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Originally Posted by astrodex
Exactly where does he put that thing when he's not using it?
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Originally Posted by milkfish
Beating out Gene Simmons for the record narrowly.
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To quote from the news article on the National Geographic site,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...gue-photo.html
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It's enough to give Gene Simmons (inset) appendage envy. Despite a '70s rock rumor, the Kiss bassist did not have his tongue surgically replaced with a cow's. But could Anoura fistulata tempt him to go batty?
A. fistulata (shown lapping sugar water from a tube) has the longest tongue, relative to body length, of any mammal—and now scientists think they know why.
"This bat was just discovered last year, and now we've observed a very unique relationship with a local flower," said Nathan Muchhala, a University of Miami Ph.D. student whose team's findings are to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature.
Found in an Andean cloud forest in Ecuador, A. fistulata (aka the tube-lipped nectar bat) evolved mutually with an extremely long, bell-shaped flower, the team says. In fact, armed with a tongue that retracts into the bat's rib cage, A. fistulata is now the only animal that can pollinate the flower.
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[img src=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/images/061206-tongue-photo_big.jpg[/img]