A remarkable stop-motion photograph of three female ruby-throated hummingbirds hovering about a vial of sweetened liquid is shown on the cover of this week’s Science News Letter.
Prof. Harold E. Edgerton, Kenneth J. Germeshausen, and Herbert E. Grier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where this ultrahigh-speed method of photography was developed, found that in hovering the wings move at the amazing speed of nearly 60 beats a second.
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