Within the entire animal kingdom, the hummingbird is the only bird that can fly in all directions. In Latin America there are 47 species. Nir sapir, an evolutionary biologist and researcher at the University of Haifa, spent several months sitting on the balcony of his house observing hummingbirds and discovered that they had the ability to fly in various directions.
Also, the good speed of these small animals caught his attention. From this, together with Robert Dudley, from the University of California, he carried out a research work with the support of Berkeley. This study, focused on the flight of hummingbirds, was carried out with the help of high-speed cameras and oxygen consumption meters. Up, down, forward and backward. A flight in all possible directions. They were of the species Calypte anna, which is characterized by having a red head, and their flight was seen as they fed one by one on sugar while the team activated a wind tunnel. In this way, they could control and manipulate the intensity of the artificial breeze, and they observed the behavior of the animals. They discovered they were highly intuitive birds, because depending on the force and direction of the air they used different flight techniques.
The movement was recorded by the cameras at the same time that the oxygen consumption of the hummingbirds, their posture and the inclination plane of their wings were measured. This last factor was the determinant of the investigation since they concluded that these birds have the ability to go forward, backward, up, down or stay in the same place. Hummingbirds use a lot of energy to fly. Observing them, they noticed that they fly backwards when they withdraw from a flower that they used as a nectar source. This explains why these very small birds look for flowers to feed on every two minutes. Apparently, they require a significant energy boost, because they have to recover from such an important expense for their bodies. In addition, it turned out that the resistance they impose on the air is slightly higher compared to forward flight.
