August 24, 2024 • 46 mins
If you didn’t already know how amazing hummingbirds are, prepare to learn. Not only do they count among their numbers the smallest bird species, they are also lightning fast and have the endurance of a marathoner and a telethoner put together. Get up to speed on these wonderful creatures in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, buddies, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our May twenty twenty episode on hummingbirds, one
of the best animals of all time. For my money.
They're cute, there's a bunch of amazing facts about them,
and they're ornery little cusses too, which makes them great. Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's flitting around here
here there, darting to and fro like a little ruby
throated Hundur and Emerald and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I saw Jerry.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I know, I heard Jerry.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That's all with my own two eyes.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
How's she doing? Is her hair just completely white? Now?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I mean we were fifteen feet away from each other,
so I couldn't tell.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
What did you try squinting?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I did, and I shaved so she didn't even recognize me.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I know, I saw that picture. Man, you look great.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, thanks so nice.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It's just luxurious.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, all the beard's coming back already, huh from.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
The second I shaved it. Technically it started coming back.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
That is true. Are you one of those people who say, like, yeah,
from the moment we're born, we start dying.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, God, I hate those people. They're the pits now
hung growing it back out. It was just a little, uh,
just a little change of pace, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
That's good. Must have felt really weird.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It does still feel pretty weird at times.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh that's good.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well four days later.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, yeah, So, Chuck, I want to talk about something
else that's weird besides the feeling of having just shaved
off a beard after fifteen million years, which.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
By the way, if you want to see that picture,
you can go to the movie Crush page on Facebook
and see that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely and they'll continue. The weird thing I want to
talk about today, Chuck, are hummingbirds. They're great hummingbirds. Yes,
so they are weird, but they're weird in all of
like the most delightful ways. I love hummingbirds, love them,
and I love them even more now that I know
more about them.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah. Good eating.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you just grab the air, snap the wings off,
and pop it.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Like you think a quail doesn't produce much meat. Hummingbird
gotta have like forty of those for dinner.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
At least that might just be an appetizer.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Good luck catching them though, right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
They are hard to catch. But I have a story.
There was a hummingbird once that got into my house
and it was freaking out. It was basically just smacking
its head against the ceiling. Oh, I know, it was
very sad. So I got a chair and I just
held my hand up just right by it, and it
stopped freaking out and perched on my hand. I had
(03:05):
a hummingbird perched motionlessly on my hand, and it stayed
there long enough for me to stick my hand out
the window and it flew off.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
How many years ago is this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
That was a while back?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
I mean, were you a child?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
No, No, I was a man. I must have smelled
great too, because the hummingbird chose to trust me. But
I thought that was just one of the coolest things ever.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That's pretty amazing. A guy in our neighborhood yesterday got
attacked by an owl. So that's on the other end
of the bird human interaction spectrum.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, an owl or the Jersey devil.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It really apparently it's not uncommon.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
To get attacked by an owl.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I mean, we've got a big one that makes
an almost every evening, fly over our backyard to the
big forest behind our yard from across the street, and
we love this thing. But I didn't know that. I
didn't know that they attacked people like this, But it happens.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Is your neighbor talking rabbit.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I don't have a neighbor to where it goes. It's
an empty house, so maybe that's why they like it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So no, who is at tech though your neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Not a neighbor, but just I saw it on the
neighborhood facebook page. Some guy was attacked, like the owl
came down and talented his head. That's crazy, isn't dude?
Can you imagine that that killed? I wonder if the
guy was like, oh, look, because owls are huge. I
wonder if he's like, man, look at that thing. Hey,
he's coming at me, and then all of a sudden,
you've got talents in your skull.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Oh my god, all right, stop diverting attention from hummingbirds.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, so hummingbirds they are with the family. Uh. I
had it.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I had it earlier, and it's really not hard. Uh
trokol a day trouk adillay tk a day chuck ala
day chok a le day and they are related to
the swifts. Yeah, and you know hummingbirds, he said, the
little bitty fellas. They weigh between two and twenty grams.
(05:03):
They have those long pointy noses that they love to
stick in flowers, and they have these wings that and boy,
when we get into the fascinating facts about the hummingbird
and those little wings, it gets pretty amazing. But one
of the things I'm gonna go ahead and spoil from
later in this stuff you put together was that what's
(05:24):
so remarkable about hummingbirds and how they fly is that
they you know, usually when you see a bird fly,
they flap down and that provides their lift. A hummingbird's like,
no way, buddy, you gotta get that thing working in
both directions.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Double your pleasure, up and down.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
That is how a hummingbird is able to hover and
go and reverse and do all those crazy things is
because it's not just flapping, it's flippin' and flappin'.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, they're the only vertebrate animal that can hover like
a helicopter.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's like The Blue Thunder of Birds.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Wasn't that Roy Scheider movie? Yeah? I think I wasn't
allowed to watch that because there's some sexy stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
There is that, yeah, the blue thunderpeaks and some windows,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, And it came out at a time when I
would watch movies with my mom and she was like,
you need to leave the room. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I don't think I was allowed to watch it at
first either, but I think I might have snuck it.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh, I see what you mean. So one of the
things that that makes hummingbirds so well known, aside from
their incredible agility and being the only vertebrate that can
hover in mid air, is just the look of them. Yeah,
Because if you've ever looked at a hummingbird from afar,
you're like, oh, that thing's okay. It's just a kind
of a normal looking bird. And then it just moves
(06:45):
and catches the sunlight just right. Yeah, and all of
a sudden, this splash of metallic jewel like color just
crosses its throat and chest, and you say, the hummingbird
is truly great.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's sort of like the butterfly wings and that if
you catch it at the right angle, you get that metallic,
sort of shiny color and it's sort of for the
same reason you those gorgets, which is that that reflective
stuff on the upper chest of the hummingbird, and like
the throat area, it's not actual pigment.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It is the structure, the physical structure of those feathers.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's little air bubbles inside there that reflect that light.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure we I mean, we did
an episode on butterfly wings.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, iridescence.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it is the exact same
thing in butterfly wings is in that gorget that clutch
of feathers in the humming bird.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, so it not only reflects it, but also like
bulks it up too. Pretty neat stuff. So man, sorry,
I guess I'm kind of flemy today. I don't know why,
but my apologies for being flemy as right. So, one
thing I didn't realize about hummingbirds is there's three hundred
(08:05):
and thirty eight species that we know of, and all
of them are found in the Americas. Did you know that.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I don't think I did.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
But they're found like all throughout the Americas, from Chile
all the way up to southern Alaska and Canada. They've
got a pretty wide range. But the thing is the
things are so small, so tiny, and so unable to
maintain a decent body temperature that they basically follow the
(08:36):
summer when they migrate.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, and they all diverged from a single common ancestor
about twenty two million years ago. And the kind of
the cool thing is that they keep changing and their
rate of speciation is really pretty incredible. It's it's supposedly
going to outpace their rate of extinction and we're going
to see well we won't see it because we'll.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Be dead in the next forty years, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
But human beings, if we're still around, that is, are
going to see the number of species of hummingbird double
to what we have today. But it's going to be
a few million years, so don't expect that anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, but it is pretty cool just to think that,
you know, they're still in the midst of their evolutionary
history and like right in the middle of it, you know, Yeah, totally.
I like that about them. So, you know, being that
multi varied species all the way from Patagonia up to Alaska,
(09:36):
they have learned to adapt to a bunch of different
niches and habitats, right, So you can find hummingbird species
in like sub sea level deserts. You can find them
up in the Andes. There's actually a lot of different
species that live in the Andes Mountains. You can find
the bulk of them in tropical forests around the tropics
(10:00):
of the New World. And they they've adapted like really
well to their different environments. Some migrate, some don't, but
all of them are very tiny.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, they're cute little little things. As if you look
up a picture of the bee hummingbird, just prepare for
one of the cutest little I mean, it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Like it looks fake.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, it doesn't look like a bird could actually
be that small without becoming an insect.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's gonna just collapse into insect form or anyone.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
But look it up online.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
The little bee hummingbird from Cuba ways about one point
nine to five grams. We don't get those here in Georgia,
the only kind. And I think how many species are
there in the United States About seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, that's what I saw, but only.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
That ruby throated is the one that we're going to
get here on the East coast.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, and just to go like to double that up,
man one point nine to five grams. Somebody did the math,
and you could mail fourteen of those things with one
postage stamp in the United States.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Just smash them down flat.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
There's not yet, right, There's not a single species of
hummingbird that breaks an ounce in weight, which is to
say that the largest hummingbird species there is the giant hummingbird,
which is kind of a contradiction in terms. It's still
smaller than an Atlantic canary. Wow, the giant hummingbird is
(11:33):
still canary size. So this is a very tiny group
of birds.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Well, and this is the stat that gets me, And
this is the one I texted Emily because we love
our hummingbirds like all normal humans. Sure, the eggs of
the ruby throated hummingbird that we have here in Georgia
are the size of ap Can you believe that?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Did you look up their nests? Pictures of their nests?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, gorgeous. It looks like something you'd buy on Etsy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
They look kind of like made of felt. Because hummingbirds
use spider silk. They take old spider webs and use
them as thread to weave like their nests, along with
plant fibers and leaves and twigs to give it kind
of this spongy, velvety, super cush feel for their little.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Babies, velvety mouthfeel exactly exactly. So we're going to.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Talk a lot about the hummingbird flying and because it's
pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
It's one of the most remarkable things in nature.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Like I think it's right up there with like the
chromatophores of the octopus. And I was about to spoil
our live show, but maybe I should.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Are we ever going to be on stage again?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I don't know, but let's just hold on to it
just in case.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
All right, we're going to keep that in our back pocket.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But the wings, the wing muscles of a hummingbird account
to about twenty five to thirty percent of its total
body weight. Yeah, so this thing is all like it
never has legs day at the gym. It's always doing
upper body and the legs are tiny and weak, and
they really don't walk. I mean, they can perch, but
if you see a hummingbird, they're going to be moving.
