Faster Than Sight

Can you imagine flapping your arms as fast as a Hummingbird's wings?  Can you imagine a mechanical model doing the same?  The friction alone would wear it out in a very short time.  The engine that drove it would have to be tiny but very powerful.

Think about how minute changes in the wing surfaces of a Hummingbird allow it to move in any direction with amazing agility.  The control necessary to keep from dashing itself into an object or the ground is astounding. (I'm running out of "superlatives" here.)  It is essentially fueled by sugar water.

Starch is the most abundant source of energy in the human diet.  It is a polymer of glucose which is a monosaccharide, one of the simplest forms of sugar.  It is created within plants to store energy by bonding multiple glucose molecules.

Most table sugar and sugar added to foods is sucrose which is another simple sugar.  It is concentrated in plants such as sugarcane and sugar beets to such extent that it can be easily extracted commercially.  It is often victimized as the source of obesity in humans.  It really isn't the sugar's fault; it is ours because we eat too much of it and don't burn those calories off.  Sugar is pure fuel to our bodies.  If we don't burn it, we store it as fat.

If we burned energy at the same rate as a hummingbird we probably couldn't consume enough of it.  Instead, we invent things to save labor and in that saved time we consume more sugar.  It seems crazy to me that we buy riding lawnmowers to save labor and then pay for gym memberships to burn off calories.  I think a better solution would be to flap our arms faster.

My wife caught a number of great pictures of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) at the feeder this week.  The photo below intrigued me because the wings were beating so fast, they were essentially invisible to the eye.