does not use his tongue to hunt, I imagine that Toothless would have drool that is very slick and lubricant. If Toothless had sticky saliva, it would be annoying to have say scales or hair sticking to his tongue, or if he bit at something and missed, he could get leaves, twigs, and other unpleasant things kinda stuck in his mouth. In the end, I really don't think Toothless's saliva is sticky.
But then the question comes, how does a slick liquid work so well as an adhesive? It's a great question! I had to think a while on it, but in the end I think it makes sense. Though Toothless's drool is slick and not sticky, I would say it has a certain amount of clinginess to it. It likes to cling to objects, especially dry ones, that it comes in contact with. This is again useful for a predator who doesn't chew. It would allow him to sort of easily slather his food as he bites onto it, and because it would cling to the prey item, it would make it easier for him to swallow. So, the stuff clings, but it doesn't have strong adhesive properties. Here's where I think the rub is on having paper stuck together by it: When it dries, any solids or enzymes in the saliva would harden and actually function as a natural, crystal-like adhesive. Kinda like when a soap bar hardens to the edge of your tub. Though soap isn't sticky, when it hardens, it can actually take a good tug to get loose. So, I think that property would help Toothless's saliva hold the sheets of paper together. But, that's not all. This is where I really start liking the idea of using Toothless's spit to hold paper together. Saliva has digestive properties. It is slightly acidic. Not a lot, not enough to sting or even tickle when he's licking Hiccup, but enough to slightly break down the natural fibers in the parchment. If both pieces of parchment were ever so slightly melting (and I mean ever so slightly) while pressed together, once Toothless's drool dried and the acidic reaction stopped completely, the fibers in the paper would indeed have practically intertwined and the two faces of the sheets would have melted ever so minutely into one another.
Final conclusion: Toothless's drool is normally slick and clingy, not glue-like. The acidity and drying solids allow it to work great as an adhesive once dry nonetheless.
So, it works as glue and it's still super adorable to be licked by :)
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