Hummingbirds live life at incomprehensible speeds. Their flight acrobatics are amazing, maneuvering more like insects than birds as they flit around, flying upside down and even backwards. They’re a blur as they race between flowers. When they do pause to visit a flower momentarily, they’re licking 15 to 20 times a second to extract their nectar fuel. What makes them so intriguing to us is the result of this simple dietary choice: they drink nectar. Each flower doesn’t offer a lot, so to make a.
Hummingbird tongues are tiny pumps that spring open to draw in nectar
Kristiina Hurme, Research Associate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
