How Fast Are They? Realtime Hummingbird fights V23976

You've seen them in slow motion. Now it's time to see just how fast they move in real life! This short collection of clips shows some of the best 2018 action captured at real-life speed, illustrating just how lightning fast these little birds are. Some recent research has suggested that in terms of relative speed (speed vs. size of object) these birds are the fastest animals on planet Earth. When it comes to absolute speed, the Cheetah is still the fastest land animal, reaching short burst speeds of up 70 mph. The Peregrine Falcon rules sky with dive speeds reaching 242 mph, and the Sailfish cuts through the ocean at around 65 mph. However, these are all relatively large animals. To determine an animal's speed relative to its size, researchers sometimes divide the measured speed of the creature by its body length, the result being expressed as "Body Lengths per Second" (BL/S).

Hummingbirds typically hit 25-35mph in straght-line flight, but can reach speeds up to 58 mph in a dive, which can usually be seen (and more often HEARD) in spring as the males perform high-speed courship dives to impress their prospective perched mates. This translates to about 340 BL/S for a 3-inch-long bird @ 58 mph, and easily beats the Cheetah (26 BL/S), the Peregrine (304 BL/S), a fighter jet with afterburners (150 BL/S) and the Space Shuttle re-entry at 207 BL/S. Even in straight level flight at 30 mph the birds travel at a blistering 176 BL/S. They can easily tolerate 10g (10x the force of gravity) and their ultra-low mass allows for amazing acceleration, deceleration, direction change. Their high speed maneuverability is accomplished with simple thrust-vectering from highly specialized wings and wing muscles, able to flap in a wide degree of angles relative to their bodies.

All this speed is worthless if the senses and brain can't keep up with it, which implies that these birds may experience the world at a much faster speed than we do. Ironically, that means that most things around them are probably moving in slow motion from their point of view!

Filmed in Santa Clarita, California with a GoPro Hero 5 Black at 120 and 240 fps, realtime audio tracks included.

Many of these scenes can be seen in slow motion below..

Real Angry Birds 2: Hummingbird Slow Motion V23961

Real Angry Birds 3: 67 Action Scenes in Slow Motion! V23969

Funny Feet 2 - Slow Motion Hummingbird Antics V23975

Long Hummingbird battle V23430u

Slow Motion Hummingbirds 2018 0 V23970

Slow Motion Hummingbirds 2018 1 (with voices) V23971

Slow Motion Hummingbirds 2018 2 240fps V23972

Slow Motion Hummingbirds 2018 3 240fps V23973

Slow Motion Hummingbirds 2018 4 120fps (-10x, with Voices)V23974

Hummingbird fights demo reel 1 V23962

Hummingbird fights demo reel 2 V23963

Hummingbird fights demo reel 3 V23964

Hummingbird fights demo reel 4 V23965

Hummingbird fights demo reel 5 V23966

Hummingbird fights demo reel 6 V23967

Hummingbird fights demo reel 7 V23968

Contains JCMDI catalog#: V23505,V23671,V23676,V23680,V23683,V23686,V23688,V23691,V23695,V23698,V23700,V23765,V23766,V23769,V23771,V23773,V23775,V23778,V23780,V23787,V23804,V23833,V23837,

[myfootsitchy]

What a hidden gem of a vid. Crazy that they can just hover like that. Don’t get em much round where I live. Thanks for sharing bud

[LJG]

They are an amazing little bird .. You captured them perfectly !!

[edwardanugent]

Unrelated to this video, how have you been since your PRK. I also had RK in the 90s and am considering PRK. So how are things now? Did you have to go for CR3?

[DragNetJoe]

How fast are they? Apparently not as fast as my cat.