title: BlackBerry content: officially unveiled the BlackBerry Priv, a slider, with a German made camera lens with 18 megapixels, phablet that utilizes the Android operating system with additional security and productivity-oriented features inspired by the BlackBerry operating systems. However, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard told Bloomberg that "The company's never said that we would not build another BB10 device." On July 26, 2016 the company hinted that another model with a physical keyboard was "coming shortly". The same day, BlackBerry unveiled a mid-range Android model with only an on-screen keyboard, the BlackBerry DTEK50, powered by the then latest version of Android, 6.0, Marshmallow. (The


title: BlackBerry content: Priv could also be upgraded to 6.0) This device featured a 5.2-inch full high-definition display. BlackBerry chief security officer David Kleidermacher stressed data security during the launch, indicating that this model included built-in malware protection and encryption of all user information. Industry observers pointed out that the DTEK50 is a re-branded version of the Alcatel Idol 4 with additional security-oriented software customizations, manufactured and designed by TCL. In September 2016, BlackBerry Limited agreed to a licensing partnership with an Indonesian company to set up a new joint venture company called "BB Merah Putih" to "source, distribute, and market BlackBerry handsets


title: BlackBerry content: in Indonesia". On October 25, 2016, BlackBerry released the BlackBerry DTEK60, the second device in the DTEK series, manufactured and designed by TCL. The device features a 5.5-inch Quad-HD touch screen display running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor with support for Quick Charge 3.0, USB Type-C, and a fingerprint sensor. In October 2016, it was announced that BlackBerry will be working with the Ford Motor Company of Canada to develop software for the car manufacturer's connected vehicles. In February 2017, a $20m class action lawsuit against BlackBerry was announced by the former employees of the company. In March 2017, BB


title: BlackBerry content: Merah Putih announced the BlackBerry Aurora, an Indonesian-made and sold device, running an operating system based on Android 7.0 out of the box. In March 2018, it was announced that BlackBerry will be working with Jaguar Land Rover to develop software for the car manufacturer's vehicles. In June 2018, BlackBerry in partnership with TCL Mobile and Optiemus Infracom launched the KEY2 at a global launch in New York. This is the third device to sport a keyboard while running Google's Android OS. In 2000 NTP sent notice of its wireless email patents to a number of companies and offered to


title: BlackBerry content: license the patents to them. NTP brought a patent-infringement lawsuit against one of the companies, Research In Motion, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. This court is well known for its strict adherence to timetables and deadlines, sometimes referred to as the "rocket docket", and is particularly efficient at trying patent cases. The jury eventually found that the NTP patents were valid; furthermore, the jury established that RIM had infringed the patents in a "willful" manner, and the infringement had cost NTP US$33 million in damages (the greater of a reasonable royalty or lost


title: BlackBerry content: profits). The judge, James R. Spencer, increased the damages to US$53 million as a punitive measure due to the willful nature of the infringement. He also instructed RIM to pay NTP's legal fees of US$4.5 million and issued an injunction ordering RIM to cease and desist infringing the patents—this decision would have resulted in the closure of BlackBerry's systems in the US. RIM appealed all of the findings of the court. The injunction and other remedies were stayed pending the outcome of the appeals. In March 2005 during appeal, RIM and NTP tried to negotiate a settlement of their dispute;


title: BlackBerry content: the settlement was to be for $450 million. Negotiations broke down due to other issues. On June 10, 2005, the matter returned to the courts. In early November 2005 the US Department of Justice filed a brief requesting that RIM's service be allowed to continue because of the large number of BlackBerry users in the US Federal Government. In January 2006 the US Supreme Court refused to hear RIM's appeal of the holding of liability for patent infringement, and the matter was returned to a lower court. The prior granted injunction preventing all RIM sales in the US and use


title: BlackBerry content: of the BlackBerry device might have been enforced by the presiding district court judge had the two parties been unable to reach a settlement. On February 9, 2006, the US Department of Defense (DOD) filed a brief stating that an injunction shutting down the BlackBerry service while excluding government users was unworkable. The DOD also stated that the BlackBerry was crucial for national security given the large number of government users. On February 9, 2006, RIM announced that it had developed software workarounds that would not infringe the NTP patents, and would implement those if the injunction was enforced. On


title: BlackBerry content: March 3, 2006, after a stern warning from Judge Spencer, RIM and NTP announced that they had settled their dispute. Under the terms of the settlement, RIM has agreed to pay NTP $612.5 million (USD) in a "full and final settlement of all claims." In a statement, RIM said that "all terms of the agreement have been finalized and the litigation against RIM has been dismissed by a court order this afternoon. The agreement eliminates the need for any further court proceedings or decisions relating to damages or injunctive relief." The settlement amount is believed low by some analysts, because


