Contrary to popular belief, hummingbirds don’t suck up nectar like we slurp juice through a straw—birds don’t have lips, which makes sucking hard. A new study with slow-motion videos of the hummingbirds’ eastern cousins, sunbirds, shows evidence of the animals using their tongues to slurp up nectar.
The project came in two parts: field experiments in Africa and Indonesia, where sunbirds are native, and detailed scans of sunbirds kept at the University of California, Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. In the field, scientists placed high-speed cameras near 3D-printed flowers so they could spy on the sunbirds in slow motion. In the lab, researchers used microCT—an X-ray technology that can see inside of and create 3D scans of an object without having to cut it open.
The researchers reported their findings in Current Biology. “By studying the physical interactions, or biomechanics, of organisms, we can better understand how the immutable laws of physics are shaping the many diverse adaptations found across the tree of life,” said David Cuban, a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University, in an interview with the University of California, Berkeley.
