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Scientists amazed by bat with longest tongue

July 2 2012 at 10:01am
By Daily Mail

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iol scitech july 2 bat

AFP

File photo: The amazing feat was recorded for the first time in a new documentary for the National Geographic channel.

London - The next time you can’t quite reach the last scoop of peanut butter in the jar, you might consider summoning Ecuador’s long-tongued bat.

The creature has a 3½ in tongue — which is one-and-a-half times the length of its body.

If humans were built to these proportions, we would have 9ft (about 2.7m)of tongue poking out of our mouths.

But this bat avoids such a fate by keeping its tongue rolled up, nestled neatly in its oesophagus.

Scientists were able to measure the bat’s tongue by artificially lengthening the tube of the Andean flower.

The hungry bats then had to fully stretch their tongues to reach the prized pollen.

The amazing feat was recorded for the first time in a new documentary for the National Geographic channel. - Daily Mail

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