Tuesday, 25 August 2015

Hummingbird tongues are way weirder than we thought

© sannesu

By Rachel Feltman

Thanks to a new study, we finally know how hummingbird tongues work.

Until now, the general consensus was that hummingbirds used capillary action to sip tiny bursts of nectar. Capillary action is a force you can observe by putting a long, thin tube in a glass of water: The water will travel up through the narrow space without any suction. Scientists thought that the long, narrow grooves they saw on hummingbird tongues accomplished the same feat.


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