Of all the strange and marvelous appendages to arise in animal anatomy, the frog tongue is one of the few to meet the requirements of a Marvel Comics superpower: the "X-Men" villain named Toad boasted ...

Chameleons can rocket their tongues at prey in a blur, frogs can slam sticky tongues onto insects with forces several times their own body weight, and hummingbirds seem to sip nectar with impossible ...

Yet how, exactly, frogs could maintain their grip on insects during such speedy attacks was not fully understood. Scientists knew the tongues were super-adhesive; one 2014 study revealed that a frog ...