Birds' Tongues in Pictures

' ~ Speaking in Queer Tongues

Lost tongues

The latest issue of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) atlas on the status of the world's languages finds threats to a growing number as a handful of languages dominate an increasingly 'globalised' world but policy towards languages can have a major effect on survival prospects. In one extreme example of the threatened status of some languages, Unesco ...

Recent advances in electronic tongues.

This minireview describes the main developments of electronic tongues (e-tongues) and taste sensors in recent years, with a summary of the principles of detection and materials used in the sensing units. E-tongues are sensor arrays capable of distinguishing very similar liquids employing the concept of global selectivity, where the difference in the electrical response of different materials se...

Why snakes have forked tongues.

The serpent's forked tongue has intrigued humankind for millennia, but its function has remained obscure. Theory, anatomy, neural circuitry, function, and behavior now support a hypothesis of the forked tongue as a chemosensory edge detector used to follow pheromone trails of prey and conspecifics. The ability to sample simultaneously two points along a chemical gradient provides the basis for ...

Disappearance of Resonance Tongues

where ai(t) = Pi + εQi cos2t, where Pi,Qi and ε are given constants, and where it is assumed that when ε=0 this system exhibits a pair of linearly independent solutions of period 2π . Since the driver cos2t has period π , we have the ingredients for a 2:1 subharmonic resonance which typically results in a tongue of instability involving unbounded solutions when ε >0. We present conditions on th...