Bat's Freakishly Long Tongue Caught on Camera

By Life's Little Mysteries staff

Credit: Live Science / Nathan Muchhala

Bat's Freakishly Long Tongue Caught on Camera

June 8, 2012 Updated Jun 8, 2012 at 2:06 PM PDT

A team of explorers for the National Geographic Channel has captured never-before-seen footage of the tube-lipped nectar bat, a peculiar species discovered in 2005 in the cloud forests of Ecuador. The bat is camera-worthy thanks to one attribute in particular: its incredibly long, worm-like tongue.

The 2.5-inch bat sports a 3.5-inch tongue — the longest (relative to body length) of any mammal in the world. If humans were similarly proportioned, we'd have 9 feet of flesh spilling out of our mouths.

To capture this striking footage of the bat plunging its tongue into nectar-laden flowers, the NatGeo team cut a tiny hole into the base of a flower and installed a special slow-motion camera inside, which slowed the action by 40 times.

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