Which species of Hummingbirds has the fastest heartbeat? And how many beats per minute is it?
Sources cite a heart rate for hummingbirds of 500-600 per minute while perched, and up to 1,260 per minute in rapid flight. However, I believe this rate was determined for the Blue-throated Hummingbird, a relatively large species at 8 g. Smaller species will have even higher heart rates, but I as far as I know these have not been measured directly. The smallest species is the Bee Hummingbird of Cuba, in which males weigh as little as 1.6 g, and this likely has the highest rate.
Thanks.
How do you catch a hummingbird without injuring it?
Oh and do hummingbirds have songs like some other birds, or are they non-singers?
I usually use mist nets- very fine black nets that the birds can’t see.
Yes. They are too high pitched to sound like much to human ears, but some species “sing” persistently in courtship. And hummingbirds are one of only three bird groups known to learn their vocalizations (rather than having them be purely innate), the others being the higher songbirds (oscines) and parrots.
Here’s a pdf on hummingbird song: Blue-throated Hummingbird Song: a Pinnacle of Nonoscine Vocalizations
I see your point. Here’s a wav of a Ruby Throated Hummingbird song. It sounds vaguely like shortwave static.
From that same page the only predator listed for hummingbirds is largemouth bass! Who knew?
I’m guessing you probably know that lots of other things will eat hummingbirds as well.
Yeah, there’s a whole sub-genre of hummingbird scientific literature that consists of “Such-and-such predation on a hummingbird,” including frogs, fish, and as you linked to, praying mantises.
Holy crap! :eek:
Note that over large ranges of animal mass, heart rate scales with mass as a power law with exponent -1/4 or so. [1] Given Colibri’s numbers, this puts the 1.6-g Bee Hummingbird’s resting heart rate at around 820 bpm.
[1] Physics Today, vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 36-42 (2004).