A tongue and a half.If there were a prize for animal rudeness, a small South American bat would surely be in the running. The creature doesn't just stick out its tongue. It shoots it way, way out. In fact, its tongue is longer than its body. At 1.5 times the animal's body length, the bat's tongue sets a record for the longest mammal tongue in relation to body size. Among all animals with backbones (called vertebrates), only chameleons, which are reptiles, have longer tongues. Theirs can be twice the length of their bodies. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nathan Muchhala of the University of Miami This article is about the university in Coral Gables, Florida. For the university in Oxford, Ohio, see Miami University. The University of Miami (also known as Miami of Florida,[2] UM,[3] or just The U in Coral Gables Coral Gables, city (1990 pop. 40,091), Miami-Dade co., SE Fla., SW of Miami; inc. 1925. Founded at the height of the Florida land boom, Coral Gables is a noted planned city, with tree-lined boulevards and Mediterranean-style buildings. , Fla., discovered the night-roaming bat in the Andes Mountains Andes Mountains Mountain system, western South America. One of the great natural features of the globe, the Andes extend north-south about 5,500 mi (8,900 km). They run parallel to the Caribbean Sea coast in Venezuela before turning southwest and entering Colombia. in Ecuador. He named it Anoura fistulata. The bat, which sips nectar from flowers, has a long, pointy point·y adj. point·i·er, point·i·est Having an end tapering to a point. lower lip The lower lip covers the anterior body of the mandible. It is lowered by the Depressor labii inferioris muscle. See also
. When it feeds at a flower, its tongue shoots out along a groove in its lower lip before quickly pulling back between sips. To measure the length of its tongue, Muchhala encouraged the bat to drink sugar water through a drinking straw. Then, he measured how far its tongue reached. The tongues of other local nectar bats went down 4 centimeters into the straw, the scientist found. The tongue of A. fistulata reached more than twice that far. "I was amazed," Muchhala says. Next, Muchhala studied examples of these bats found in museum collections. He discovered that the base of the bat's tongue is deep down in the animal's ribcage ribcage Noun the bony structure formed by the ribs that encloses the lungs , near the heart, rather than at the back of its jaw. Special muscles within the tongue help it lengthen quickly. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the bats' fur, Muchhala found pollen grains of a pale-green, trumpet-shaped flower called Centropogon nigricans. These flowers are about as deep as A. fistulata's tongue is long, and nectar collects at the bottom of each flower's tube. Muchhala videotaped some of these flowers for more than a week. He found that A. fistulata was their only visitor. He suggests that just these bats pollinate pol·li·nate also pol·len·ate tr.v. pol·li·nat·ed also pol·len·at·ed, pol·li·nat·ing also pol·len·at·ing, pol·li·nates also pol·len·ates To transfer pollen from an anther to the stigma of (a flower). the flowers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scaly anteaters are the only other animals known to have tongue tubes in their chests. Their tongues stretch about half as long as their bodies. Anteaters eat from ant nests, which are like the deep flowers that bats feed from. Both animals, it seems, came up with similar strategies for getting food out of hard-to-reach places.--E. Sohn |
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