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.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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.
I saw Jerry.
I know, I heard Jerry.
That's all with my own two eyes.
How's she doing? Is her hair just completely white? Now?
Well, I mean we were fifteen feet away from each other, so I couldn't tell.
What did you try squinting?
I did, and I shaved so she didn't even recognize me.
I know, I saw that picture. Man, you look great.
Yeah, thanks so nice.
It's just luxurious.
Well, all the beard's coming back already, huh from.
The second I shaved it. Technically it started coming back.
That is true. Are you one of those people who say, like, yeah, from the moment we're born, we start dying.
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.
That's good. Must have felt really weird.
It does still feel pretty weird at times.
Oh that's good.
Well four days later.
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.
By the way, if you want to see that picture, you can go to the movie Crush page on Facebook and see that.
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.
Yeah. Good eating.
Yeah, you just grab the air, snap the wings off, and pop it.
Like you think a quail doesn't produce much meat. Hummingbird gotta have like forty of those for dinner.
At least that might just be an appetizer.
Good luck catching them though, right.
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 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.
How many years ago is this?
That was a while back?
I mean, were you a child?
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.
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.
Yeah, an owl or the Jersey devil.
It really apparently it's not uncommon.
To get attacked by an owl.
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.
Is your neighbor talking rabbit.
I don't have a neighbor to where it goes. It's an empty house, so maybe that's why they like it.
So no, who is at tech though your neighborhood.
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.
Oh my god, all right, stop diverting attention from hummingbirds.
Yeah, so hummingbirds they are with the family. Uh. I had it.
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. 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 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.
Double your pleasure, up and down.
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'.
Yeah, they're the only vertebrate animal that can hover like a helicopter.
It's like The Blue Thunder of Birds.
Wasn't that Roy Scheider movie? Yeah? I think I wasn't allowed to watch that because there's some sexy stuff in there.
There is that, yeah, the blue thunderpeaks and some windows, if you know what I mean.
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.
I don't think I was allowed to watch it at first either, but I think I might have snuck it.
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
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.
Yeah, it's amazing.
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.
It is the structure, the physical structure of those feathers.
It's little air bubbles inside there that reflect that light.
Right.
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure we I mean, we did an episode on butterfly wings.
Yeah, iridescence.
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.
Pretty cool.
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 and thirty eight species that we know of, and all of them are found in the Americas. Did you know that.
I don't think I did.
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 summer when they migrate.
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.
Be dead in the next forty years, Okay.
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.
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, 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 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.
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.
Like it looks fake.
Yeah it does.
You know, it doesn't look like a bird could actually be that small without becoming an insect.
It's gonna just collapse into insect form or anyone.
But look it up online.
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.
Yeah, that's what I saw, but only.
That ruby throated is the one that we're going to get here on the East coast.
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.
Just smash them down flat.
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 still canary size. So this is a very tiny group of birds.
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?
Did you look up their nests? Pictures of their nests?
Oh?
Yeah, gorgeous. It looks like something you'd buy on Etsy.
Yeah.
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.
Babies, velvety mouthfeel exactly exactly. So we're going to.
Talk a lot about the hummingbird flying and because it's pretty remarkable.
It's one of the most remarkable things in nature.
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.
Are we ever going to be on stage again?
I don't know, but let's just hold on to it just in case.
All right, we're going to keep that in our back pocket.
Yeah.
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. If you notice, you never see a hummingbird just kind of strolling around in your on your deck or something.
Yeah, they kind of have legs similar to David Cross's character in that Titanica sketch from Mister Show.
Yeah, do you remember?
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.
We'll see, perch on your finger.
Apparently they palm in your hand.
Oh it was palming your hand.
It was a pall in my hand. Yeah, I give it plenty of space.
Okay, I gotcha.
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.
Oh wow.
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.
They're real show offs.
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, is you know, thirty plus miles an hour. That's pretty impressive.
No, it's super impressive.
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 second or I wonder if that's if that counts as one or two.
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.
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.
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.
All, lazies, so chuck.
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.
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?
Is that? And three hundred and seventy pounds of potatoes?
No? I think each of these.
Okay, So take your pick.
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.
But right, well, but as far as usable beef, I don't know.
There you go.
I'm sorry for any vegetarians out there by me saying usable beef.