title: BlackBerry content: of the absence of any future royalties on the technology in question. On May 26, 2017, BlackBerry announced that it had reached an agreement with Qualcomm Incorporated resolving all amounts payable in connection with the interim arbitration decision announced on April 12, 2017. Following a joint stipulation by the parties, the arbitration panel has issued a final award providing for the payment by Qualcomm to BlackBerry of a total amount of U.S.$940,000,000 including interest and attorneys' fees, net of certain royalties due from BlackBerry for calendar 2016 and the first quarter of calendar 2017. On November 24, 2010, Research In


title: BlackBerry content: Motion (RIM) removed Kik Messenger from BlackBerry App World and limited the functionality of the software for its users. RIM also sued Kik Interactive for patent infringement and misuse of trademarks. In October 2013, the companies settled the lawsuit, with the terms undisclosed. In 2018 it was reported that BlackBerry would be filing legal action against Facebook over perceived intellectual property infringements within both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as well as with Instagram. Many BlackBerry retail stores operate outside North America, such as in Thailand, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, and Mexico. In December 2007 a BlackBerry Store opened in Farmington


title: BlackBerry content: Hills, Michigan. The store offers BlackBerry device models from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint, the major U.S. carriers which offer smartphones. There were three prior attempts at opening BlackBerry stores in Toronto and London (UK), but they eventually folded. There are also BlackBerry Stores operated by Wireless Giant at airports in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Philadelphia, Houston, and Newark, but several have been slated for closing. On September 23, 2015, Blackberry opened its first pop-up store in Frankfurt, Germany. At various stages of the company's history it suffered occasional service outages that have been referred to in the media


title: BlackBerry content: as "embarrassing". In 2005 the company suffered a relatively short-term outage reportedly among a small handful of North America carriers. The service was restored after several hours. In 2007 the e-mail service suffered an outage which led for calls by some questioning the integrity towards BlackBerry's perceived centralized system. In 2009 the company had an outage reportedly covering the whole of North America. At 2011-10-10 10:00 UTC began a multi-day outage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, affecting millions of BlackBerry users. There was another outage the following day. By October 12, 2011, the Blackberry Internet Service went down


title: BlackBerry content: in North America. Research In Motion attributed data overload due to switch failures in their two data centres in Waterloo in Canada and Slough in England as the cause of the service disruptions. The outage intensified calls by shareholders for a shake-up in the company's leadership. Some estimates by BlackBerry are that the company lost between $50 million to $54 million due to global email service failure and outage in 2011. The BCESA, BlackBerry Certified Enterprise Sales Associate qualification, is the first of three levels of professional BlackBerry Certification. More information on certifications is on the BlackBerry.com website. The BlackBerry


title: BlackBerry content: Technical Certifications available are: Android devices: BlackBerry 10 devices: BlackBerry 7 devices: BlackBerry 6 devices: BlackBerry 5 devices: Blackberry 4 devices: Blackberry 3 devices: Blackberry 2 devices: Blackberry 1 devices: Modern LTE based phones such as the BlackBerry Z10 have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus, a proprietary Qualcomm SOC which is based on ARMv7-A architecture, featuring two 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Krait CPU cores, and a 400 MHz Adreno 225 GPU. GSM-based BlackBerry phones incorporate an ARM 7, 9 or 11 processor. Some of the BlackBerry models (Torch 9850/9860, Torch 9810, and Bold 9900/9930) have a 1.2 GHz MSM8655 Snapdragon S2


title: BlackBerry content: SOC, 768 MB system memory, and 8 GB of on-board storage. Entry-level models, such as the Curve 9360, feature a Marvell PXA940 clocked at 800 MHz. Some previous BlackBerry devices, such as the Bold 9000, were equipped with Intel XScale 624 MHz processors. The Bold 9700 featured a newer version of the Bold 9000's processor but is clocked at the same speed. The Curve 8520 featured a 512 MHz processor, while BlackBerry 8000 series smartphones, such as the 8700 and the Pearl, are based on the 312 MHz ARM XScale ARMv5TE PXA900. An exception to this is the BlackBerry 8707


title: BlackBerry content: which is based on the 80 MHz Qualcomm 3250 chipset; this was due to the PXA900 chipset not supporting 3G networks. The 80 MHz processor in the BlackBerry 8707 meant the device was often slower to download and render web pages over 3G than the 8700 was over EDGE networks. Early BlackBerry devices, such as the BlackBerry 950, used Intel 80386-based processors. BlackBerry's latest Flagship phone the BlackBerry Z30 based on a 5" Super AMOLED, 1280x720 resolution, at 295 ppi 24-bit color depth and powered by Quad-Graphics and Qualcomm's Dual Core 1.7 GHz MSM8960T Pro. The first BlackBerry with an