(13:12):
If you notice, you never see a hummingbird just kind
of strolling around in your on your deck or something.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, they kind of have legs similar to David Cross's
character in that Titanica sketch from Mister Show.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, do you remember?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I do. So he's kind of hummingbird like in that respect.
But yeah, if your legs are that weak and your
wings are that strong, you're going to spend most of
your time in mid air. And they basically do. Although
they do, you know, they nest on branches, They sleep
on branches, they do perch they made on branches, as.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We'll see, perch on your finger.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Apparently they palm in your hand.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Oh it was palming your hand.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
It was a pall in my hand. Yeah, I give
it plenty of space.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And then they also sometimes will sleep upside down, just
kind of dang from a twig or something with their
spinley little legs like a bat.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah. So the just some amazing stats about their ability
to fly. Like we said, they're the only vertebrate they
can hover in place. They can also fly upside down backward.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
They're real show offs.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
They really are big time show offs. They can get
up to speeds of more than forty five miles per hour.
God knows how many kilometers per hour that is. It's
a lot on some of their dives. But even like
an average speed for them of just flying around, you
know where they're not just you know, going from flower
to flower, but they're like say, traveling from place to place,
(14:41):
is you know, thirty plus miles an hour. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
No, it's super impressive.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
And if you think, man, A, how fast are those
little wings going? And b what is their little cardiovascular
system doing, it's doing exactly what you think it is.
They have their heart beats about two hundred and twenty
five times permit when it's hanging out and doing nothing right,
about twelve hundred times a minute when it's flying, and
those wings range from seventy up and down strokes per
(15:10):
second or I wonder if that's if that counts as
one or two.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And I was wondering that myself, and I'm not sure
that that is answered. At the very least, we're not
going to answer it because we don't have that answer.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, how about it doesn't matter because either way it's
a ton. It's either it's seventy times per second when
they're just flying normally around to get some some good
sweet stuff. But that courtship dive, which we're going to
talk about a little later, that you mentioned about two
hundred times per second those wings are flapping.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, and I actually, now that you say it, if
they're kind of doubling up what a flap is, then
maybe hummingbirds aren't so impressive after.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
All, lazies, so chuck.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
When you're flapping your wings one hundred or two hundred
times per second, depending on whether you're counting the upbeats
and the down beats as a six flap or not,
you need like a lot of energy to do that,
and as a result, the hummingbird typically eats about two
to three times its own weight in food every day.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, like, if that was a human, you would let
me see here, let's the equivalent of about two hundred
and eighty five pounds of hamburger?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Is that? And three hundred and seventy pounds of potatoes?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
No? I think each of these.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Okay, So take your pick.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
If you want to eat just hamburger, it would be
two hundred and eighty five pounds a day. That's a
whole cow, that's yeah, I think a little bit. I
think cow's way more than that.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
But right, well, but as far as usable beef, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I'm sorry for any vegetarians out there by me saying
usable beef.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Just maybe wretch in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Maybe it's an album name now that I think about.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Usable Beef mm hmm by the band what Jungle X.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So, yeah, they eat a lot because they need to, and.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
It's like it's like Fourth of July for them every day. Yeah, yeah,
pretty much three two to three times their own weight
in food.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, and this is uh, we're talking about just on
normal days. Can we talk a little bit about the
migration and what there need to beef up?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Then I think we should.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So they migrate like we like we talked about. They're
not exactly sure what triggers that they think. Maybe they
see the change in daylight like some other animals and
birds do, or maybe just the fact that flowers, you know,
what the flowers are doing.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But I think that that's the one, that's the big one,
because they they can't go for more than a few
hours without food, so they need to go where the
plants are flowering. Right, They just kind of follow.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
That, and I guess they're always connected to that, those
subtle changes in the flowering exactly. So during this migration,
their heart beats about twelve hundred in sixty times a minute.
And they have to gain because they're trekking. I mean
sometimes they're flying over the Gulf of Mexico in one
shot over the course of a few days, so they
need to bulk up big time. They gain about twenty
(18:14):
five to forty percent of their body weight before they
start this migration. And if we're going to do the
human equivalent again for this, if you were a person
that weigh one hundred and seventy pounds, that means you'd
have to gain up to about two fifty five in
a few weeks time, right like Christian bale.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Esque, I know, in just a few weeks, man, that's crazy.
So one of the things that's so impressive about the
hummingbird is just how far it can fly in a day,
especially for how small it is. You know, they they
average something like twenty three miles a day when they're migrating.
But the ruby throated hummingbird the one that it's the
(18:54):
only one that you'll find east of the Mississippi. So
if you see a hummingbird in your east the Mississippi,
you can be like a ornithologist for once in your
life and be like, that's a ruby thrown at hummingbird.
They actually can travel for extraordinarily long stretches, and they
do because their winter and grounds are in the Yucatan,
(19:16):
but they hang out in Florida during the other part
of the year, I guess during the summer, and so
they travel over the Gulf of Mexico, they think, and
when they do that, they do it in like a
straight five hundred miles stretch within eighteen to twenty two
hours without stopping.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That's incredibly impressive.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It really is. But then there was a study in
twenty sixteen that found they could go even further.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Right, Yeah, they said, you know, physiologically, in theory, they
could fly close to fourteen hundred miles without stopping if
they needed to.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
That's crazy. That'd be like flying from Atlanta to Albuquerque.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
That's nuts.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
If you want a reference, that means nothing to nobody.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So if you're wondering when they rest, when they they
finally get down to that sweet soil in Mexico, they
can enter torpoor, which we've talked about before. It is
sort of hibernation light really deep sleep like state. Their
metabolic functions are really slowed. I think they can drop
their their body temperature by thirty to forty degrees fahrenheit.
(20:20):
They lower that heart rate from about twelve hundred bats
per minute to as few as fifty And they do
this after they after they migrate, but they can do
this anytime they need to, and they do.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, they do. And also I think it depends on
where they live, because hummingbirds, like I said, a lot
of them live in the Andes, like high up on
the mountain side, and even in the summer, it can
get kind of cool there. So when the temperature cools
enough that it makes no sense for them to keep
up their metabolic rate to try to meet their one
hundred and five degree height body temperature, they'll enter torpor.
(20:55):
And that's just what they do for sleep. And one
of the other things that I wanted to point out
about them living in the Andes, Chuck, this is all
really just a segue for this amazing fact they live
in the Andes, despite the fact and there are some
species that are native to the Andies, not just like
migrating through. That's where they live is the Andes. Despite
the fact that they have these high metabolic rates and
(21:17):
they need more oxygen. Well, there's just inherently less oxygen
in the air up in the mountains, and it's harder
to hover because the air is thinner. And yet they
are so successful there in the andes that up above
a certain line, there's no insects, and so it's up
to the hummingbirds exclusively to pollinate all the flowering plants
(21:37):
up there.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I mean, I think that's probably why they have the
market cornered up there. Sure they're like, all right, well
let's adapt so we can kind of own this area.
And not only that, I don't think we mentioned that
sometimes if you're a small enough hummingbird and there's a
big enough insect, the insect is can win that battle.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
In hummingbird world, the insect eat you.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
All Right, Branson, misery, Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I figured that was gonna trigger a break.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
All right, we'll come back right now to talk more
about hummingbirds.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Okay, Chuck. So we're talking more about hummingbirds. One of
the things that I really feel like we just need
to underscore here is that they are metabolic wonders. They'd
live on this edge of survival where they will die
if they go a few hours without food. Like, do
you know how many days you a human being and
go without food before you die, as long as you
(23:01):
have water and maybe access to a couple vitamins or whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I think we did a podcast on that at some point.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I'm pretty sure we did. Yeah, Angus Barber or Barbier,
I can't remember. They die within hours, so they constantly
have to search for food sources.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yeah, that's why you see them flitting about constantly. They're
always looking for food.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But it's also one of the reasons why they're known
as potentially the most unsociable and most territorial bird in existence.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, they don't like hanging out with each other. There
are some exceptions that we're going to talk about, but
they generally don't like hang out together. They don't like
hanging out with other birds. At the end of the day,
when everyone's just sing songing by the shoreline, hummingbirds are like, no,
screw you, guys, I got to eat. And not only
do I have to eat, I gotta make little hummingbird
(23:56):
pea eggs. And we talked about this Courtship Dive kind
of teased it out. This is pretty incredible and this
is you know, a lot of times in mating rituals
you'll see the males doing these kind of big fancy shows.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
To try my card tricks.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, try and dogs playing poker. That was that was
all about. Photographer was a female dog, that's right, And
so'll I guess it wasn't a photograph, was it. It was
probably a painting now I think about it and stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
You should know a world. It was a photograph, but.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It was a tin type so it was very old.
