High-Speed Feeding Video

Hi everyone,

I know a lot of you already know what my Ph.D. research is about but for those of you who don't, I work on feeding in chameleons. Part of my research involves filming chameleons feeding using high-speed cameras. The camera in our lab is able to film at up to 106,000 frames per second but as you increase the frame rate, you lose resolution and need more light. For chameleon feeding, I am able to get all the information I need filming at 3000 frames per second. Anyway, I've been working on taking some of these videos and making them so I could upload them online and thought I would share the first. This video is of a 4.7cm SVL male Rhampholeon spinosus feeding on a cricket. He projected his tongue out 10.4 cm (>2.2x body length) and achieved a maximum projection velocity of 5.2 meters/second. You can watch the video here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/parsonii2002/3613921083/

Hope you enjoy it.

Chris

WOW!!!!! Cris I envy you

Very cool work. keep it up.

Wow, amazing Chris ! Thanks for sharing !

Thats awesome, I had know idea you worked with chameleons.

Awesome. The extreme contrast in the extension vs. retraction makes you appreciate how fast they actually work!

Any way I can get an mpg or avi (or whatever will work in powerpoint)version of that to insert intop my powerpoint presentations? Full credit to you, of course!

WOW!! What an amazing video of a gorgeous little chameleon! Brilliant!

Thank you for sharing this with us, Chris. Your work never ceases to amaze me!

You need an apprentice??

The speed and accuracy is unbelievable. Nice shot.

Reminds me of Scorpion from Mortal Combat. Cool vid.

Wonderful Chris!! Thank you so much for sharing that with all of us.

I made a comment on facebook... but ill say it again here... way cool.

WOW!!!! That is so cool!

Watching that crickets legs go backward and then forward has us laughing hard, the cricket gets whip-lashed big time. Love the video, very nice

Awesome video thanks for sharing!

That is a fantastic video! How long is the actual recording in real time? Man, I wish I was doing your phd!

wow

wow, this is a great movie,
thank you for sharing
Thomas

Glad you all enjoyed the movie. I have a few hundred videos of about 14 different species at this point. I have a number of species in my collection that I still need to film. It definitely is fun research but even fun questions have aspects of the research that get old pretty quick. Analyzing these videos is quite challenging and time consuming.

Eric Adrignola said:

Any way I can get an mpg or avi (or whatever will work in powerpoint)version of that to insert intop my powerpoint presentations? Full credit to you, of course!

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I can probably arrange that. When are you giving your next talk? I'm hoping to have my personal site with a bunch of these movies up in the next month or so and once I do I should have about a dozen or so up for people to see.

chams1 said:

You need an apprentice??

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I'll be sure to let you know, Julie. BTW, are you the Julie who Mike introduced me to at a show down here a couple months ago who helped him at the Chicago show?

SliK JiM said:

That is a fantastic video! How long is the actual recording in real time? Man, I wish I was doing your phd!

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Ha, that entire video in real time is approximately 0.6 seconds. The video is slowed down 100x. Its pretty quick.

Chris

The way you got the cricket to stay on that small screen is a miracle in itself.

dodolah said:

The way you got the cricket to stay on that small screen is a miracle in itself.

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Oh, don't even get me started. I don't always have the longest fuse, unfortunately, and trying to get the crickets to cooperate when you're dealing with a shy animal can be the most frustrating thing. That's especially true when I'm filming at either high (35C/95F) or low temps (15C/60F). Try sitting in a giant refrigerator for a couple hours filming at 60F and trying to be perfectly still for about 30 minutes while a shy chameleon gets over you being in their bubble to put a cricket on the screen only to have the cricket let go of the screen just as the chameleon starts to protrude his tongue to eat.

Chris

dude that's the best f***en video i've ever seen.