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Monday 10 August 2015

Hummingbird

The smallest bird in the world is the bee hummingbird. The bird is 2.24 inches long.

A hummingbird's brain makes up 4.2% of its weight—proportionally, that's the largest of any bird's.

The smallest bird egg known to man is that of the hummingbird and is the size of a pea.

A hummingbird nest is generally only a couple of centimeters in diameter - about the size of a half walnut shell.

When hummingbirds dive, their bodies twerk faster than any other vertebrate on the planet.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards. They can also hover, fly upside-down and sideways.


The sweet taste is missing in almost all birds. The hummingbird, which feeds on sweet nectar, is an exception.

A hummingbird will visit an average of 1,000 flowers per day.

Thanks to its long, agile tongue, the adult hummingbird can lick 13 times in a single second.

Hummingbirds have such a high metabolism that they are continuously hours away from starving to death.

Hummingbirds can only store enough energy to last overnight and must immediately search for food in the morning.

Hummingbirds consume between 3.14 - 7.6 calories per day and a human with similar metabolism would consume about 155,000 calories in a day.

A person would have to eat 300 hamburgers or a refrigerator full of food just to match the equivalent of what hummingbirds consume to survive every day.

A hummingbird takes up to 250 breaths in a minute.

Hummingbirds have no sense of smell and can't walk.

The sword-billed hummingbird is the only bird with a beak longer than its body.

 By Francesco Veronesi from Italy - Sword-billed Hummingbird - Ecuador

Hummingbirds use hawks as bodyguards, using the proximity of hawks’ nests as protection from predatory birds.

In Aztec culture the hummingbird was a sacred animal revered for its fierceness and held as a symbol of the empire.

Costa Rica possesses 51 of the New World’s 300 hummingbird species, making it the hummingbird capital of the world.

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