So it was funny. I was telling my daughter today
about my bed. She always loves hearing stories about me
and my brother as a kid, and I was telling
her about my teenage bedroom and I.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Was like, I'll show you a picture one day. I've
got pictures.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And she said, you had a phone when you were little,
and I was like, oh boy, that's what it's like
these days. She is so and I had to explain that,
you know, this phone, camera and a phone is kind
of a new thing, Like they used to be two
different pieces of equipment.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yes, they were two very bulky different pieces of equipment.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And a phone used to be attached to your wall
in your kitchen.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh yeah, that's true. But if you were, you know,
super wealthy, you have one of those really really long.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Hold you're to say that, because that's exactly the deal.
So the courtship dive is when the male is trying
to attract the female for a little lovin. They will
fly up in the air really high, about fifty or
sixty feet, and then dive bomb toward the female as
fast as it can go.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And they are flying the whole way.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They're not just they don't tuck the wing back and
the wings back like you're parachuting or something like. They're
flying as fast as they can right at this lady's
face and within inches of her head, going full tilt,
they just pull up real quick and they hit her
in the arm twice and say two for flinching.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They put it on the brakes and she flies right by.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
But that's what they do is crazy. They fly right
at their face and then stop. If the female gets
a little turned on, she might flit about in the
air with them. And then that's where people might think, oh,
look at those two hummingbirds are up in the air
having sex.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Not true.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
No, And maybe your mom would tell you that you
need to leave the room because hummingbirds are doing it
in mid air. But that's not what they're doing. They
actually they actually copulate perched on a branch.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Okay, now I do that, air man.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
The female lands on the branch. Sometimes, like you said,
she'll join them in the air. Other times she'll just
be like, come on down here, you you win, let's go,
and the male mounts her from behind on the branch,
and just like with everything else, the hummingbirds are super
quick at sex too. Apparently it takes about four seconds
(26:53):
and then that's it, like wambam, thank you, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yep, and the male flies away. He doesn't around and
see if it took. He goes on to have sex
with another female, and the lady goes like, what is
this a fern bar?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Who are you? Jack tripper?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And so she goes off and builds a nest and
does all the parenting. Like I said, you know, they
don't mate for life. They don't even stick around after
they mate at all. It's just they're in, they're out,
they're gone.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
And I mean you might think, well, that's that's a
pretty big bummer. Poor, poor poor lady mail poor, yeah,
poor lady hummingbirds. That's exactly how they want it. Because,
like we said, as the species is known as or
all of the species, the hummingbird is known as the
most territorial bird, so it seems, at least as far
(27:45):
as natural selection is concerned, females prefer this arrangement no
pair in printing or mating pair and printing, to where
they just do all the work themselves, because that means
that they can also have their own access to their
food source, to where no matter what the male hummingbird
is going to bring the table and say child bearing
(28:06):
or whatever, it's not worth the food that this female
would have to share. And that's where their territoriality comes from.
Because remember, hummingbirds live on this edge of survival where
if they go for hours without food, they will die.
So they're really really protective of their food source to
the point where a female hummingbird would preferably raised young
(28:31):
on her own then share her food source with the male.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Actually, I get the picture that the female hummingbird is like,
I need you for one thing. It takes four seconds,
and believe me, if I could go to a sperm bank,
I would prefer that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Honestly, I thought you.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Were going to say, believe me, you're going to have
the time of your.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Life that those four seconds will be a wild ride,
my friend.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
That's right. Come meet me on this branch over here, baby,
and those it's gonna be a wait, it's going to
be a stone gasney.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Hey, babe, come here.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So those gorgets that we were talking about, those really colorful, iridescent,
sort of fluffy chest and neck feathers of the male.
Like with many animals, the more brightly colored and showy
that is, the more the female might be attracted because
that might indicate that male bird's fitness because you know,
you got to it takes a lot of work to
(29:26):
keep that hairstyle up, so he must be pretty pretty
strong and have, you know, pretty good at organizing his
day to day list to.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Do effectively the exact same signals that Joe Dirt put
out with his hair. You know, he was obviously very
genetically fit and ready to get I never saw that,
you should. It's definitely it's got a lot of heart.
I think I say that every time you say you
never saw it, but it's worth checking out for sure.
(29:56):
It's one of those ones. You know, some don't age
very well. I think it came poorly aged right out
of the production facility. But that's one of the great
beauties of it. It's definitely worth seeing.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Chuck Well, speaking of aged right out of the shoot.
That's kind of the deal with hummingbird babies too. They say,
the mom doesn't there's not a lot of teaching, and like, here,
let me show you the ropes. It's kind of like,
all right, this is the world. You've been hatched from
your little pea sized egg. Now go out there and
be a hummingbird. Learn it all on your own, kiddo.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But what's amazing, though, is that they do learn this
on their own. They have astounding memories, to the point
where when they migrate people who put out feeders, which
we'll talk about in a little bit four hummingbirds, note
that the same ones, or what they believe is the
same one, comes back year after year. And what's even
(30:52):
more astounding, frequently on the same day of the year,
the same date, the same humming bird will come back
a year after year on his or her migration, right,
and that they just understand this, they know, and part
of it, yes, is following flowers and the blooming patterns
of flowers. But they also think it they might have
(31:13):
some sort of magnetic compass built in that possibly part
of their pinial gland, which is light sensitive, is used
manages to use the sun as a compass, and that
they have astounding memories somehow, some way, because apparently their
brain is about the size of a grain of rice
in most cases.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And the other thing they'll do too, is if they
have speaking of coming back to the buffet, if they
have a patch of flowers, let's say, on your property
that they just love, they'll be like, all right, this
is this is mine.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I'm just gonna go ahead and claim this. I'm going
to come.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Back here because you've got all the good stuff. My
beak fits that flower just perfectly. And we'll talk here
in a minute more about what they eat and why.
But they will they will fiercely protect that little patch
of flower that they love so much and go back
to it time and time again.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yes, So that's where their territoriality comes from, is protecting
food sources, and not just food sources, like I've been
growing this patch of flowers all summer. Stay away. They
could stop somewhere for a half of an hour and
or colloquially half hour and will still protect like that
(32:24):
flower patch that they stopped by if somebody comes along
and tries to get it. And the whole reason that
they do this is because they eat nectar along with
some other stuff, and it takes a really long time
for a flower to produce nectar. So the hummingbird would
love to just have to go to the flower once
and get the full dose of nectar. But they can't
(32:45):
just wait around because other things will come and eat
the nectar they've been hanging out for. So they've developed
this secondary behavior, which is territoriality, where they'll chase off
other hummingbirds. They'll chase off o their birds. They've been
known to chase off hawks even if the hawk comes
a little close for their comfort.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, and they'll you know, I think early on in
the Hummingbird Council of nineteen fifteen, they said all the
socialist hummingbirds got together and said, hey, if we all relax,
just let that nectar build up, it'll be a lot
easier to eat and all the other you know, the
little I'm not gonna I don't want to get political here,
but there were some hummingbirds that were like, no way, man,
(33:26):
I'm not playing ball. I'm going to get in there
and get that nectar whenever I feel like it, right,
So the humbirds couldn't work it out.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
No, and the ones, the other ones that wouldn't go
along with have fired all the air traffic controlling hummingbirds.
That's right, Yeah, I think we shoud take a break.
I think.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So let's take a break and we'll finish up about
what they eat and all about those little feeders that
you have in your backyard right after this.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Okay, chuck. So everybody knows that hummingbirds eat nectar, and
that's definitely true, and they're very well adapted to eat nectar.
They have this tube like tongue that apparently uses a
wicking action to soak up nectar from a flower on
a plant, and they do this. This tongue can actually
carry a load of nectar into their mouths like thirteen
(34:41):
times a second.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
That's over fast.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Not that surprising that they're doing this super fast too,
but it's still pretty impressive. But it's not just nectar.
It's not the only thing that they eat. And actually
people found out the hard way that they didn't just
eat nectar because captured hummingbirds who were studied in the
in captivity died pretty quickly when all they were given
(35:05):
was like a sugar water solution or even a nectar solution.
