A chameleon’s tongue can dart out of its mouth and nab insects at super fast speeds, sometimes reaching 13.4 miles (21.6 kilometers) per hour. To do this, chameleon’s have a bone at the base of their tongue to anchor the muscles. And good thing to as their ballistic tongues can shoot out of their mouth and reach lengths 1.5 times that of their body.
BBC Unplugged has slowed down this process so we can see it in action. “This is 1500 frames a second, so that’s about 60 times slower than real time,” says Sam Hume, an assistant producer at BBC Earth, in the video. “And [their tongues] reach around 41 g, which is actually around four times faster than the maximum acceleration of a fighter jet.”
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