Fastest Tongue in the West

Parson's chameleon catapults its tongue and captures grasshopper before it can hop away

Genesis 7:14
​
​Considering the chameleon's slow walking speed, you might never guess that it possesses the fastest tongue of any creature. On second thought, it does makes a lot of sense for a wise Designer to equip chameleons with a tongue that's actually longer than its entire body … and lightning-fast so it can catch fast-moving insects.

Using high-speed video and x-ray film, two Dutch biologists have calculated that the chameleon shoots its tongue out of its mouth at more than 26 body lengths per second. They found that the chameleon's tongue accelerates from 0 to 20 feet per second in only 20 milliseconds!

So what's the chameleon's secret? By dissecting the chameleon's tongue, the biologists discovered a layer of collagen tissue that serves as a biological catapult that propels the tongue just similar to the way a drawn bow fires off an arrow.

Can evolution explain how this catapult got there? Creationist and author Bruce Malone points out in his book Censored Science, "It is theoretically possible to make up a story of how the chameleon's specialized eyes, tongue, and catapult structures all just happened to develop independently in order to work in perfect concert. But given that there is no fossil evidence of any other creatures possessing such structures, it would seem to be a more logical conclusion that the features were created all at the same time, rather than developed by many small step-changes over huge periods of time."

Notes: B. Trivedi, "'Catapults' Give Chameleon Tongues Superspeed, Study Says," National Geographic News, 5/19/04. Bruce Malone, Censored Science: The Suppressed Evidence, pp. 18-19 (Search for the Truth Publications, 2009). Photo: Photograph by Paul Souders, Corbis. (Fair Use). Creation Moments, Inc., P.O. Box 839, Foley, MN 56329 www.creationmoments.com

---