Chameleon and Salamander Tongues Inspire Innovations in Medicine and Space Tech
A new study reveals the surprisingly similar mechanics behind the rapid-fire tongues of chameleons and salamanders, offering a potential blueprint for advancements ranging from clearing blood clots to capturing space debris.
The seemingly disparate worlds of reptiles and amphibians have yielded a shared secret: an incredibly efficient biological mechanism for projectile movement. Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) have discovered that both chameleons and salamanders utilize the same “ballistic tongue” technique, despite inhabiting different environments and evolving independently. This finding, published on September 8 in the journal Current Biology, could revolutionize engineering and medical applications.
While chameleons thrive in warmer, arboreal habitats and salamanders prefer cool, damp environments, observing their feeding habits reveals a striking commonality. “They evolved the same architecture in their bodies to fire their tongues at high speed,” explained a USF biologist in a statement. “What’s surprising is that they achieve this using the same ordinary tissues, tendons, and bone that other vertebrates have.”
For years, the research team, led by Yu Zeng, has investigated how animals achieve remarkable feats of movement, initially focusing on insect flight. This interest naturally extended to the hunting techniques of chameleons and salamanders. Zeng collaborated with USF animal physiology expert Stephen Deban to conduct a decade-long study analyzing video documentation of tongue utilization in both species. Their work represents the first side-by-side comparison, demonstrating a shared “unifying mechanical model.”
The key lies in the “ballistic tongue” mechanism. Both animals employ a slingshot-like action, squeezing muscles within their mouths to propel a skeletal rod within their tongues forward with incredible speed – up to 16 feet per second. “This design decouples muscle action from skeletal movement,” the authors detailed in their study, noting that the 30-fold range in body size highlights “some of the most efficient energy transfer in vertebrate movements.”
This efficiency is what makes the discovery so promising for technological applications. Researchers believe the underlying principles can be scaled using soft or flexible materials. “Nature has already solved these problems, now we’re learning how to adapt those solutions for us,” said Deban.
Discussions are already underway with engineers to explore biomedical applications, including the development of miniature devices equipped with artificial ballistic tongues capable of clearing blood clots. The same principles could also be applied to retrieve objects in disaster zones or even address the growing problem of space junk orbiting Earth. [A graphic illustrating the ballistic tongue mechanism in both a chameleon and salamander would be beneficial here.]
“It is gratifying to have a unifying story about these amazing tongues, as well as potential engineering applications after so many years of focusing on the biology of these animals,” Deban concluded, highlighting the long-term impact of this interdisciplinary research.
