Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds are one of God’s many amazingly designed creatures¹. If you’ve ever seen these beautiful animals, you’ll have seen that their most incredible feature is their ability to hover. This is accomplished by a forward and reverse sweeping wing motion forming a figure-8 pattern, while the wings flap 50 to 80 times per second!

But what fuels these little powerhouses? This is actually the most amazing part. The metabolism of these little birds is among the highest in vertebrate animals. Their active heart rate is about 1200 beats per minute! In order to sustain this, the birds consume the nectar of up to 2000 flowers per day.

For you Timmy’s fans out there, the human equivalent of this is drinking over 1200 large double doubles per day. That would mean our hearts would beat 1260 beats per minute which is enough to raise our internal body temperature to 385 degrees Celsius – during which we would burst into flames.

That sounds pretty dire. But not a single hummingbird has ever burst into flame! They were designed perfectly to accommodate the increased temperature with sophisticated heat dissipation mechanisms like the fanning action that cools the entire length of the bird, rapid air respiration, a heat exchange system on the skin and bill and water bathing.

Could a bird like this evolve each one of these abilities one at a time?  Or is the most probable explanation that this bird was designed by an Intelligent Creator?

1. Gillis, S. “God’s amazing design of the hummingbird.” Creation.com, Creation Ministries International, 29 Aug. 2019, https://creation.com/hummingbird-superhero. Accessed Feb 22, 2022.