As they zip around in search of nectar, hummingbirds have no trouble navigating dense foliage and other tight spaces.
Without that ability, scientists wondered how hummingbirds squeeze through such tiny gaps—but the speedy fliers move too quickly for the human eye to follow.
“This is a new insight into the amazing capacity of hummingbirds,” says Bret Tobalske, a biologist at the University of Montana who was not involved in the research, to Science News’ Erin Garcia de Jesús.
Hummingbirds have long fascinated scientists. About 340 species exist in the wild, from teeny-tiny bee hummingbirds—the world’s smallest bird—to fiery-throated hummingbirds with their rainbow hues.
While watching hummingbirds fly outside his window, University of California, Berkeley scientist and engineer Marc Badger was impressed by their ability to rapidly and easily negotiate dense greenery.
“When a dominant male would come and chase an intruder away, that intruder would fly through a bush,” Badger, one of the study’s co-authors, tells New Scientist’s Matthew Sparkes.
He brought this question back to the lab, where a team of researchers came up with an experiment for studying hummingbirds’ flight patterns. They built an enclosure with two separate compartments connected by a small hole.