And so they came to realize that they actually eat
a lot of insects too, And that's one of the
great things about hummingbirds. In addition to being pollinators, they're
also really big at insect controls. And one of the
insects that they eat are bloodsucking mosquitoes.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, mosquitoes, little spiders.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And this is in addition to I don't think we
mentioned the one thousand to two thousand flower blossoms that
they will go poke every single day. So that's why
I mean when we talk about these these hummingbirds are
food scavengers. Up to two thousand flowers a day. That's
pretty intense, it really is.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So that makes them very very important pollinators. Like we
said in the Andes, where you know you're above the
insect line, it's just up the hummingbirds to pollinate flowers.
So when they're going from flower to flour getting that nectar,
if you pretend that evolution is a living, breathing thing,
evolution has created this arrangement where the flower produces a
(36:07):
nectar treat in exchange or to attract the little hummingbird.
And then when the hummingbird's getting its little nectar treat,
the flower just kind of goes, here's a little pollen
on your forehead. Go find another flower that looks like me,
and you'll find another nectar treat and then transfer this
pollen while you do so. They pollinate a lot of
important stuff and in addition to to eating lots of bugs.
(36:30):
So they're just all around great animals.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, and they love that nectar.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
If you're thinking about flowers in your own garden, if
you want to track some hummingbirds, they want a sugar
content of about twenty six percent. It can't be too
It can't be like a Wendy's frosty because they're using
that tongue. It acts sort of like a straw, right,
So you got to get that spoon with the frosty.
You can't suck that thing up. If you try, you're
going to pass out in your car while you're driving
(36:57):
at cross And that sugar concentrate it can't be too
too sticky because like I said, they're sucking that thing up.
Oftentimes you'll see red or orange petals or bracts they're
often long and tubular because that long tongue and beak
can get in there when others can't. So that kind
(37:18):
of gives them the market cornered on that particular flower.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
It keeps out posers, it does.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And this is the cool thing, those flowers that you
see that sort of trumpet downward. You know, unless you
can hover, you're out of luck there. So they love
these things because they can hover.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
So there's a lot of Actually, there's a lot of
plants that have flowers that kind of fit this bill.
And most huming birds aren't.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I don't really fit the bill.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Man. That was an unintentional I guess fit the beak.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
They don't build well, you.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Know the duck's bill and ducks are birds, right, right,
are they so? But they're not super specialized. They'll eat
just about anything that they can get necked or out of.
But there are definitely kinds of flowers that are have
kind of co evolved with hummingbirds to kind of give
them what they're looking for more easily. But one of
(38:13):
the problems with human development, as with all things, is
we kind of have supplanted a lot of those kinds
of flowers. The good news is if you have heard
all this and you're like, I want to encourage hummingbirds
to keep living, you can plant these flowers pretty easy.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah. I sent this list to Emily. Actually, because we
have our garden is very Our garden is very much
built for use, for use in Emily's budding interest in herbalism,
and use for the insects that we know and the
birds that we know inhabit our area. So it's not
(38:50):
just like, oh, that's pretty like we want it to
be a real thing that works for our local environment.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I can't remember who said it, but there's a famous
quote that nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful. Interesting,
and I found that that is one of the truest
things ever said.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Nothing useless, useless.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Can never truly be beautiful.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
I think that broke my brain. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (39:15):
It just means that use like usefulness, like the ability
for something to to have a purpose, is an important
part of its existence, and so just beauty alone doesn't
justify the exists.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay, that's what I thought it was saying, But something
felt like a double negative in there.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
That kind of broke my brain a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You overthought I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
B Balm the old trumpet creeper, yeah, which was Miles
Davis's nickname for a little while.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
When he was drilling holes in bathroom wall.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
The cardinal flower, the columbine, and the coral honeysuckle are
all very hummingbird friendly flowers and play so you can
put in your yard. And I sent that to Emily,
and I think we have a couple of these. We
used to have columbine and dompe. She's going to bring
that back and we're gonna see if we can get
some more hummingbird action in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
That's awesome, some hot, sticky hummingbird action.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Four seconds of pleasure.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So you can also just go get yourself a hummingbird feed.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
And a lot of people put red food dye in there,
and that is actually a controversial move. There's some concern
among hummingbird enthusiasts that the dye actually can be harmful
over long periods of time. Maybe it can build up
because again, hummingbirds have very tiny organs because they're a
very tiny bird, so introducing this artificial red dye might
(40:43):
not be the best idea. Other people say that's totally unsubstantiated.
There's never been any proof that it actually harms hummingbirds.
And then the other people say, back, it's totally unnecessary.
The bird's gonna find the sugar water either way, So
why add the red dye just in case it is harmful?
If it's just unnecessary. So most most hummingbird enthusiasts say,
(41:05):
don't put red dye in your hummingbird sugar water.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yes, and that solution mixture is important. You can't just
don't just dump a bunch of syrup and water together,
or a bunch of sugarcane or whatever it is four
parts water to one part sugar, because they need a
specific sugar content of about twenty six percent, and that
four to one makes about twenty five percent if my
(41:28):
math is correct.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
It does.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's close to close enough. So one of the other
ways you can help hummingbirds too is in the most
delicious way by choosing coffee that has grown in a
situation that allows hummingbirds to thrive.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Yeah, this is I didn't know about this. This is
really cool.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There is certified bird friendly coffee. Because we were talking
about the andes and the fact that the birds travel
great distances and elevations up and down these mountains, and
coffee is grown about halfway up these tropical mountains, and
they have a lot of great you know, flowers under
the shady canopy there, and it's a really nice home
(42:08):
for hummingbirds there. And if you drink bird friendly coffee,
that means that they're they have these flowers and they're
making sure they take care of these flowers.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You're right, And yeah, it's it's grown in a kind
of like a simulated forest, as closely simulated as possible.
So you want to look for something that says it's
bird friendly, rainforest alliance and or shade grown, and that
probably means that hummingbirds are thriving on those coffee plantations.
And I went and looked in my beloved Batdorf and
(42:39):
bronze and coffees are all bird friendly of course, land
shade grown.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Is that what you do?
Speaker 1 (42:45):
It's very Oh yeah, yeah, same here. I'm crazy for that.
So I've got a great, great blend for you, Trader
Joe's Decaf Beans half and the other half Batdorf from
Bronzon Whirling Dervish. It's it's the most amazing combination ever
(43:05):
I think of that a shot.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I don't you know, I'm not drinking coffee now because
of it's not winter. But Emily still has her latte
every morning and she she just has their you know,
their espresso beans.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Coffee is a three hundred and sixty five day a
year activity check.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I know, not for me, but I get it.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
That's okay. I'm not going to yum your yuck very
well done. So that's it for hummingbirds, right, that's it. Well,
if you want to know more about hummingbirds, get one
to land in your hand and study it up close
to personal, but don't mess with it because it's protected
under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of nineteen eighteen in
(43:44):
the United States, and you could land in jail and
pay up to a two hundred thousand dollars fine for
harmon good. And since I said two hundred thousand dollars
fine everybody, that means, of course, is time for listener mayl.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
About the exploding birthmark.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Hey guys, big fan of the show which I listened
to while I'm cooking breakfast, doing laundry and staring, oh boy,
get this, and staring at one hundred thousand row Excel
spreadsheets for work.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Man, my soul just shuddered.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
I know I recently listened to the episode on birthmarks
and thought you would like to hear the story of
my birthmark that exploded. I was born with two birthmarks,
both of which have since been removed. One of those
birthmarks was dark brownish red in a.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Circle on the inside of my right thigh.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
I didn't think much of it because it wasn't very visible, and,
like you said on the show, lots of people have birthmarks. However,
when I was in the third grade, my family and
I were about to leave for my aunt's house to
celebrate Thanksgiving when I realized my pants.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Kept sticking to my leg.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I went to the bathroom and removed my pants, and
I saw blood running down my leg. As a third
grader who had not yet even learned about menstruation, I
assumed I was dying, so I freaked out. Turns out
my birthmark was result of a vascular malformation the size
of a small bouncy ball in my inner thigh. My gosh,
the tangled up ball of veins had ruptured that Thanksgiving
(45:09):
morning and I had to go to the er, where
they stuck a tiny piece of foam on my leg
and probably charges about two thousand dollars because hospitals. A
few months later, I had it surgically removed, but now
have a three inch long scar instead of a birthmark.
But because of my surgery, I wasn't allowed to run
for a few weeks and I got out of running
the mile.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
So who's the winner.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Now, Lucky, Thanks for helping me. Seem really knowledgeable on
very specific topics.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
And that is from Bailey.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Nice Bailey. That is a great story.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Pretty good.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Bailey left out that ironically, both the birthmark and the
scar were in the shape of satan.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
And by the way, Bailey says in the PS that
the other birthmark was hemangioma on the bottom lip that
was removed.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
So man, that's interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, very interesting. And what was the fact that I
kept saying over and over again about homongiomas that they're
a tangled cluster of blood vessels.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Oh I don't think so, okay, So maybe they were.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Two of the same kind of birthmark.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Yeah maybe so.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Well, thanks a lot, Bailey, And if you want to
get in touch with us like Bailey did and share
an amazing story, We're always up for those You can
get in touch with us via email these days at
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
You Know Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, buddies, it's me Josh, and for this week's select
I've chosen our May twenty twenty episode on hummingbirds, one
of the best animals of all time. For my money.
