The role of extensional viscosity in frog tongue projection

Frogs and other amphibians capture insects through high-speed tongue projection, some achieving tongue accelerations of over fifty times gravity. In this experimental study, we investigate how a frog's sticky saliva enables high-speed prey capture. At the Atlanta zoo, we used high-speed video to film the trajectory of frog tongues during prey capture. We have also designed and built a portable extensional rheometer; by following the capillary-driven thinning in the diameter of a thread of saliva we characterize the relaxation time and extensional viscosity and so infer the adhesive force between the frog tongue and prey.