Hummingbird Tongue Design Gets an Upgrade

One of the memorable moments in Illustra Media's documentary Flight: The Genius of Birds is the hummingbird tongue animation (see it on YouTube). The unique nectar-trapping mechanism of unfurling flaps (lamellae) on supporting rods that automatically fold over to seal in the nectar was discovered by two biologists at the University of Connecticut in 2011 (see the paper in PNAS). This was cutting-edge science at the time the film was made, because most biologists previously had assumed the to...