They're cute, there's a bunch of amazing facts about them,
and they're ornery little cusses too, which makes them great. Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's flitting around here
here there, darting to and fro like a little ruby
throated Hundur and Emerald and this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I saw Jerry.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I know, I heard Jerry.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
That's all with my own two eyes.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
How's she doing? Is her hair just completely white? Now?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I mean we were fifteen feet away from each other,
so I couldn't tell.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
What did you try squinting?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I did, and I shaved so she didn't even recognize me.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I know, I saw that picture. Man, you look great.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, thanks so nice.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
It's just luxurious.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, all the beard's coming back already, huh from.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
The second I shaved it. Technically it started coming back.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
That is true. Are you one of those people who say, like, yeah,
from the moment we're born, we start dying.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, God, I hate those people. They're the pits now
hung growing it back out. It was just a little, uh,
just a little change of pace, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
That's good. Must have felt really weird.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It does still feel pretty weird at times.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh that's good.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well four days later.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, yeah, So, Chuck, I want to talk about something
else that's weird besides the feeling of having just shaved
off a beard after fifteen million years, which.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
By the way, if you want to see that picture,
you can go to the movie Crush page on Facebook
and see that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely and they'll continue. The weird thing I want to
talk about today, Chuck, are hummingbirds. They're great hummingbirds. Yes,
so they are weird, but they're weird in all of
like the most delightful ways. I love hummingbirds, love them,
and I love them even more now that I know
more about them.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah. Good eating.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, you just grab the air, snap the wings off,
and pop it.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Like you think a quail doesn't produce much meat. Hummingbird
gotta have like forty of those for dinner.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
At least that might just be an appetizer.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Good luck catching them though, right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
They are hard to catch. But I have a story.
There was a hummingbird once that got into my house
and it was freaking out. It was basically just smacking
its head against the ceiling. Oh, I know, it was
very sad. So I got a chair and I just
held my hand up just right by it, and it
stopped freaking out and perched on my hand. I had
(03:05):
a hummingbird perched motionlessly on my hand, and it stayed
there long enough for me to stick my hand out
the window and it flew off.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
How many years ago is this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
That was a while back?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
I mean, were you a child?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
No, No, I was a man. I must have smelled
great too, because the hummingbird chose to trust me. But
I thought that was just one of the coolest things ever.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That's pretty amazing. A guy in our neighborhood yesterday got
attacked by an owl. So that's on the other end
of the bird human interaction spectrum.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, an owl or the Jersey devil.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It really apparently it's not uncommon.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
To get attacked by an owl.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I mean, we've got a big one that makes
an almost every evening, fly over our backyard to the
big forest behind our yard from across the street, and
we love this thing. But I didn't know that. I
didn't know that they attacked people like this, But it happens.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Is your neighbor talking rabbit.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I don't have a neighbor to where it goes. It's
an empty house, so maybe that's why they like it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So no, who is at tech though your neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Not a neighbor, but just I saw it on the
neighborhood facebook page. Some guy was attacked, like the owl
came down and talented his head. That's crazy, isn't dude?
Can you imagine that that killed? I wonder if the
guy was like, oh, look, because owls are huge. I
wonder if he's like, man, look at that thing. Hey,
he's coming at me, and then all of a sudden,
you've got talents in your skull.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Oh my god, all right, stop diverting attention from hummingbirds.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, so hummingbirds they are with the family. Uh. I
had it.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I had it earlier, and it's really not hard. Uh
trokol a day trouk adillay tk a day chuck ala
day chok a le day and they are related to
the swifts. Yeah, and you know hummingbirds, he said, the
little bitty fellas. They weigh between two and twenty grams.
(05:03):
They have those long pointy noses that they love to
stick in flowers, and they have these wings that and boy,
when we get into the fascinating facts about the hummingbird
and those little wings, it gets pretty amazing. But one
of the things I'm gonna go ahead and spoil from
later in this stuff you put together was that what's
(05:24):
so remarkable about hummingbirds and how they fly is that
they you know, usually when you see a bird fly,
they flap down and that provides their lift. A hummingbird's like,
no way, buddy, you gotta get that thing working in
both directions.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Double your pleasure, up and down.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
That is how a hummingbird is able to hover and
go and reverse and do all those crazy things is
because it's not just flapping, it's flippin' and flappin'.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, they're the only vertebrate animal that can hover like
a helicopter.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's like The Blue Thunder of Birds.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Wasn't that Roy Scheider movie? Yeah? I think I wasn't
allowed to watch that because there's some sexy stuff in there.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
There is that, yeah, the blue thunderpeaks and some windows,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, And it came out at a time when I
would watch movies with my mom and she was like,
you need to leave the room. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I don't think I was allowed to watch it at
first either, but I think I might have snuck it.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh, I see what you mean. So one of the
things that that makes hummingbirds so well known, aside from
their incredible agility and being the only vertebrate that can
hover in mid air, is just the look of them. Yeah,
Because if you've ever looked at a hummingbird from afar,
you're like, oh, that thing's okay. It's just a kind
of a normal looking bird. And then it just moves
(06:45):
and catches the sunlight just right. Yeah, and all of
a sudden, this splash of metallic jewel like color just
crosses its throat and chest, and you say, the hummingbird
is truly great.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It's sort of like the butterfly wings and that if
you catch it at the right angle, you get that metallic,
sort of shiny color and it's sort of for the
same reason you those gorgets, which is that that reflective
stuff on the upper chest of the hummingbird, and like
the throat area, it's not actual pigment.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It is the structure, the physical structure of those feathers.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's little air bubbles inside there that reflect that light.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure we I mean, we did
an episode on butterfly wings.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, iridescence.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it is the exact same
thing in butterfly wings is in that gorget that clutch
of feathers in the humming bird.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, so it not only reflects it, but also like
bulks it up too. Pretty neat stuff. So man, sorry,
I guess I'm kind of flemy today. I don't know why,
but my apologies for being flemy as right. So, one
thing I didn't realize about hummingbirds is there's three hundred
(08:05):
and thirty eight species that we know of, and all
of them are found in the Americas. Did you know that.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I don't think I did.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
But they're found like all throughout the Americas, from Chile
all the way up to southern Alaska and Canada. They've
got a pretty wide range. But the thing is the
things are so small, so tiny, and so unable to
maintain a decent body temperature that they basically follow the
(08:36):
summer when they migrate.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, and they all diverged from a single common ancestor
about twenty two million years ago. And the kind of
the cool thing is that they keep changing and their
rate of speciation is really pretty incredible. It's it's supposedly
going to outpace their rate of extinction and we're going
to see well we won't see it because we'll.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Be dead in the next forty years, Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
But human beings, if we're still around, that is, are
going to see the number of species of hummingbird double
to what we have today. But it's going to be
a few million years, so don't expect that anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, but it is pretty cool just to think that,
you know, they're still in the midst of their evolutionary
history and like right in the middle of it, you know, Yeah, totally.
I like that about them. So, you know, being that
multi varied species all the way from Patagonia up to Alaska,
(09:36):
they have learned to adapt to a bunch of different
niches and habitats, right, So you can find hummingbird species
in like sub sea level deserts. You can find them
up in the Andes. There's actually a lot of different
species that live in the Andes Mountains. You can find
the bulk of them in tropical forests around the tropics
(10:00):
of the New World. And they they've adapted like really
well to their different environments. Some migrate, some don't, but
all of them are very tiny.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, they're cute little little things. As if you look
up a picture of the bee hummingbird, just prepare for
one of the cutest little I mean, it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Like it looks fake.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, it doesn't look like a bird could actually
be that small without becoming an insect.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's gonna just collapse into insect form or anyone.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
But look it up online.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
The little bee hummingbird from Cuba ways about one point
nine to five grams. We don't get those here in Georgia,
the only kind. And I think how many species are
there in the United States About seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, that's what I saw, but only.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
That ruby throated is the one that we're going to
get here on the East coast.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, and just to go like to double that up,
man one point nine to five grams. Somebody did the math,
and you could mail fourteen of those things with one
postage stamp in the United States.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Just smash them down flat.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
There's not yet, right, There's not a single species of
hummingbird that breaks an ounce in weight, which is to
say that the largest hummingbird species there is the giant hummingbird,
which is kind of a contradiction in terms. It's still
smaller than an Atlantic canary. Wow, the giant hummingbird is
(11:33):
still canary size. So this is a very tiny group
of birds.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Well, and this is the stat that gets me, And
this is the one I texted Emily because we love
our hummingbirds like all normal humans. Sure, the eggs of
the ruby throated hummingbird that we have here in Georgia
are the size of ap Can you believe that?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Did you look up their nests? Pictures of their nests?
