High-Speed Chameleon Feeding Video

[Chris Anderson]

Hi everyone,

My Ph.D. research is on feeding in chameleons. Part of my research involves filming chameleons feeding using high-speed cameras. The camera in our lab is able to film at up to 106,000 frames per second but as you increase the frame rate, you lose resolution and need more light. For chameleon feeding, I am able to get all the information I need filming at 3000 frames per second. Anyway, I've been working on taking some of these videos and making them so I could upload them online and thought I would share the first. This video is of a 4.7cm SVL male Rhampholeon spinosus feeding on a cricket. He projected his tongue out 10.4 cm (>2.2x body length) and achieved a maximum projection velocity of 5.2 meters/second. You can watch the video here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/parsonii2002/3613921083/

Hope you enjoy it.

Chris

 

[latshki]

thats awesome, I wish my chams tong went twice his body length he'd be able to get his food from the other side of his cage

 

[sncboom]

That is simply amazing. Nice work. Thanks for posting.

 

[Vicious_Fish]

That's wicked!

 

[Will Hayward]

Chris, you posted two videos a couple years ago on chamforums... can you post those up here as well? one was a calyptratus and the other a pygmy species. I'd like to see those ones again also.

 

[Chris Anderson]

Will,

I'm setting up a personal website and will have about a dozen of them on it once I finish it. I'm hoping to have it done in the next month or so. Once I do, I'll post the URL and there will be a number of them to check out. In the mean time, you can watch this: http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/da...008/daily-planet-september-09-2008/#clip92044

Glad you all liked the video!

Chris

 

[Will Hayward]

Chris were you featured on Daily Planet? I like that show.

I can't see the video in the link you sent, so I'll try again later on another computer.

 

[Finalfire9]

First link is really amazing but that second link i couldnt get working for some reason.. I use chrome but the server said it was down

 

[Chris Anderson]

Yeah, I was on it back in September. They filmed it last summer. Here is another link to the segment you can try: http://www.xplanefreeware.net/cameron/Chameleon.mpg

Chris

 

[jrjerin]

nice