Overview

• Peer-reviewed findings appear on the Sept. 8 cover of Current Biology, led by Yu Zeng and Stephen Deban of the University of South Florida.
• Comparative videos resolve both animals’ tongue launches into a single mechanical model that stores and releases energy like a slingshot.
• The strikes reach up to 16 feet per second using ordinary vertebrate tissues such as tendons and bone, highlighting a simple, robust architecture.
• Researchers say the mechanism could inform scalable soft or flexible actuators for medicine, disaster response, and space operations, and they are in talks with engineers.
• Follow-up work will investigate rapid, precise retraction to guide designs for deployable tools that must return reliably to a starting position.