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, gorgeous. It looks like something you'd buy on Etsy.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
They look kind of like made of felt. Because hummingbirds
use spider silk. They take old spider webs and use
them as thread to weave like their nests, along with
plant fibers and leaves and twigs to give it kind
of this spongy, velvety, super cush feel for their little.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Babies, velvety mouthfeel exactly exactly. So we're going to.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Talk a lot about the hummingbird flying and because it's
pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
It's one of the most remarkable things in nature.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Like I think it's right up there with like the
chromatophores of the octopus. And I was about to spoil
our live show, but maybe I should.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Are we ever going to be on stage again?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I don't know, but let's just hold on to it
just in case.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
All right, we're going to keep that in our back pocket.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But the wings, the wing muscles of a hummingbird account
to about twenty five to thirty percent of its total
body weight. Yeah, so this thing is all like it
never has legs day at the gym. It's always doing
upper body and the legs are tiny and weak, and
they really don't walk. I mean, they can perch, but
if you see a hummingbird, they're going to be moving.
(13:12):
If you notice, you never see a hummingbird just kind
of strolling around in your on your deck or something.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, they kind of have legs similar to David Cross's
character in that Titanica sketch from Mister Show.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, do you remember?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I do. So he's kind of hummingbird like in that respect.
But yeah, if your legs are that weak and your
wings are that strong, you're going to spend most of
your time in mid air. And they basically do. Although
they do, you know, they nest on branches, They sleep
on branches, they do perch they made on branches, as.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We'll see, perch on your finger.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Apparently they palm in your hand.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Oh it was palming your hand.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
It was a pall in my hand. Yeah, I give
it plenty of space.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And then they also sometimes will sleep upside down, just
kind of dang from a twig or something with their
spinley little legs like a bat.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah. So the just some amazing stats about their ability
to fly. Like we said, they're the only vertebrate they
can hover in place. They can also fly upside down backward.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
They're real show offs.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
They really are big time show offs. They can get
up to speeds of more than forty five miles per hour.
God knows how many kilometers per hour that is. It's
a lot on some of their dives. But even like
an average speed for them of just flying around, you
know where they're not just you know, going from flower
to flower, but they're like say, traveling from place to place,
(14:41):
is you know, thirty plus miles an hour. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
No, it's super impressive.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
And if you think, man, A, how fast are those
little wings going? And b what is their little cardiovascular
system doing, it's doing exactly what you think it is.
They have their heart beats about two hundred and twenty
five times permit when it's hanging out and doing nothing right,
about twelve hundred times a minute when it's flying, and
those wings range from seventy up and down strokes per
(15:10):
second or I wonder if that's if that counts as
one or two.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And I was wondering that myself, and I'm not sure
that that is answered. At the very least, we're not
going to answer it because we don't have that answer.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, how about it doesn't matter because either way it's
a ton. It's either it's seventy times per second when
they're just flying normally around to get some some good
sweet stuff. But that courtship dive, which we're going to
talk about a little later, that you mentioned about two
hundred times per second those wings are flapping.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, and I actually, now that you say it, if
they're kind of doubling up what a flap is, then
maybe hummingbirds aren't so impressive after.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
All, lazies, so chuck.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
When you're flapping your wings one hundred or two hundred
times per second, depending on whether you're counting the upbeats
and the down beats as a six flap or not,
you need like a lot of energy to do that,
and as a result, the hummingbird typically eats about two
to three times its own weight in food every day.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, like, if that was a human, you would let
me see here, let's the equivalent of about two hundred
and eighty five pounds of hamburger?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Is that? And three hundred and seventy pounds of potatoes?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
No? I think each of these.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Okay, So take your pick.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
If you want to eat just hamburger, it would be
two hundred and eighty five pounds a day. That's a
whole cow, that's yeah, I think a little bit. I
think cow's way more than that.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
But right, well, but as far as usable beef, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I'm sorry for any vegetarians out there by me saying
usable beef.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Just maybe wretch in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Maybe it's an album name now that I think about.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Usable Beef mm hmm by the band what Jungle X.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So, yeah, they eat a lot because they need to, and.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
It's like it's like Fourth of July for them every day. Yeah, yeah,
pretty much three two to three times their own weight
in food.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, and this is uh, we're talking about just on
normal days. Can we talk a little bit about the
migration and what there need to beef up?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Then I think we should.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So they migrate like we like we talked about. They're
not exactly sure what triggers that they think. Maybe they
see the change in daylight like some other animals and
birds do, or maybe just the fact that flowers, you know,
what the flowers are doing.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But I think that that's the one, that's the big one,
because they they can't go for more than a few
hours without food, so they need to go where the
plants are flowering. Right, They just kind of follow.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
That, and I guess they're always connected to that, those
subtle changes in the flowering exactly. So during this migration,
their heart beats about twelve hundred in sixty times a minute.
And they have to gain because they're trekking. I mean
sometimes they're flying over the Gulf of Mexico in one
shot over the course of a few days, so they
need to bulk up big time. They gain about twenty
(18:14):
five to forty percent of their body weight before they
start this migration. And if we're going to do the
human equivalent again for this, if you were a person
that weigh one hundred and seventy pounds, that means you'd
have to gain up to about two fifty five in
a few weeks time, right like Christian bale.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Esque, I know, in just a few weeks, man, that's crazy.
So one of the things that's so impressive about the
hummingbird is just how far it can fly in a day,
especially for how small it is. You know, they they
average something like twenty three miles a day when they're migrating.
But the ruby throated hummingbird the one that it's the
(18:54):
only one that you'll find east of the Mississippi. So
if you see a hummingbird in your east the Mississippi,
you can be like a ornithologist for once in your
life and be like, that's a ruby thrown at hummingbird.
They actually can travel for extraordinarily long stretches, and they
do because their winter and grounds are in the Yucatan,
(19:16):
but they hang out in Florida during the other part
of the year, I guess during the summer, and so
they travel over the Gulf of Mexico, they think, and
when they do that, they do it in like a
straight five hundred miles stretch within eighteen to twenty two
hours without stopping.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
That's incredibly impressive.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It really is. But then there was a study in
twenty sixteen that found they could go even further.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Right, Yeah, they said, you know, physiologically, in theory, they
could fly close to fourteen hundred miles without stopping if
they needed to.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
That's crazy. That'd be like flying from Atlanta to Albuquerque.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
That's nuts.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
If you want a reference, that means nothing to nobody.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
So if you're wondering when they rest, when they they
finally get down to that sweet soil in Mexico, they
can enter torpoor, which we've talked about before. It is
sort of hibernation light really deep sleep like state. Their
metabolic functions are really slowed. I think they can drop
their their body temperature by thirty to forty degrees fahrenheit.
(20:20):
They lower that heart rate from about twelve hundred bats
per minute to as few as fifty And they do
this after they after they migrate, but they can do
this anytime they need to, and they do.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, they do. And also I think it depends on
where they live, because hummingbirds, like I said, a lot
of them live in the Andes, like high up on
the mountain side, and even in the summer, it can
get kind of cool there. So when the temperature cools
enough that it makes no sense for them to keep
up their metabolic rate to try to meet their one
hundred and five degree height body temperature, they'll enter torpor.
(20:55):
And that's just what they do for sleep. And one
of the other things that I wanted to point out
about them living in the Andes, Chuck, this is all
really just a segue for this amazing fact they live
in the Andes, despite the fact and there are some
species that are native to the Andies, not just like
migrating through. That's where they live is the Andes. Despite
the fact that they have these high metabolic rates and
(21:17):
they need more oxygen. Well, there's just inherently less oxygen
in the air up in the mountains, and it's harder
to hover because the air is thinner. And yet they
are so successful there in the andes that up above
a certain line, there's no insects, and so it's up
to the hummingbirds exclusively to pollinate all the flowering plants
(21:37):
up there.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I mean, I think that's probably why they have the
market cornered up there. Sure they're like, all right, well
let's adapt so we can kind of own this area.
And not only that, I don't think we mentioned that
sometimes if you're a small enough hummingbird and there's a
big enough insect, the insect is can win that battle.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
In hummingbird world, the insect eat you.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
All Right, Branson, misery, Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I figured that was gonna trigger a break.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
All right, we'll come back right now to talk more
about hummingbirds.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Okay, Chuck. So we're talking more about hummingbirds. One of
the things that I really feel like we just need
to underscore here is that they are metabolic wonders. They'd
live on this edge of survival where they will die
if they go a few hours without food. Like, do
you know how many days you a human being and
go without food before you die, as long as you
(23:01):
have water and maybe access to a couple vitamins or whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I think we did a podcast on that at some point.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I'm pretty sure we did. Yeah, Angus Barber or Barbier,
I can't remember. They die within hours, so they constantly
have to search for food sources.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yeah, that's why you see them flitting about constantly. They're
always looking for food.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
But it's also one of the reasons why they're known
as potentially the most unsociable and most territorial bird in existence.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, they don't like hanging out with each other. There
are some exceptions that we're going to talk about, but
they generally don't like hang out together. They don't like
hanging out with other birds. At the end of the day,
when everyone's just sing songing by the shoreline, hummingbirds are like, no,
screw you, guys, I got to eat. And not only
do I have to eat, I gotta make little hummingbird
(23:56):
pea eggs. And we talked about this Courtship Dive kind
of teased it out. This is pretty incredible and this
is you know, a lot of times in mating rituals
you'll see the males doing these kind of big fancy shows.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
To try my card tricks.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, try and dogs playing poker. That was that was
all about. Photographer was a female dog, that's right, And
so'll I guess it wasn't a photograph, was it. It was
probably a painting now I think about it and stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
You should know a world. It was a photograph, but.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It was a tin type so it was very old.
