How do frogs' tongues stretch so far?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ever wish you had a frog's tongue? You wouldn’t even have to pick up a cookie with your hand…your tongue would grab it for you! How amazing is that? But really, how DO frog tongues stretch so far? We asked Kiisa Nishikawa, a professor at Northern Arizona University, to help us find the answer.

Got a sticky question? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll slurp up an answer for you!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.
0:06.3	Answering those questions that make you go,
0:08.8	Um, Moment of Um, um, comes to you from APM. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios.
0:25.8	I'm Rosie DuPont.
0:28.1	Um.
0:29.9	I'm on a road trip going to visit some friends, but I'm stuck in traffic and I'm so hungry.
0:35.7	I ate all my emergency peanuts.
0:38.1	I skipped lunch and it's almost dinner time.
0:40.0	I just want to get there already so I can eat.
0:42.9	I can't believe the people in the car next to me are eating chips.
0:47.1	And their windows are down?
0:49.2	I can practically hear them crunching.
0:52.3	I wish I had a really, really long sticky tongue that could shoot out, wrap around that bag of chips,
0:58.5	and then snap back to me, like an extra long superhero frog tongue.
1:03.4	Then the chips would be mine.
1:05.3	Wah!
1:06.2	Ah!
1:08.2	Huh.
1:14.9	How do frog tongues work? I bet someone has looked into this.
1:21.7	Hi, I'm Lily from Washington State, and my question is, how do frog's tongue stretch so far?
1:28.3	My name is Kisa Nishikawa, and I'm a professor at Northern Arizona University. We did a lot of work making actually high-speed movies.
1:34.3	I think we looked at probably over 120 different species of frogs from all over the world.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -37 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from American Public Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of American Public Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.