Just maybe wretch in your mouth.
Maybe it's an album name now that I think about.
Usable Beef mm hmm by the band what Jungle X.
Right.
So, yeah, they eat a lot because they need to, and.
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.
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?
Then I think we should.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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, 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.
That's incredibly impressive.
It really is. But then there was a study in twenty sixteen that found they could go even further.
Right, Yeah, they said, you know, physiologically, in theory, they could fly close to fourteen hundred miles without stopping if they needed to.
That's crazy. That'd be like flying from Atlanta to Albuquerque.
That's nuts.
If you want a reference, that means nothing to nobody.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 up there.
Yeah.
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.
In hummingbird world, the insect eat you.
All Right, Branson, misery, Let's take a break.
I figured that was gonna trigger a break.
All right, we'll come back right now to talk more about hummingbirds.
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 have water and maybe access to a couple vitamins or whatever.
I think we did a podcast on that at some point.
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.
Yeah, that's why you see them flitting about constantly. They're always looking for food.
But it's also one of the reasons why they're known as potentially the most unsociable and most territorial bird in existence.
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 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.
To try my card tricks.
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.
You should know a world. It was a photograph, but.
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.
Was like, I'll show you a picture one day. I've got pictures.
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.
Yes, they were two very bulky different pieces of equipment.
And a phone used to be attached to your wall in your kitchen.
Oh yeah, that's true. But if you were, you know, super wealthy, you have one of those really really long.
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.
And they are flying the whole way.
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.
They put it on the brakes and she flies right by.
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.
Not true.
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.
Okay, now I do that, air man.
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 and then that's it, like wambam, thank you, ma'am.
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?
Who are you? Jack tripper?
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.
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 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 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 on her own then share her food source with the male.
Yeah, I mean it's kind of cool.
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.
Honestly, I thought you.
Were going to say, believe me, you're going to have the time of your.
Life that those four seconds will be a wild ride, my friend.
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.
Hey, babe, come here.
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 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.
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. 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.
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.
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 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 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.
Yeah.
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.
I'm just gonna go ahead and claim this. I'm going to come.
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.
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 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 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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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 times a second.
That's over fast.
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 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.
Yeah, mosquitoes, little spiders.
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.
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 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. So they're just all around great animals.
Yeah, and they love that nectar.
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 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 of gives them the market cornered on that particular flower.
It keeps out posers, it does.
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.
Yep.
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.
I don't really fit the bill.
Man. That was an unintentional I guess fit the beak.
They don't build well, you.
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 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.
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 just like, oh, that's pretty like we want it to be a real thing that works for our local environment.
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.
Nothing useless, useless.
Can never truly be beautiful.
I think that broke my brain. What does that mean?
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.
Okay, that's what I thought it was saying, But something felt like a double negative in there.
That kind of broke my brain a little bit.
You overthought I don't think so.
B Balm the old trumpet creeper, yeah, which was Miles Davis's nickname for a little while.
When he was drilling holes in bathroom wall.
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.
That's awesome, some hot, sticky hummingbird action.
Four seconds of pleasure.
So you can also just go get yourself a hummingbird feed.
Yeah.
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 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, don't put red dye in your hummingbird sugar water.
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 math is correct.
It does.
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.
Yeah, this is I didn't know about this. This is really cool.
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
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.
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 bronze and coffees are all bird friendly of course, land shade grown.
Is that what you do?
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 I think of that a shot.
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.
Coffee is a three hundred and sixty five day a year activity check.
I know, not for me, but I get it.
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 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.
About the exploding birthmark.
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.
Man, my soul just shuddered.
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.
Circle on the inside of my right thigh.
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.
Kept sticking to my leg.
Oh man.
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 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.
So who's the winner.
Now, Lucky, Thanks for helping me. Seem really knowledgeable on very specific topics.
And that is from Bailey.
Nice Bailey. That is a great story.
Pretty good.
Bailey left out that ironically, both the birthmark and the scar were in the shape of satan.
And by the way, Bailey says in the PS that the other birthmark was hemangioma on the bottom lip that was removed.
So man, that's interesting stuff.
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.
Oh I don't think so, okay, So maybe they were.
Two of the same kind of birthmark.
Yeah maybe so.
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.
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.