Why can hummingbirds float without falling?

Why can tiny hummingbirds float above a flower for a very long time? Douglas Warrick, professor of zoology at Oregon State University (USA), used a device that allowed capturing very short moments in hummingbird wing movements, about 250 microseconds (a microsecond equal to a millionth of a second) aims to analyze the movement of the air layer around hummingbird wings and provide detailed information about its flight phenomenon.

He found that hummingbirds receive 75% of the lift from the flapping of the wings, the remaining 25% comes from the process of flapping the wings. In general, hummingbirds can be considered as a dividing line between birds on the one side (gaining lift from falling wings) with insects (soaring by half the process of flapping their wings and half from the process of flapping up the wings. Note that in other birds, the body lift is 100% thanks to the flapping of the wings, while the ratio in insects is 50-50.

Douglas Warrick argues that this experiment has provided strong evidence for bio-convergence - species that do not have relatives but evolve similar characteristics to exploit their advantages.

NGUYEN SINH