So it was funny. I was telling my daughter today
about my bed. She always loves hearing stories about me
and my brother as a kid, and I was telling
her about my teenage bedroom and I.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Was like, I'll show you a picture one day. I've
got pictures.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And she said, you had a phone when you were little,
and I was like, oh boy, that's what it's like
these days. She is so and I had to explain that,
you know, this phone, camera and a phone is kind
of a new thing, Like they used to be two
different pieces of equipment.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yes, they were two very bulky different pieces of equipment.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And a phone used to be attached to your wall
in your kitchen.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Oh yeah, that's true. But if you were, you know,
super wealthy, you have one of those really really long.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Hold you're to say that, because that's exactly the deal.
So the courtship dive is when the male is trying
to attract the female for a little lovin. They will
fly up in the air really high, about fifty or
sixty feet, and then dive bomb toward the female as
fast as it can go.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
And they are flying the whole way.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They're not just they don't tuck the wing back and
the wings back like you're parachuting or something like. They're
flying as fast as they can right at this lady's
face and within inches of her head, going full tilt,
they just pull up real quick and they hit her
in the arm twice and say two for flinching.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
They put it on the brakes and she flies right by.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
But that's what they do is crazy. They fly right
at their face and then stop. If the female gets
a little turned on, she might flit about in the
air with them. And then that's where people might think, oh,
look at those two hummingbirds are up in the air
having sex.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Not true.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
No, And maybe your mom would tell you that you
need to leave the room because hummingbirds are doing it
in mid air. But that's not what they're doing. They
actually they actually copulate perched on a branch.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Okay, now I do that, air man.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
The female lands on the branch. Sometimes, like you said,
she'll join them in the air. Other times she'll just
be like, come on down here, you you win, let's go,
and the male mounts her from behind on the branch,
and just like with everything else, the hummingbirds are super
quick at sex too. Apparently it takes about four seconds
(26:53):
and then that's it, like wambam, thank you, ma'am.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yep, and the male flies away. He doesn't around and
see if it took. He goes on to have sex
with another female, and the lady goes like, what is
this a fern bar?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Who are you? Jack tripper?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And so she goes off and builds a nest and
does all the parenting. Like I said, you know, they
don't mate for life. They don't even stick around after
they mate at all. It's just they're in, they're out,
they're gone.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
And I mean you might think, well, that's that's a
pretty big bummer. Poor, poor poor lady mail poor, yeah,
poor lady hummingbirds. That's exactly how they want it. Because,
like we said, as the species is known as or
all of the species, the hummingbird is known as the
most territorial bird, so it seems, at least as far
(27:45):
as natural selection is concerned, females prefer this arrangement no
pair in printing or mating pair and printing, to where
they just do all the work themselves, because that means
that they can also have their own access to their
food source, to where no matter what the male hummingbird
is going to bring the table and say child bearing
(28:06):
or whatever, it's not worth the food that this female
would have to share. And that's where their territoriality comes from.
Because remember, hummingbirds live on this edge of survival where
if they go for hours without food, they will die.
So they're really really protective of their food source to
the point where a female hummingbird would preferably raised young
(28:31):
on her own then share her food source with the male.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Actually, I get the picture that the female hummingbird is like,
I need you for one thing. It takes four seconds,
and believe me, if I could go to a sperm bank,
I would prefer that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Honestly, I thought you.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Were going to say, believe me, you're going to have
the time of your.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Life that those four seconds will be a wild ride,
my friend.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
That's right. Come meet me on this branch over here, baby,
and those it's gonna be a wait, it's going to
be a stone gasney.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Hey, babe, come here.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So those gorgets that we were talking about, those really colorful, iridescent,
sort of fluffy chest and neck feathers of the male.
Like with many animals, the more brightly colored and showy
that is, the more the female might be attracted because
that might indicate that male bird's fitness because you know,
you got to it takes a lot of work to
(29:26):
keep that hairstyle up, so he must be pretty pretty
strong and have, you know, pretty good at organizing his
day to day list to.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Do effectively the exact same signals that Joe Dirt put
out with his hair. You know, he was obviously very
genetically fit and ready to get I never saw that,
you should. It's definitely it's got a lot of heart.
I think I say that every time you say you
never saw it, but it's worth checking out for sure.
(29:56):
It's one of those ones. You know, some don't age
very well. I think it came poorly aged right out
of the production facility. But that's one of the great
beauties of it. It's definitely worth seeing.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Chuck Well, speaking of aged right out of the shoot.
That's kind of the deal with hummingbird babies too. They say,
the mom doesn't there's not a lot of teaching, and like, here,
let me show you the ropes. It's kind of like,
all right, this is the world. You've been hatched from
your little pea sized egg. Now go out there and
be a hummingbird. Learn it all on your own, kiddo.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But what's amazing, though, is that they do learn this
on their own. They have astounding memories, to the point
where when they migrate people who put out feeders, which
we'll talk about in a little bit four hummingbirds, note
that the same ones, or what they believe is the
same one, comes back year after year. And what's even
(30:52):
more astounding, frequently on the same day of the year,
the same date, the same humming bird will come back
a year after year on his or her migration, right,
and that they just understand this, they know, and part
of it, yes, is following flowers and the blooming patterns
of flowers. But they also think it they might have
(31:13):
some sort of magnetic compass built in that possibly part
of their pinial gland, which is light sensitive, is used
manages to use the sun as a compass, and that
they have astounding memories somehow, some way, because apparently their
brain is about the size of a grain of rice
in most cases.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And the other thing they'll do too, is if they
have speaking of coming back to the buffet, if they
have a patch of flowers, let's say, on your property
that they just love, they'll be like, all right, this
is this is mine.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I'm just gonna go ahead and claim this. I'm going
to come.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Back here because you've got all the good stuff. My
beak fits that flower just perfectly. And we'll talk here
in a minute more about what they eat and why.
But they will they will fiercely protect that little patch
of flower that they love so much and go back
to it time and time again.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yes, So that's where their territoriality comes from, is protecting
food sources, and not just food sources, like I've been
growing this patch of flowers all summer. Stay away. They
could stop somewhere for a half of an hour and
or colloquially half hour and will still protect like that
(32:24):
flower patch that they stopped by if somebody comes along
and tries to get it. And the whole reason that
they do this is because they eat nectar along with
some other stuff, and it takes a really long time
for a flower to produce nectar. So the hummingbird would
love to just have to go to the flower once
and get the full dose of nectar. But they can't
(32:45):
just wait around because other things will come and eat
the nectar they've been hanging out for. So they've developed
this secondary behavior, which is territoriality, where they'll chase off
other hummingbirds. They'll chase off o their birds. They've been
known to chase off hawks even if the hawk comes
a little close for their comfort.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, and they'll you know, I think early on in
the Hummingbird Council of nineteen fifteen, they said all the
socialist hummingbirds got together and said, hey, if we all relax,
just let that nectar build up, it'll be a lot
easier to eat and all the other you know, the
little I'm not gonna I don't want to get political here,
but there were some hummingbirds that were like, no way, man,
(33:26):
I'm not playing ball. I'm going to get in there
and get that nectar whenever I feel like it, right,
So the humbirds couldn't work it out.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
No, and the ones, the other ones that wouldn't go
along with have fired all the air traffic controlling hummingbirds.
That's right, Yeah, I think we shoud take a break.
I think.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So let's take a break and we'll finish up about
what they eat and all about those little feeders that
you have in your backyard right after this.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Okay, chuck. So everybody knows that hummingbirds eat nectar, and
that's definitely true, and they're very well adapted to eat nectar.
They have this tube like tongue that apparently uses a
wicking action to soak up nectar from a flower on
a plant, and they do this. This tongue can actually
carry a load of nectar into their mouths like thirteen
(34:41):
times a second.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
That's over fast.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Not that surprising that they're doing this super fast too,
but it's still pretty impressive. But it's not just nectar.
It's not the only thing that they eat. And actually
people found out the hard way that they didn't just
eat nectar because captured hummingbirds who were studied in the
in captivity died pretty quickly when all they were given
(35:05):
was like a sugar water solution or even a nectar solution.
