Today we're at the Singapore Zoo.
We've got some speedy munchers in there.
- Dan:
about holding the cricket yourself?
Absolutely.
Dan:
Gav:
Don't talk to it like it's cute.
Gav: It is cute.
If you could have a tongue like this, would you?
Those were some fast animals.
I wish I could do something that fast.
The chameleon I feel like-- absolute slow motion classic.
Yeah, it was disgusting, actually.
The end of the tongue, it looked so graphic.
It looks almost like we can't show it, but it's just a tongue.
Imagine just releasing the video
and then blurring it out.
( funk music playing )
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
It makes me feel inadequate as a human.
Yeah, me? Not great.
Which animal do you think is most like you?
Probably the turtle, 'cause I like to inhale food.
My impression is this...
- That was good. - Yeah.
Really cute, actually, for something so ugly.
I'm hoping that in my older age
that's what's going to happen to me as well.
People will just watch you eat
and think, "Oh, that's cute."
Yeah, "He ate so fast."
In a minute, we're going to do an experiment
demonstrating the mouth of a Mata Mata turtle.
But first, we spoke to a bloke called Webster.
- He'll be right with us. - Okay.
- Webster, how's it going? - Good.
Good, good. Got a couple of questions for you
about our fast animals.
First of all, chameleon--
how does it actually grip stuff with its tongue?
Okay, so the tongue envelops the prey.
So it's the saliva that's sticky.
So after it envelops, the saliva does the job.
Okay. Have you ever had your finger hit by one of them?
- Yeah. - Is it disgusting?
- No. - No? It's fine?
- No, it's fine. - It feels good?
It doesn't feel good, but it's not disgusting.
It'd be weird if it felt good.
- Ooh. - Ooh, that's nice.
How fast is a chameleon's tongue?
Webster:
at 97 kilometers per hour
within 1/100th of a second.
- Wait, so-- - That's-- that's insanity.
So how does it actually get that speed with its tongue?
They have accelerated muscles within their jaws
which shoot the tongue out.
Yeah, I noticed on the footage
it's almost like there's a rigid bar
inside the tongue that it fires off,
and then when it's raveling it in, it's still rigid.
What is that inside the tongue? Is it like a bone or--
Oh, it's not actually bone.
- It's cartilage. Yeah. - It's cartilage.
So it's almost like your nose. It's, like, a rigid...
- Yeah. - ...hard nose bit.
Except I can't fire my nose off.
It's big enough, I'd say. It kind of looks like that.
Offensive.
I think my favorite creature we filmed today was the Mata Mata turtle.
Do you mean your favorite as in, like, it was cute?
I just liked everything about it.
It's such an interesting way to eat.
- Yeah? - Yeah, 'cause the amount of volume it suddenly gets.
It doesn't have a very fat neck until it absorbs all that water.
Dan:
Gav:
Where do you typically find those turtles?
They're found in the rivers
and streams of South America in the Amazon.
So they just sit in-- they just wait for stuff to float by in the stream?
Yeah, because of how they look.
- They look like dry leaves. - Yeah.
Webster:
Gav:
- Webster:
When they poke their noses out, the prey can't see them.
So it's almost like they use it as a snorkel
and they just-- it's like a camouflage snorkel.
I feel like if you just saw the head,
you'd think, "What am I looking at?"
Dan:
We saw that when the Gaboon Viper struck,
it left a little bit of venom on the holder for the mouse.
How much venom does it typically inject into a prey?
They can inject however much they want.
Sometimes they don't inject at all.
But a full grown Gaboon Viper can inject about this much.
That's about six milliliters.
It's enough to put down a bull elephant.
- Yeah. - That seems unnecessary.
Well, you know, wouldn't have to--
- wouldn't have to hunt for the rest of his life. - Hungry snake.
That's so much. Like, visually that's so much.
Imagine that in your veins.
- Oh. - You'd be toast.
How long-- if this all went into you,
- how long would you have to live? - I don't know.
I don't think anyone has tried and lived to tell.
It's probably a good thing that we don't know that.
- Thanks very much, Webster, for your help today. - No problem.
- It's been interesting. - Had a lot of fun.
- Back to you Gav and Dan. - Thanks, us.
Now that we're back and we've got
all our footage downloaded, why don't we time exactly
- how long that snake strike was? - Yeah, sounds good.
Let's take a look.
Here is our Gaboon Viper footage.
So, on paper, these bad boys strike at between 500ths
and 900ths of a second.
- Is that right? - Yes, it is.
Okay, so we've got our timecode up here,
and we'll play and we'll time it.
You'll notice that there's absolutely no pre-movement.
It's from zero to "I'm eating the rat."
Dan:
is completely frozen, not moving in time.
-
Dan:
That's 50-- so that's the minimum.
There you go.
Gav:
- Tell you what we should do. - Yeah?
Your blink from birds.
Three, two, one, play.
- Absolutely smashed me. - Right?
- Yeah? - We'll play it side by side.
- Be a good comparison. - And we'll see if you blink,
do you actually miss it?
I feel like I'm gonna lose again here.
Gav:
( chiptunes playing )
Okay, so we've learned a lot about our snake.
Why don't we now time the tongue of the chameleon?
- Okay. - That'll be good.
Chameleon's up. It's got a nice little blap going on.
- Blap? - Bleh.
He's already sort of got his tongue out a little bit
- as, like, a pre-bang. - Yeah.
He sort of eases the tongue out, and it's--
Bap!
All right, let's play this.
So, the actual shoot off bit is bloody fast.
40 milliseconds from when he's sort of like--
to when he actually smashed the bug.
He's faster than the Gaboon Viper.
( chiptunes playing )
- So he's winning so far? - Yep, he's winning.
Let's have a look at the turtle.
Turtle's up. We're gonna start the timer
right before his gob starts moving.
- Okay. - "Gob" is English for "mouth."
Okay, let's play it.
So, I guess this one would vary
depending on the size of the fish, but, yeah,
-
( chiptunes playing )
So the speed of all these animals,
if we added up the total amount of time--
-
Why don't we, in real time,
play each one back to back?
That was quick.
- Wasn't that quick? - It was quick.
All right, shall we now move on
to our turtle experiment?
- Yeah. - All right.
Look, okay, I lost the blink to the bird.
- Yeah. - I want to claw one back.
So you think you can beat the turtle?
Let me see. Let's put some popcorn on here.
I'm gonna try and suck it into my gob
quicker than the turtle did.
Bit smaller than a fish. Bit lighter.
- Not really a fair comparison. - Just film it.
I'll get on the camera.
All right, Dan, a thousand frames a second.
Let's see if you're faster than a turtle.
Ready when you are.
All right, I guess. Okay.
- ( coughs ) - ( laughs )
That was actually quite good.
( Dan chokes, groans )
Slow motion gold.
- Did I win? - Well, let's see.
Let's see. Did you win?
I'll tell you what,
it's pretty-- it's up there.
But anything can be quick if you only do it
- a millimeter through the air. - Oh!
- ( Dan groans ) - End of experiment?
- Yes. - Gav: Yeah.
Well, there we go.
Today we learned a lot about fast animals
and a lot about Dan's mouth.
A little too much about my mouth.
- Way too much. - All right.
Hopefully, you enjoyed that video,
feel free to subscribe to the Slow Mo Guys,
and make sure you check out other episodes
from "Planet Slow Mo" over here.
Yeah.
- Dan says yeah. - Yeah.