Animal Voted Most Likely to Become Popular with Singles

-- or -- "If I'd Given One of These to Both My Ex-Wives, I'd Be a Bigamist Today."

Salamander Tongue Is World's Most Explosive Muscle

The greatest burst of power from any animal muscle comes from the tongue of a tropical salamander, scientists have announced.The giant palm salamander of Central America (Bolitoglossa dofleini) captures fast-moving bugs with an explosive tongue thrust that releases over 18,000 watts of power per kilogram of muscle. That shatters the previous record of 9,600 watts per kilogram, held by the Colorado River toad.

World's Fastest Moving Muscle: Salamander Can Shoot Its Tongue 50 Times Faster Than an Average Eye Blink!

You know, as these become more widespread in our cities, attendance at singles bars of all persuasions could approach absolute zero.

Or, we could just set up a fund to send these salamanders to where they'd do the most good. For instance, this guy. He's in more dire need of a giant palm salamander than any white man in history.

In other salamander facts comes this one:

"While many species capture insects with a projectile tongue, Hydromantes supramontis (one of the European plethodontids) actually fires its tongue skeleton out of its mouth, with the tongue protruding for up to 80% of its body length during this act. It’s ‘the only vertebrate known to shoot part of the visceral skeleton completely out of its body as a projectile’ " Darren Naish

One rude commenter in the thread termed this a "tongue bone," but I would never be so crude.

Yet more about salamander tongues. Why? Because I can. Here's a very unfortunate lead that is sure to have Islamophiles up in arms: "In Arabic, there is a phrase that is often applied to cocky youngsters: lisanak taweel ( “your tongue is long”). But even the cockiest young Arab is no match for the plethodontids, or lungless salamanders.... (Neurophilosophy) But he recovers well with extra detail on the aforementioned "tongue bone":

The salamander is able to do this because of an elaborate tongue skeleton and specialized tongue muscles. Whereas the tongue skeleton of other salamanders is located in the floor of the mouth, that of plethodontid salamanders has elongated cartilage elements which extend back over the shoulders. The skeleton contains a tuning fork-shaped cartilage structure which is derived from the visceral skeleton that supported the gill arches of the salamander’s ancient ancestor. The forked ends of this structure taper to a thin point at the back of the mouth; the tapered ends are surrounded by specialized ring-shaped tongue protractor muscles, which are so large that they are visible as bulges in the side of the salamander’s body.

You know, the more you study this miracle of nature the more you have to come to the conclusion that this salamander is the all-natural, organic, and homeopathic cure for singles loneliness, marital strife and frustration, and lesbian bed-death, all in one neat little animal package.

Posted by Vanderleun at March 12, 2006 10:21 AM | TrackBack