The Physics of high-speed prey capture by a frog

Synopsis

Frogs use a sticky, whip-like tongue to grab prey even faster than a human can blink. One may think that the frog tongue succeeds in capturing only lightweight prey; however, the frog tongue can pull up to 1.4 times the frog’s body weight. This talk explains the mechanism by which frog tongues stick on prey so well enabling high-speed capture. The tongue’s unique stickiness results from a combination of a soft, viscoelastic tongue coupled with non-Newtonian saliva. These properties make its tongue 50 times more adhesive than known synthetic polymer materials such as the sticky-hand toy. These principles may inspire the design of adhesives for high-speed application.