{"id":2186401,"date":"2025-04-12T18:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2186401"},"modified":"2025-04-12T09:30:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T07:30:39","slug":"hummingbird-chicks-observed-for-the-first-time-pretending-to-be-caterpillars-to-avoid-being-eaten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/hummingbird-chicks-observed-for-the-first-time-pretending-to-be-caterpillars-to-avoid-being-eaten\/","title":{"rendered":"Hummingbird Chicks Observed for the First Time Pretending to be Caterpillars to Avoid Being Eaten"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Jay Falk and Scott Taylor first saw the white-necked Jacobin hummingbird chick in Panama\u2019s dense rainforest, the bird biologists didn\u2019t know what they were looking at.<\/p>\n

The day-old bird, smaller than a pinky finger, had brown fuzz all over its body. When Falk and Taylor walked closer to the nest, the chick began twitching and shaking its head\u2014a behavior they had never seen in birds before. (See the video below\u2026)<\/p>\n

It turns out the hummingbird might fend off predators by mimicking a poisonous caterpillar that lives in the same region. In a new paper published March 17 in Ecology, Taylor, associate professor at University of Colorado Boulder, and his team described this unusual mimicry behavior for the first time in hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know so little about what nesting birds do in the tropics,\u201d said Falk, the paper\u2019s first author and postdoctoral fellow in Taylor\u2019s lab. \u201cBut if we put more effort into observing the natural world, we might discover these kinds of behavior are very common.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tropical rainforest is a dangerous place for small birds, said Falk, who\u2019s also a researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Snakes, monkeys, birds, and even insects all prey on them.<\/p>\n

So how can tiny hummingbird chicks survive? Falk and his team may have stumbled upon the answer during a trip to Soberan\u00eda National Park in Panama last year.<\/p>\n

Despite the birds\u2019 frequent visits to Falk\u2019s feeders outside his research station in Panama, Falk had never seen a white-necked jacobin chick or its nest before.<\/p>\n

\"White-necked
White-necked jacobin hummingbird incubating its eggs \u2013Credit: Michael Casta\u00f1o-D\u00edaz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But last March, his Smithsonian colleague Michael Casta\u00f1o and Sebastian Gallan-Giraldo at the University of Antioquia in Colombia (both co-authors on the paper) discovered a female jacobin hummingbird incubating an egg in its nest, not far from a forest trail. The tiny well-camouflaged nest was made of plant parts to blend in perfectly with the surrounding environment.<\/p>\n

Over the following month, the team closely monitored the nest and witnessed a chick hatch from the egg. Unlike most hummingbirds that are born naked, the jacobin chick was covered in long brown feathers, looking nearly identical to the nest material.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the team witnessed the chick\u2019s unusual jerking behavior. Scientists had never reported a similar behavior in any other hummingbird species.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started texting a video to people and asking them, \u2018What does this look like?\u2019\u201d said Taylor. \u201cAnd invariably, they said, \u2018That looks like a caterpillar.\u2019 It was very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n