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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Wed Sep 9, 2020, 05:06 AM Sep 2020

This hummingbird survives cold nights by nearly freezing itself solid

The black metaltail goes into a state of suspended animation, becoming ‘cold as a rock’



A black metaltail hummingbird (Metallura phoebe) perches on a branch in the Peruvian Andes. To survive cold nights, this bird cools down to 3° Celsius, putting itself in a state of suspended animation. It’s the coldest body temperature ever recorded for a bird or non-hibernating mammal.

By Jonathan Lambert

10 HOURS AGO

The high Andes mountains of Peru are a hummingbird’s paradise, rich in wildflower nectar and low in predators. But there’s one problem: the cold.

Nighttime temperatures often dip below freezing in these rainy tropical highlands. How does a six-gram bird that needs nectar from 500 flowers a day just to survive get enough extra energy to keep itself warm all night?

It doesn’t.

Instead, as temperatures drop with the sun, these hummingbirds enter a state of suspended animation known as torpor. One species, the black metaltail (Metallura phoebe), chills to 3.26° Celsius, the coldest body temperature ever recorded in a bird or non-hibernating mammal, researchers report September 9 in Biology Letters.

“They’re cold as a rock,” says Blair Wolf, a physiological ecologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “If you didn’t know better you’d think they were dead.” Cooling to near-death temperatures lets the hummingbirds save precious energy, allowing them to survive the cold night and gear up to feed the next day, Wolf says.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hummingbirds-black-metaltail-cold-torpor

Also in Science:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122871554





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This hummingbird survives cold nights by nearly freezing itself solid (Original Post) Judi Lynn Sep 2020 OP
Sounds like my wife's feet. Throck Sep 2020 #1
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