This equates to saving 65-95 percent of their energy every hour! (If a human drops 3.5 degrees, we become hypothermic.)īeing in a torpid state allows them to use roughly 5-30 percent of the energy they would normally use during the day at rest. When a hummingbird enters torpor, their heart rate drops down to roughly 50 beats per minute-a far cry from 1200 during the day! Their metabolism drops to 1/15 of what it was, and their body temperature decreases to the ambient temperature, which can be up to a 50 degree shift. Essentially, it’s a way to conserve energy. It doesn’t happen over long periods of time, like hibernation, but the concept is very similar. Torpor is a deep sleep that is similar to hibernation. Hummingbirds do the latter, which puts them in a state of torpor. The solution to this is either to wake up and eat (often) or slow these processes down so they don’t use as much energy. If a hummingbird’s internal processes worked the same at night as they do during the day, they would waste all their energy trying to keep warm, breathing, and maintaining their metabolism. So how do they manage to restrict their energy expenditure at night? That’s where their unique sleeping habits come in! Hummingbird Sleep Cycle Since they don’t eat at night, they can’t risk wasting any precious calories. They burn so many calories and if they don’t replace them, they’ll perish. They have to do this basically just to stay alive for the day. If you know any birds that do this, please let me know because I’ll have some serious research to catch up on.)ĭuring the day, hummers constantly eat food. Those are calories that hummers simply can’t afford to spare, especially when they are not consuming food (unless they could sleep fly. Tally up those calories across several hours of sleep and it starts to add up. Wait, waste energy? I thought sleep was supposed to create energy.Įven while sleeping, bodies burn calories. Good, solid sleep, that doesn’t waste any energy. In addition to fuel, they also need sleep. If the average human had the same crazy metabolism, they would have to consume 285 pounds of meat to maintain their body weight. Because of this, hummers intake about half to eight times their body weight in nectar per day. And humans, well we can’t fly.Īll those energy expenditures require vast amounts of fuel to power them.
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