Longest tongue for a mammal (relative to body size)

The tube-lipped nectar bat (Anoura fistulata), native to cloud forests of Ecuador, has a body length of around 5.5 centimetres (2.1 inches) but a tongue length of up to 8.49 centimetres (3.3 inches) – giving it a body-to-tongue ratio of 1:1.5, or 150% its own body size. When not using its tongue, the organ is retracted and stored in the bat's thoraic cavity around its rib cage.

The bat has co-evolved its super-long tongue along with a particular tubular flower – Centropogon nigricans, endemic to the western slopes of the Andes – a mutually beneficial arrangement for both the animal and the plant.

This emulates a similar relationship between Morgan's sphinx (hawk) moths of Madagascar (Xanthopan morgani praedicta), which boasts the longest insect tongue, and the star-shaped flowers of the "comet orchid" (Angraecum sesquipedale).

The bat was first described in 2005 and its tongue anatomy was detailed in December 2006 in the journal Nature by Nathan Muchhala (USA), assistant professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in St Louis, Missouri, USA.