Thursday, June 11, 2009

Hummingbirds 'faster than jets'

Male hummingbirds, swooping in an effort to impress females, achieve speeds "faster than fighter jets", according to a study.
A US researcher has captured the birds' dives with super-fast cameras. He lured them into their impressive displays using stuffed models of female birds.
The feathered acrobats reached speeds of almost 400 body lengths per second.
Christopher Clark from the University of California Berkeley filmed the courtship dives of male Anna's hummingbirds on cameras able to capture 500 frames per second.
When measured relative to the length of their bodies, the birds' top speed, he said, was "greater than [that] of a fighter jet with its afterburners on, or the space shuttle during atmospheric re-entry".
VIDEO
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