And so they came to realize that they actually eat
a lot of insects too, And that's one of the
great things about hummingbirds. In addition to being pollinators, they're
also really big at insect controls. And one of the
insects that they eat are bloodsucking mosquitoes.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, mosquitoes, little spiders.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And this is in addition to I don't think we
mentioned the one thousand to two thousand flower blossoms that
they will go poke every single day. So that's why
I mean when we talk about these these hummingbirds are
food scavengers. Up to two thousand flowers a day. That's
pretty intense, it really is.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
So that makes them very very important pollinators. Like we
said in the Andes, where you know you're above the
insect line, it's just up the hummingbirds to pollinate flowers.
So when they're going from flower to flour getting that nectar,
if you pretend that evolution is a living, breathing thing,
evolution has created this arrangement where the flower produces a
(36:07):
nectar treat in exchange or to attract the little hummingbird.
And then when the hummingbird's getting its little nectar treat,
the flower just kind of goes, here's a little pollen
on your forehead. Go find another flower that looks like me,
and you'll find another nectar treat and then transfer this
pollen while you do so. They pollinate a lot of
important stuff and in addition to to eating lots of bugs.
(36:30):
So they're just all around great animals.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, and they love that nectar.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
If you're thinking about flowers in your own garden, if
you want to track some hummingbirds, they want a sugar
content of about twenty six percent. It can't be too
It can't be like a Wendy's frosty because they're using
that tongue. It acts sort of like a straw, right,
So you got to get that spoon with the frosty.
You can't suck that thing up. If you try, you're
going to pass out in your car while you're driving
(36:57):
at cross And that sugar concentrate it can't be too
too sticky because like I said, they're sucking that thing up.
Oftentimes you'll see red or orange petals or bracts they're
often long and tubular because that long tongue and beak
can get in there when others can't. So that kind
(37:18):
of gives them the market cornered on that particular flower.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
It keeps out posers, it does.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
And this is the cool thing, those flowers that you
see that sort of trumpet downward. You know, unless you
can hover, you're out of luck there. So they love
these things because they can hover.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
So there's a lot of Actually, there's a lot of
plants that have flowers that kind of fit this bill.
And most huming birds aren't.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I don't really fit the bill.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Man. That was an unintentional I guess fit the beak.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
They don't build well, you.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Know the duck's bill and ducks are birds, right, right,
are they so? But they're not super specialized. They'll eat
just about anything that they can get necked or out of.
But there are definitely kinds of flowers that are have
kind of co evolved with hummingbirds to kind of give
them what they're looking for more easily. But one of
(38:13):
the problems with human development, as with all things, is
we kind of have supplanted a lot of those kinds
of flowers. The good news is if you have heard
all this and you're like, I want to encourage hummingbirds
to keep living, you can plant these flowers pretty easy.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Yeah. I sent this list to Emily. Actually, because we
have our garden is very Our garden is very much
built for use, for use in Emily's budding interest in herbalism,
and use for the insects that we know and the
birds that we know inhabit our area. So it's not
(38:50):
just like, oh, that's pretty like we want it to
be a real thing that works for our local environment.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
I can't remember who said it, but there's a famous
quote that nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful. Interesting,
and I found that that is one of the truest
things ever said.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Nothing useless, useless.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Can never truly be beautiful.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
I think that broke my brain. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (39:15):
It just means that use like usefulness, like the ability
for something to to have a purpose, is an important
part of its existence, and so just beauty alone doesn't
justify the exists.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay, that's what I thought it was saying, But something
felt like a double negative in there.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
That kind of broke my brain a little bit.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You overthought I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
B Balm the old trumpet creeper, yeah, which was Miles
Davis's nickname for a little while.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
When he was drilling holes in bathroom wall.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
The cardinal flower, the columbine, and the coral honeysuckle are
all very hummingbird friendly flowers and play so you can
put in your yard. And I sent that to Emily,
and I think we have a couple of these. We
used to have columbine and dompe. She's going to bring
that back and we're gonna see if we can get
some more hummingbird action in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
That's awesome, some hot, sticky hummingbird action.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Four seconds of pleasure.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So you can also just go get yourself a hummingbird feed.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
And a lot of people put red food dye in there,
and that is actually a controversial move. There's some concern
among hummingbird enthusiasts that the dye actually can be harmful
over long periods of time. Maybe it can build up
because again, hummingbirds have very tiny organs because they're a
very tiny bird, so introducing this artificial red dye might
(40:43):
not be the best idea. Other people say that's totally unsubstantiated.
There's never been any proof that it actually harms hummingbirds.
And then the other people say, back, it's totally unnecessary.
The bird's gonna find the sugar water either way, So
why add the red dye just in case it is harmful?
If it's just unnecessary. So most most hummingbird enthusiasts say,
(41:05):
don't put red dye in your hummingbird sugar water.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yes, and that solution mixture is important. You can't just
don't just dump a bunch of syrup and water together,
or a bunch of sugarcane or whatever it is four
parts water to one part sugar, because they need a
specific sugar content of about twenty six percent, and that
four to one makes about twenty five percent if my
(41:28):
math is correct.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
It does.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's close to close enough. So one of the other
ways you can help hummingbirds too is in the most
delicious way by choosing coffee that has grown in a
situation that allows hummingbirds to thrive.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Yeah, this is I didn't know about this. This is
really cool.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
There is certified bird friendly coffee. Because we were talking
about the andes and the fact that the birds travel
great distances and elevations up and down these mountains, and
coffee is grown about halfway up these tropical mountains, and
they have a lot of great you know, flowers under
the shady canopy there, and it's a really nice home
(42:08):
for hummingbirds there. And if you drink bird friendly coffee,
that means that they're they have these flowers and they're
making sure they take care of these flowers.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You're right, And yeah, it's it's grown in a kind
of like a simulated forest, as closely simulated as possible.
So you want to look for something that says it's
bird friendly, rainforest alliance and or shade grown, and that
probably means that hummingbirds are thriving on those coffee plantations.
And I went and looked in my beloved Batdorf and
(42:39):
bronze and coffees are all bird friendly of course, land
shade grown.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Is that what you do?
Speaker 1 (42:45):
It's very Oh yeah, yeah, same here. I'm crazy for that.
So I've got a great, great blend for you, Trader
Joe's Decaf Beans half and the other half Batdorf from
Bronzon Whirling Dervish. It's it's the most amazing combination ever
(43:05):
I think of that a shot.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I don't you know, I'm not drinking coffee now because
of it's not winter. But Emily still has her latte
every morning and she she just has their you know,
their espresso beans.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Coffee is a three hundred and sixty five day a
year activity check.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
I know, not for me, but I get it.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
That's okay. I'm not going to yum your yuck very
well done. So that's it for hummingbirds, right, that's it. Well,
if you want to know more about hummingbirds, get one
to land in your hand and study it up close
to personal, but don't mess with it because it's protected
under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of nineteen eighteen in
(43:44):
the United States, and you could land in jail and
pay up to a two hundred thousand dollars fine for
harmon good. And since I said two hundred thousand dollars
fine everybody, that means, of course, is time for listener mayl.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
About the exploding birthmark.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Hey guys, big fan of the show which I listened
to while I'm cooking breakfast, doing laundry and staring, oh boy,
get this, and staring at one hundred thousand row Excel
spreadsheets for work.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Man, my soul just shuddered.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
I know I recently listened to the episode on birthmarks
and thought you would like to hear the story of
my birthmark that exploded. I was born with two birthmarks,
both of which have since been removed. One of those
birthmarks was dark brownish red in a.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Circle on the inside of my right thigh.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
I didn't think much of it because it wasn't very visible, and,
like you said on the show, lots of people have birthmarks. However,
when I was in the third grade, my family and
I were about to leave for my aunt's house to
celebrate Thanksgiving when I realized my pants.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Kept sticking to my leg.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Oh man.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I went to the bathroom and removed my pants, and
I saw blood running down my leg. As a third
grader who had not yet even learned about menstruation, I
assumed I was dying, so I freaked out. Turns out
my birthmark was result of a vascular malformation the size
of a small bouncy ball in my inner thigh. My gosh,
the tangled up ball of veins had ruptured that Thanksgiving
(45:09):
morning and I had to go to the er, where
they stuck a tiny piece of foam on my leg
and probably charges about two thousand dollars because hospitals. A
few months later, I had it surgically removed, but now
have a three inch long scar instead of a birthmark.
But because of my surgery, I wasn't allowed to run
for a few weeks and I got out of running
the mile.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
So who's the winner.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Now, Lucky, Thanks for helping me. Seem really knowledgeable on
very specific topics.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
And that is from Bailey.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Nice Bailey. That is a great story.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Pretty good.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Bailey left out that ironically, both the birthmark and the
scar were in the shape of satan.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
And by the way, Bailey says in the PS that
the other birthmark was hemangioma on the bottom lip that
was removed.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
So man, that's interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, very interesting. And what was the fact that I
kept saying over and over again about homongiomas that they're
a tangled cluster of blood vessels.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Oh I don't think so, okay, So maybe they were.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Two of the same kind of birthmark.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Yeah maybe so.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Well, thanks a lot, Bailey, And if you want to
get in touch with us like Bailey did and share
an amazing story, We're always up for those You can
get in touch with us via email these days at
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
You Know Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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