{"id":251842,"date":"2026-01-18T23:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/251842\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:48:07","slug":"its-2-5-times-its-body-length-all-sticky-and-coiled-like-a-spring-ready-to-catapult-out-accelerating-faster-than-a-sports-car-reaching-nearly-100km-h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/251842\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s 2.5 times its body length, all sticky and coiled like a spring ready to catapult out, accelerating faster than a sports car reaching nearly 100km\/h"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bigger chameleons may look more striking, with their changing colours, swivelling eyes and long, elastic tongues (which are often their body length) &#8211; but their smaller cousins take the prize for tongue-strike speed. <\/p>\n<p>Though its body is only about 5cm long, the little rosette-nosed pygmy chameleon from Tanzania has one of the fastest tongues.<\/p>\n<p>That organ  is 2.5 times its body length, all sticky and coiled like a spring ready to catapult out, accelerating faster than a sports car &#8211; reaching nearly 100km\/h in only one-hundredth of a second.<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/reptiles\/chameleon-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">chameleon<\/a> rarely misses its target, ambushing prey at a distance while hiding patiently, camouflaged among shrubs. Rapidly recoiling elastic muscle tissue enhances the tongue&#8217;s speed; the tip is covered in thick, sticky slime and sports a suction pad to firmly hold insect prey while it is swiftly drawn back into the reptile&#8217;s mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Main image: \u00a9 John Lyakurwa, some rights reserved (CC BY), CC BY 4.0 <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bigger chameleons may look more striking, with their changing colours, swivelling eyes and long, elastic tongues (which are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-251842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}