According to a recent survey, the hummingbird is the most stylish bird. According to researchers, the color range of the hummingbird’s plumage much outweighs that of any other bird on the earth!
Yale ornithologist studied nanostructures making up birds’ feathers
Richard Prum, a Yale ornithologist, has researched the nanostructures and molecules that make up the feathers of many different bird varieties. Still, he claims to have been completely taken aback by what he discovered in hummingbirds.
Prum said, “We knew that hummingbirds were colorful, but we never imagined that they would rival all the rest of the birds combined.”
These results were made possible by data gathered by Gabriela Venable, a graduate student at Duke University and former undergrad in Prum’s lab. Gabriela conducted data on the different wavelengths radiated by the bird’s feathers from 1,600 feather specimens of 114 hummingbird species. The scientists matched all of that information to an earlier collection of hues that were previously reported to be present in the plumages of 111 bird species, varying from parrots to penguins.
Can birds detect colors that humans cannot?
The birds’ eyes have four different kinds of color cones, which are receptive to green, red, blue, and UV or violet hues. Birds could thus see all these colors that humans can, as well as a wide range of other hues that are undetectable to human sight. The combinations of UV and other colors, like ultraviolet-green and ultraviolet-yellow, are examples birds can see that humans can’t.
These most recent discoveries show that the variety of bird-visible colors found in hummingbird feathers is more than the recognized variety of colors observed in the overall plumages of other bird species! In addition, the overall number of hues associated with visible avian plumage has just expanded by an astounding 56% due to this research.
Blue greens, intense blues, and dark purples are among the hues in hummingbird plumage; these are especially noticeable on the birds’ heads and necks. These feathers are generally prominent on birds during social interactions and mating season.
