Animal Slander! Debunking 'Birdbrained' And 'Eat Like A Bird'
A hummingbird feeds on the nectar of a flower in Boquete, Chiriqui Province, Panama. Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A hummingbird feeds on the nectar of a flower in Boquete, Chiriqui Province, Panama.
Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty ImagesWelcome back to "Animal Slander," the series where we take common expressions about animals and debunk them with science. Today on the show, we tackle "birdbrained" and to "eat like a bird" with biologists Corina Newsome and Alejandro Rico-Guevara.
Alejandro's paper, "Hummingbird's tongues are elastic micropumps," was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences in 2015.
Previous episodes of animal slander include:
Myth Busting 'Blind As A Bat' And 'Memory Of A Goldfish'
Does Your Cat Really Hate You?
Send us your animal slander—and questions and praise—by emailing the show at shortwave@npr.org.
This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Geoff Brumfiel, and fact-checked by Emily Vaughn.