New video of hummingbirds reveals their remarkable drinking mechanism

Wired : New video footage of hummingbirds drinking has revolutionized scientists’ understanding of the process. “The first time I saw these videos, they blew my mind,” said Alejandro Rico-Guevara from the University of Connecticut, one of the coauthors of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It had been believed that capillary action drew the fluid up a pair of tubes in the hummingbird’s tongue, but the video shows instead that the tongue’s tip acts as a liquid-trapping device. For the study, Rico-Guevara and colleague Margaret Rubega built transparent flowers. They then filmed high-speed, magnified footage of hummingbirds’ tongues flicking into the nectar. Instead of simply sucking up the nectar, the tongue’s two tubes, which are initially curled at the tip of the tongue, uncurl when they come in contact with the nectar; when the tongue is retracted, they curl back up to trap the nectar and pull it back into the beak. Studies of this mechanism could aid in the design of self-assembling electronics, fluid-power microchips, or even liquid-sipping robots.