title: BlackBerry content: Android operating system was released in late November 2015, the 192 gram/6.77 ounce BlackBerry Priv. It launched with version 5.1.1 but was later upgraded to version 6.0 Android Marshmallow. It was first available in four countries but increased to 31 countries by February 28, 2016. Employing a Qualcomm 8992 Snapdragon 808 Hexa-Core, 64 bit, Adreno 418, 600 MHz GPU with 3GB RAM processor, this unit is equipped with a curved 5.4-inch (2560 x 1440) OLED display and a sliding QWERTY keyboard which is hidden when not in use; Google's voice recognition that allows for dictating e-mails is also available. The


title: BlackBerry content: Priv retained the best BlackBerry 10 features. Its 3,410mAh battery is said to provide 22.5 hours of mixed use. The 18-megapixel camera, with a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, can also record 4K video; a secondary selfie camera is also provided. Several important apps unique to the Priv were available from Google Play by mid December. A new operating system, BlackBerry 10, was released for two new BlackBerry models (Z10 and Q10) on January 30, 2013. At BlackBerry World 2012, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins demonstrated some of the new features of the OS, including a camera which is able to rewind frame-by-frame separately


title: BlackBerry content: of individual faces in an image, to allow selection of the best of different shots, which is then stitched seamlessly to an optimal composite, an intelligent, predictive, and adapting keyboard, and a gesture based user interface designed around the idea of "peek" and "flow". Apps are available for BlackBerry 10 devices through the BlackBerry World storefront. The previous operating system developed for older BlackBerry devices was BlackBerry OS, a proprietary multitasking environment developed by RIM. The operating system is designed for use of input devices such as the track wheel, track ball, and track pad. The OS provides support for


title: BlackBerry content: Java MIDP 1.0 and WAP 1.2. Previous versions allowed wireless synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange Server email and calendar, as well as with Lotus Domino email. OS 5.0 provides a subset of MIDP 2.0, and allows complete wireless activation and synchronisation with Exchange email, calendar, tasks, notes and contacts, and adds support for Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes. The BlackBerry Curve 9360, BlackBerry Torch 9810, Bold 9900/9930, Curve 9310/9320 and Torch 9850/9860 featured the 2011 BlackBerry OS 7. Apps are available for these devices through BlackBerry World (which before 2013 was called BlackBerry App World). Third-party developers can write software using


title: BlackBerry content: these APIs, and proprietary BlackBerry APIs as well. Any application that makes use of certain restricted functionality must be digitally signed so that it can be associated to a developer account at RIM. This signing procedure guarantees the authorship of an application but does not guarantee the quality or security of the code. RIM provides tools for developing applications and themes for BlackBerry. Applications and themes can be loaded onto BlackBerry devices through BlackBerry World, Over The Air (OTA) through the BlackBerry mobile browser, or through BlackBerry Desktop Manager. BlackBerry devices, as well as Android, iOS, and Windows Phone platforms,


title: BlackBerry content: have the ability to use the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger, also known as BBM, software for sending and receiving encrypted instant messages, voice notes, images and videos via BlackBerry PIN. As long as your cell phone has a data plan these messages are all free of charge. Some of the features of BBM include groups, bar-code scanning, lists, shared calendars, BBM Music and integration with apps and games using the BBM social platform. In April 2013, BlackBerry announced that it was shutting down its streaming music service, BBM Music, which was active for almost two years since its launch. BlackBerry Messenger


title: BlackBerry content: Music closed on June 2, 2013. In July 2014, BlackBerry revealed BlackBerry Assistant, a new feature for BlackBerry OS 10.3, and BlackBerry Passport hardware. The feature is a digital personal assistant to help keep you "organized, informed and productive." In December 2014, BlackBerry and NantHealth, a healthcare-focused data provider, launched a secure cancer genome browser, giving doctors the ability to access patients' genetic data on the BlackBerry Passport smartphone. Several non-BlackBerry mobile phones have been released featuring the BlackBerry email client which connects to BlackBerry servers. Many of these phones have full QWERTY keyboards. Third-party software available for use on


title: BlackBerry content: BlackBerry devices includes full-featured database management systems, which can be used to support customer relationship management clients and other applications that must manage large volumes of potentially complex data. In March 2011, RIM announced an optional Android player that could play applications developed for the Android system would be available for the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM's first entry in the tablet market. On August 24, 2011 "Bloomberg News" reported unofficial rumors that BlackBerry devices would be able to run Android applications when RIM brings QNX and the Android App Player to BlackBerry. On October 20, 2011 RIM officially announced that Android


