Not actually a cartoon

November 11, 2012 5:33 PM

Snoring Hummingbird (SLYT) Watch closely for sticky-outy tongue!
posted by Mizu (14 comments total)

this is one of the most adorable things i have ever seen
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:43 PM on November 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought they slept upside down and basically didn't detectably breath.

That is thoroughly cute.
posted by figurant at 5:53 PM on November 11, 2012

Humming Snoringbird.
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:54 PM on November 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

Coming up next: the world's tiniest CPAP machine.
posted by maudlin at 5:57 PM on November 11, 2012 [10 favorites]

How'd they get this hummingbird to sleep inside that white contraption?
posted by zagyzebra at 5:57 PM on November 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

come on now nothing this cute can possibly be real
posted by Rora at 6:30 PM on November 11, 2012

Aaaand just saw the header/title. But I still maintain this is too cute to be real.
posted by Rora at 6:32 PM on November 11, 2012

Cute, but snoring doormouse is still cuter.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:38 PM on November 11, 2012 [5 favorites]

hippybear: "It's a contraption which measures the amount of oxygen the bird is using.

I have no idea how they got it to sleep in there, but they did. And they did it for science"

"I have no idea how these people got their hummingbirds wedged into their oxygen-measurers, or why."
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:58 PM on November 11, 2012 [8 favorites]

Hummingbirds are one of those little things you might never think of this way. But they don't exist in Europe, and I miss them terribly. At least in South Africa, we had sunbirds, which are slightly larger and look amazingly similar. I miss the confusion of thinking I'm hearing a big bumblebee, and then realizing it's a bird.
posted by Goofyy at 12:55 AM on November 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

My sleeping cat responded to that video with the startled awaking of 'holy mother of God am I going to get myself a tasty snoring snack', and then went back to her default position of wanting to kill me when she realised it wasn't really in the room.
posted by Augenblick at 3:46 AM on November 12, 2012 [2 favorites]

My goal in life is to be an echo (of this sound).
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:21 AM on November 12, 2012

Thanks to the flowers in my yard, we get a lot of hummingbirds, and they are astonishing little beasties. Usually, one dominant male will emerge to chase off others with loud, savage dogfights which can be alarming to watch.

My brother-and-sister team of cats once knocked a feeding hummer out of the air before I could stop them; the little guy was soaking wet and uttering loud distress calls amid the flowers but I scooped him up and held him safely in my lap where he dried in the sun, perched on my finger and, once dried, abruptly took off, flying just past my head in the process. The vibration of his wings and the strength of his grip on my finger were surprising. When that guy passed my face the sound was like a huge, loud zipper.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:42 AM on November 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hummingbirds sleep but that sleep is a transitional state to a state of torpor called noctivation, which is one of my favorite words. Noctivation helps keep them from freezing or starving to death overnight. Their heartbeats go from 1260 beats per minute when flying at full tilt to 250 bpm when resting to as low as 36 beats in noctivation, with their body temperature falling to 60 to 65 degrees Farenheit from a waking temperature around 104 . And I can testify from personal knowledge that they are up before dawn to just after sunset. They are amazing creatures.
posted by y2karl at 10:19 AM on November 12, 2012 [3 favorites]