Though you probably never gave it a moment’s thought, it turns out we’ve been wrong about how hummingbirds drink. A new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used high-speed imagery of a hummingbirds split tongue to determine what, exactly, happens when a the fast-flapping birds go in for a drink.
Conventional wisdom held that the liquid nectar was held in the tubes that run along the bird’s tongue through capillary action. However, this would mean that thicker liquids would not be held as well, suggesting that hummingbirds would prefer less viscous meals. After careful study it was shown that, in fact, the birds prefer the thicker nectar. Enter: The high-speed video, which revealed the bird’s trick.
The video showed that when the tongue entered the fluid, the tubes opened up allowing fluid to enter. When it was withdraw, the two sides of the tongue closed tight like a zipper. Though this discovery has overturned many flawed assumptions about the tiny birds, it still has many mysteries left to unravel. For instance, scientists still have no idea how the bird swallows the nectar that it drinks. Hopefully, some 3D X-ray scanning will be as enlightening as this most recent study.
Read on below to see a video of the hummingbird’s amazing tongue in action.
(via Wired, image via Wikipedia)
