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