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December 15, 2025<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n These Hummingbirds Joust Like Medieval Knights\u2014Even to the Death<\/p>\n The sharp, elongated bills of green hermit hummingbirds aren\u2019t just fine-tuned for feeding; they also allow males to joust like knights over mates<\/p>\n By Sara Novak edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n A green hermit hummingbird in Costa Rica.<\/p>\n The iridescent green hermit hummingbird is known for its elongated bill, which is fine-tuned for feasting on a particular tropical flower in the rainforests of Central and South America.<\/p>\n But once mating season begins, its distinctive needle-pointed bill also becomes a weapon of war. According to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, male green hermit hummingbirds use their bill\u2014which is straighter and sharper than females\u2019\u2014to joust in a sparring match that can sometimes end in death.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used to think that males and females had different bill curvature because they feed on different flowers, but now we see that the evolutionary purpose that shapes their beaks is also about fighting,\u201d says lead study author Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Using three-dimensional modeling of the bills of museum specimens, the researchers showed that the males bill is 3 percent straighter and 69 percent more pointed than the females\u2019, and the former has a dagger-tipped end that can strike at competition with surprising ferocity, Rico-Guevara says.<\/p>\n Hummingbirds from a species related to green hermit hummingbirds fighting in a similar way.<\/p>\n During breeding season in early May, the male birds gather in a group called a lek, where they begin singing a yippy chirp that tells breeding females to come hither. They fight for a position in the lek because males who are not part of the chorus are less likely to be heard by females. And if another hummingbird tries to perch on a branch that\u2019s already occupied, the fight can escalate. \u201cThe birds fly bill-first at the other bird and poke them with their entire force,\u201d Rico-Guevara says.<\/p>\n Marcelo Araya-Salas, a biologist studying hermit hummingbirds at the University of Costa Rica, who was not involved in the study, says that this research does an elegant job of showing the difference in the bills using 3D modeling but that the conduct of the birds isn\u2019t at all surprising.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re crazy aggressive,\u201d he says, so much so that the term Huitzilopochtli which is the Aztec sun and war god, \u201cis a hummingbird.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" December 15, 2025 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm These Hummingbirds Joust Like Medieval Knights\u2014Even to the Death The sharp, elongated bills of green hermit hummingbirds aren\u2019t just fine-tuned for feeding; they also allow males to joust like knights over mates By Sara Novak edited by Andrea Thompson A green hermit hummingbird in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[7616,20729,18991,14088,6077,485,241,2359],"class_list":{"0":"post-37514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-hummingbirds","9":"tag-jousting","10":"tag-knights","11":"tag-mating","12":"tag-medieval","13":"tag-rare","14":"tag-show","15":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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