Category: Birds
These masters of graceful flight can soar hundreds of miles a day, barely flapping their wings as they scan the ocean waters for prime fishing. They feed by sitting on the water surface and catching squid and other small prey with their bills. They are named for the Laysan breeding colony in the Hawaiian Islands, where they are the second most common seabird. Laysan albatrosses can be exceptionally long-lived - one individual was still nesting at 63 years of age, as of 2014.
Sugar, Honey Honey…
Too much sugar in the diet leads to obesity for humans: if we drink a can of soda pop (which is mostly high fructose corn syrup), the fructose is converted into fat by our livers; drink too many too often, and we end up gaining weight. But for hummingbirds, sugar isn’t something to eat sparingly: it is a source of power! Because of their simple, sugar rich diet, hummingbirds have adapted the ability to fuel their muscles with fructose without first converting it to fat - a feat unique among vertebrates. We do not yet know for sure how they process it so fast, though experiments have demonstrated that they do indeed possess this amazing capability. How fast, you ask? Their metabolisms are so extreme, a human-sized hummingbird would have to drink a can of soda pop every minute in order to gain weight!
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