Hummingbirds are some of the fastest and most agile birds on earth. They squeeze into incredibly tight spaces to obtain nectar and can reach flight speeds of up to 9G during courtship without causing bodily harm. They also seem to have a very controlled way of flying. Hummingbirds use two different sensory strategies to control the way they fly, depending on whether they are moving forward or hovering. Here are the findings: The study was published on January 10 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
[Related: Hummingbirds have two creative strategies for flying through tight spaces.]
hummingbird when flying forward It depends on the “internal forward model”. This model is a deeply ingrained and intuitive autopilot feature that allows you to measure speed while experiencing multiple visual stimuli.
“There’s too much information coming in to rely directly on all the visual cues from the environment,” said study co-author Vikram B. Baliga, a zoologist and comparative physiologist at the University of British Columbia. said in a statement.
But when the birds are hovering or responding to cues that may require them to change altitude, the team found that the birds are using more real-time, direct vision from the environment. I discovered.
To study these flight patterns, the research team brought in 11 wild adult males. anna’s hummingbird (Calypte Anna) Go to the laboratory. They had the birds repeatedly fly from a perch to a feeder in a tunnel about 13 feet long and recorded video of each flight. The research team also projected patterns onto the front and side walls of the tunnel and tested how the hummingbirds responded to this different visual stimulus.
In several flight scenarios, the researchers projected vertical stripes on the sides of the tunnel that moved at different speeds to mimic forward motion. They also sometimes used horizontal stripes on the sides to mimic elevation changes. On the front wall, the team projected a rotating vortex. These circular patterns are designed to create the illusion of a change in position.
“If birds were receiving direct cues from visual stimuli, we would expect them to adjust their forward speed to match the speed of the vertical stripes on the sidewalls,” Barriga says. “However, the birds varied their speed or stopped completely depending on the pattern, but there was no clear correlation.”
However, the researchers observed that the hummingbirds adapted more directly to stimuli that indicated changes in altitude during flight. As the birds hovered, they tried to adjust their position to approach the moving spirals of the wall in front of them.
[Related: This hybrid hummingbird’s colorful feathers are a genetic puzzle.]
“Our experiment was designed to investigate how hummingbirds control their flight speed,” said study co-author Doug Altshuler, a zoologist and comparative physiologist at the University of British Columbia. To tell said in a statement. “But because hummingbirds take spontaneous breaks during flight to hover, we discovered these two different strategies to control different aspects of their trajectory.”
The findings provide insight into how these fast birds perceive the world as they transition between flight patterns. Such data could also help engineers develop better in-vehicle navigation systems for drones and hovering vehicles in the future.
