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| Male amethyst-throated Sunangel in Ecuador. Photo by Patty McGann |
Last night we were listening to “As it Happens” on CBC, and their sound of the day was – are you ready for this? – a snoring hummingbird! Today, we found out a a bit more about the story behind the sounds. It was a female Amethyst-throated Sunangel, native to the northern Andes in South America. It had been captured by biology researchers who wanted to study the bird's oxygen uptake while it slept.
Many hummingbird species go into torpor overnight as a way to preserve energy, especially if they live in cold places. The rufous hummingbird, which shows up in the Canadian Rockies for the summer, is a torpor specialist, and the Sunangel lives high enough in the Andes that it needs this strategy too. These hummingbirds drop their heart rate, body temperature and their respiratory rate to get through the night. But now you can add to the list at least one species that snores!
And by the way, the bird was released back into the wild the next morning.
