Report: Could Recently Discovered Bat Give GENE SIMMONS Tongue Envy?
December 7, 2006, 18 years ago
National Geographic News (news.nationalgeographic.com) has issued the following interesting report from Ted Chamberlain:
It's enough to give GENE SIMMONS 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.
