Hummingbirds Are More Organized Than We Thought

Image: Dawn Beattie
Wikimedia Commons

I have three hummingbirds that come to my backyard feeder and I love watching these tiny creatures. It was previously known that hummingbirds visit flowers in particular sequences when foraging. A new study titled Numerical ordinality in a wild nectarivore suggests they are able to understand a numerical concept of order, rather than features such as specific flower location or nearby landmarks. This is the first time such a capability has been shown in a wild, free-living vertebrate.