Hummingbirds’ whole survival strategy is built around motion. Since they can’t afford to linger too long at one flower, they’ve evolved a way to drink nectar in a hurry.
And a new study using super slow-motion video indicates their tongues do that in a very different way than previously thought. Instead of siphoning up nectar using capillary action, hummingbird tongues are actually pumping liquid up in a very unexpected way. That discovery flies in the face of what biologists have thought for more than a century.
