"Los colibríes: maestros de la vida extrema y su sorprendente adaptación" | Ciencia | EL PAÍS Inglés

A todos les fascina observar a los colibríes: diminutos destellos de vivos colores que se desplazan con agilidad, suspendiéndose en las flores y defendiendo con pasión su territorio alrededor de un alimentador.

But to the scientists who study them, hummingbirds offer much more than an entertaining spectacle. Their small size and blazing metabolism mean they live life on a knife-edge, sometimes needing to shut down their bodies almost completely just to conserve enough energy to survive the night — or to migrate thousands of miles, at times across open ocean.

Their nectar-rich diet leads to blood-sugar levels that would put a person in a coma. And their zipping, zooming flight sometimes generates g-forces high enough to make a fighter pilot black out. The more researchers look, the more surprises lurk within those tiny bodies, the smallest in the avian world.