A Chameleon’s Tongue…

[kinyonga]

Oxford mathematicians reveal secrets of chameleon's 'extreme' tongue…“Special collagenous tissue within the chameleon's tongue is one of the secrets behind its effectiveness. This tissue surrounds a bone at the core of the tongue and is surrounded itself by a muscle.”…​

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-b...ians-reveal-secrets-chameleons-extreme-tongue

Lingual structural pattern of juvenile Chameleon, Chameleo chameleon…​

“Finally the authors concluded that the juvenile ages of common chameleon exhibited the characteristic feature of the developing tongue system which is adapted for capturing prey coincides with glandular structure of fore-tongue, pattern of lingual papillae and stem cell contents.”..​

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314808X16301920

Functional implications of supercontracting muscle in the chameleon tongue retractors…​

“We suggest that the chameleon tongue retractor muscles may have evolved supercontractile properties to enable a substantial force to be produced over a wide range of tongue projection distances”…​

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11719528/

Evidence for an elastic projection mechanism in the chameleon tongue...​

“The release power of the sliding tubular springs exceeds the work rate of the accelerator muscle by at least a factor of 10 because the elastic-energy release occurs much faster than the loading process.”…​

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691657/

The Elastic Secrets of the Chameleon’s Tongue…
“The model involves three distinct coupled subsystems: the energetics of the intralingual sheaths, the mechanics of the activating accelerator muscle and the dynamics of tongue extension”…
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2016.0030

Chameleon has one of fastest tongues in animal kingdom…​

“the team found that smaller species' tongues could accelerate at more than 250 g, five times faster than that of the largest chameleon”…​

https://www.science.org/content/article/video-chameleon-has-one-fastest-tongues-animal-kingdom

Lens of Time: A Record-Breaking Tongue Lashing | bioGraphic…​

The Mechanism of Tongue Projection in Chameleons: II. Role of Shape Change in a Muscular Hydrostat…​

“We propose that the elongate, parallel-sided shape of the entoglossus is a key, derived feature of the chameleon feeding mechanism, and that this novel shape interacts with the accelerator muscle to provide a preloading mechanism enabling the accelerator muscle to generate maximal forces, thus enhancing the potential acceleration and velocity of the tongue during ballistic prey-capture behaviour.”…​

https://journals.biologists.com/jeb...-Mechanism-of-Tongue-Projection-in-Chameleons

 

[elizaann2]

Haha what a strange animal we are all fascinated with

 

[kinyonga]

Haha what a strange animal we are all fascinated with

Yup..strange and fascinating! But then most animals fascinate me enough that I love to study them and learn more about them!

I love to test their reactions to things if I can do it in a relatively un stressful way. For example…I have a “flock” of blue jays that visit my yard. One beeps at me to tell me he/she is there and needs a nut. If I beep once… he does…if I beep twice…he does. Can’t get him to do 3. He/she also is the only one of them that has figured out how to get more than one peanut (in a shell) in his/her mouth at the same time. (One is shoved straight down the throat and the other held across the end of the bill.) So to test him/her, I pick odd shaped nuts or fat ones to see if two can still be picked up. Amazing how the problem is solved.

(I test other animals too….keeps me out of trouble! )