I Fed a Chameleon From My Mouth To Study Its Mouth ( In Slow Motion) | Smarter Every Day 180

Hey, it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I've been wanting to do this video forever. Chameleons' tongues are very unique, and this is a very hungry chameleon right now, and I'm going to see if I can feed him by holding a cricket in my mouth. And there's a lot of her gone. Hmm, that was amazing. You got it! Okay, so the unique—that was—okay, the cool thing about chamele—I'm feeding him again. We're doing it again. Alright, cricket. I think you've had a good life. It's time to meet Mojo (watchmojo is cancer) (laughs). I think Mojo likes crickets. Okay, that's amazing.

Okay, so it's a really unique biomechanical device that's a catapult, and we're going to analyze it in slow motion, and then I'm going to show you a little model I built to explain this. But the chameleon's tongue is a wonder of nature; it is beautiful. So I'm gonna feed Mojo a little bit more and, uh, let's look at some slow motion, then we'll talk about it. Watchmojo is cancer.

Okay, this is not a good model, but we're gonna try this anyway. This is a chameleon, right? Right. In the back of a chameleon's throat, there is this long longitudinal bone that is fired by something called the hyoid bone. You have a hyoid—it's in the back of your throat just under your jaw—anyway, the chameleon will use that to launch that bone straight out forward, right? On the outside of that, there is this musculature. That's the tongue muscle, and a sphincter is like a muscle around a hole, right?

Well, this tongue of the chameleon has a series of sphincter muscles lined up, and it will fire them in rapid succession so that it'll squeeze that tongue muscle off of that bone that's protruding forward. So you've got several steps that happen in order to accelerate that tongue forward. It's really neat how it works, but it's really hard to visualize with pipes that you created in your eyes. But what does help you is when you have a really smart friend named Emily Graslie, and you can just randomly text her: "I was wondering if you guys have a chameleon skeleton?" To which she replies: "I'm certain we do."

Hey guys, it's Emily Graslie from The Brain Scoop here at the Field Museum in Chicago, and I wanted to show you a chameleon that's been prepared in a really special way that allows you to see all of the bones in the specimen that are still intact. And it's a process that we call diaphonization or clearing and staining. This is what this process looks like. It looks as though the specimen is just a skeleton, but actually there's still tissue that is on all the bones. It's just been processed with an enzyme that makes it clear, and then the specimen sits in glycerin, which has the same refractive index as the tissue in the animal, so you don't get any sort of reflection.

And then here you can see the hyoid bone, and here's some of the cartilage of the trachea of the windpipe, and then the hyoid bone, which is three bones put together. You can even see some of that other blue cartilage down there, and then wrapped around it, that's actually the tongue. That's still in place resting on the hyoid bone. As soon as Emily sent me this footage, everything became clear. You've got a two-bar mechanical linkage—just like I learned about in engineering school—in the throat of the chameleon. You can see that U-shape bone in the back fold up and back as he sticks that bone in and out. It's amazing!

You've got those muscles on the outside of that linear bone. You can see the sphincters fire to squirt that tongue off the end of it. It's amazing! Anyway, let's watch the high-speed together and see if you can identify each individual step in the process in order to attack this cricket.

On this shot the shadows are perfect, so they reveal exactly what's going on with the hyoid bone. It's operating exactly like a mechanical bar linkage. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this episode of "Smarter Every Day." You know how the internet works—sometimes a sponsor will sponsor a video. Well, this one was sponsored by KiwiCo. If you watched "Smarter Every Day" for any length of time, you know I love their products. I reached out to them. They sponsored when they were called Kiwi Crate, but that's the name of one of their products, so now they changed their name to KiwiCo.

Different boxes are focused on different ages in different stages of development. For example, they have a new box called a "cricket crate" that's focused on 2+, so my daughter's excited—she gets to have one for herself now. "I got these." "What do you got?" "I got all of these!" "Oh my goodness! Are you—are you serious? You're going to make rockets? Man! It's a rocket! I might steal this from you."

If you want to do this, go to KiwiCo.com/smarter. Get the first box for free; you just pay shipping. This is completely worth it, and it is great for a kid's mind. As a dad, I love this because it gives my kids hands-on developmental time. It's better than screen time. We enjoy it. My son, for example, he likes tinker crates. He learns about engineering. My daughter loves art, so we do the doodle crate for her. She even keeps the old boxes and goes back through them sometimes. This is a blast! You will love it. I highly recommend it. Go to KiwiCo.com/smarter.

These make great gifts. It's like giving the kid a gift every single month, and the gift is "learning." Thanks to KiwiCo for sponsoring "Smarter Every Day" and give my family some quality time together. We really appreciate it. A big thanks to Emily Graslie from The Brain Scoop. She's got a great YouTube channel; you should check it out. She basically takes some part animals all the time. You should go look at that. It's called The Brain Scoop. You'll love it.

Also, a big thanks to Drew, who is Mojo's human. Drew takes care of Mojo, and he does a really good job at it. "How many crickets will Mojo eat?" "He'll eat about 10 to 15 a day." "So what other—what other things do you feed him? Just crickets?" "Just crickets. He'll eat hornworms, cicadas, butterflies, moths." "You're feeding butterflies??"

I hope this video earned your subscription. I'm gonna put a link right here beside Mojo. If you feel like this video has earned it, please click the subscribe link. I'm not gonna know if you click it or not, but Mojo is gonna be sitting there with a look of disapproval until you actually subscribe to "Smarter Every Day." So I don't know, whatever you want to do, but Mojo's watching. Here we go.