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Scientists from the Functional Morphology and Biomechanics research group at Kiel University have shown, for the first time, what happens when a frog's tongue makes contact with a surface. They discovered similarities to conventional adhesive tape.
Like sticky tape, the tongues form lots of little threads (fibrils) when being removed from a surface, which break one at a time before the contact disconnects. "We got horned frogs to spit their tongues towards a cricket, which was placed behind a sheet of glass", said Dr Thomas Kleinteich from the Zoological Institute to describe the experiment. The glass was connected to a light source which lit up the places the tongue came into contact with. The researchers then filmed these lit areas using a high-speed camera with a time resolution of 0.5 milliseconds (half of a thousandth of a second). This enabled them to observe exactly how the contact formed and then disconnected again.
The zoologists also investigated the anatomy of the frog's tongues. Using 3D models created by micro computer tomography, they were able to see how individual muscle fibres in the tongue were arranged. According to this, the muscle that pulls the tongue back into the frog's mouth literally fans out under the surface of the tongue. When the frog pulls its tongue back into its mouth, the force is spread evenly over the entire surface of the tongue. Kleinteich: "This is a similar effect to trying to vertically pull a strip of Sellotape off a surface, instead of starting from one end - you need significantly more strength to do so." This enables the animals to lift insects, or even other frogs or small mice, in one go.
Original publication:
Thomas Kleinteich and Stanislav Gorb. Frog tongue acts as muscle powered
adhesive tape. R. Soc. open sci. 2: 150333.
Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150333
Photos are available to download:
Caption: The horned frog (Ceratophrys cranwelli) hunts by burying itself in loose soil, staying motionless and waiting for prey to get close.
Photo/Copyright: Kleinteich
Caption: The experiment setup: Kiel scientists used a high-speed camera to film how frogs spit their tongues towards a sheet of glass. The places the tongue comes into contact with the glass are lit up.
Photo/Copyright: Kleinteich
Caption: The threads which form when the frog's tongue is removed from the glass can clearly be seen in the high-speed recording (a still frame here).
Photo/Copyright: Kleinteich
Caption: Micro-CT image of a frog's tongue: The muscle fibres (in red) are spread evenly across the entire surface of the tongue.
Image/Copyright: Kleinteich
Contact:
Dr Thomas Kleinteich
Funktionelle Morphologie und Biomechanik
Kiel University
Tel.: +49 (0)431 880 4509
E-mail: tkleinteich@zoologie.uni-kiel.de
The horned frog (Ceratophrys cranwelli) hunts by burying itself in loose soil, staying motionless an ...
Kleinteich
None
Micro-CT image of a frog's tongue: The muscle fibres (in red) are spread evenly across the entire su ...
Kleinteich
None
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