title: Predation with the tongue through viscous adhesion, a scaling approach.
abstract: Some predators, mainly lizards and amphibians, capture their prey with their tongue. The process of capture involves strong adhesion mechanisms to overcome inertial forces that should be related to a viscous mucus produced at the tongue tip. A scaling model of prey capture independent of the anatomic details of the animals is developed from a study of viscous adhesion with a probe-tack geometry. This model is then successfully applied to describe the nonlinear evolution of the maximum prey size with the predator length for chameleons. This approach of prey capture defines a new framework that should help biophysicists and biologists to study more quantitatively the adhesion mechanisms for various animals and biological processes.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Interfaces & Fluides Complexes, Université de Mons, 20 Place du Parc, B-7000 Mons, Belgium. pascal.Damman@umons.ac.be.
authors.forename: Maurine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Houze
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Interfaces & Fluides Complexes, Université de Mons, 20 Place du Parc, B-7000 Mons, Belgium. pascal.Damman@umons.ac.be.
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Damman
mesh_terms: D000268:Adhesiveness; D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D008124:Locomotion; D008954:Models, Biological; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D014059:Tongue / Q000502:physiology*; D014783:Viscosity