title: BlackBerry content: applications could run, unmodified, on the BlackBerry tablet and the newest BlackBerry phones, using the newest version of its operating system. BlackBerry smartphones can be integrated into an organization's email system through a software package called BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) through version 5, and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) as of version 10. (There were no versions 6 through 9.). Versions of BES are available for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and Google Apps. While individual users may be able to use a wireless provider's email services without having to install BES themselves, organizations with multiple users usually run BES


title: BlackBerry content: on their own network. BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry OS 10 or later can also be managed directly by a Microsoft Exchange Server, using Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies, in the same way that an iOS or Android device can. (EAS supports fewer management controls than BES does.) Some third-party companies provide hosted BES solutions. Every BlackBerry has a unique ID called a BlackBerry PIN, which is used to identify the device to the BES. BlackBerry at one time provided a free BES software called BES Express (BESX). The primary BES feature is to relay email from a corporate mailbox to a


title: BlackBerry content: BlackBerry phone. The BES monitors the user's mailbox, relaying new messages to the phone via BlackBerry's Network Operations Center (NOC) and user's wireless provider. This feature is known as push email, because all new emails, contacts, task entries, memopad entries, and calendar entries are pushed out to the BlackBerry device immediately (as opposed to the user synchronising the data manually or having the device poll the server at intervals). BlackBerry also supports polling email, through third-party applications. The messaging system built into the BlackBerry only understands how to receive messages from a BES or the BIS, these services handle the


title: BlackBerry content: connections to the user's mail providers. Device storage also enables the mobile user to access all data off-line in areas without wireless service. When the user reconnects to wireless service, the BES sends the latest data. A feature of the newer models of the BlackBerry is their ability to quickly track the user's current location through trilateration without the use of GPS, thus saving battery life and time. Trilateration can be used as a quick, less battery intensive way to provide location-aware applications with the co-ordinates of the user. However, the accuracy of BlackBerry trilateration is less than that of


title: BlackBerry content: GPS due to a number of factors, including cell tower blockage by large buildings, mountains, or distance. BES also provides phones with TCP/IP connectivity accessed through a component called MDS (Mobile Data System) Connection Service. This allows custom application development using data streams on BlackBerry devices based on the Sun Microsystems Java ME platform. In addition, BES provides network security, in the form of Triple DES or, more recently, AES encryption of all data (both email and MDS traffic) that travels between the BlackBerry phone and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Most providers offer flat monthly pricing via special Blackberry tariffs


title: BlackBerry content: for unlimited data between BlackBerry units and BES. In addition to receiving email, organizations can make intranets or custom internal applications with unmetered traffic. With more recent versions of the BlackBerry platform, the MDS is no longer a requirement for wireless data access. Starting with OS 3.8 or 4.0, BlackBerry phones can access the Internet (i.e. TCP/IP access) without an MDS – formerly only email and WAP access was possible without a BES/MDS. The BES/MDS is still required for secure email, data access, and applications that require WAP from carriers that do not allow WAP access. The primary alternative to


title: BlackBerry content: using BlackBerry Enterprise Server is to use the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries internationally. BlackBerry Internet Service was developed primarily for the average consumer rather than for the business consumer. The service allows users to access POP3, IMAP, and Outlook Web App (not via Exchange ActiveSync) email accounts without connecting through a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). BlackBerry Internet Service allows up to 10 email accounts to be accessed, including proprietary as well as public email accounts (such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and AOL). BlackBerry Internet Service also supports the push capabilities of various


title: BlackBerry content: other BlackBerry Applications. Various applications developed by RIM for BlackBerry utilise the push capabilities of BIS, such as the Instant Messaging clients (like Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger). The MMS, PIN, interactive gaming, mapping and trading applications require data plans like BIS (not just Wi-Fi) for use. The service is usually provisioned through a mobile phone service provider, though BlackBerry actually runs the service. The BlackBerry PIN (Personal Identification Number) is an eight-character hexadecimal identification number assigned to each BlackBerry device. PINs cannot be changed manually on the device (though BlackBerry technicians are able to reset or


title: BlackBerry content: update a PIN server-side), and are locked to each specific BlackBerry. BlackBerry devices can message each other using the PIN directly or by using the BlackBerry Messenger application. BlackBerry PINs are tracked by BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and the BlackBerry Internet Service and are used to direct messages to a BlackBerry device. Emails and any other messages, such as those from the BlackBerry Push Service, are typically directed to a BlackBerry device's PIN. The message can then be routed by a RIM Network Operations Center, and sent to a carrier, which will deliver the message the last mile to the device.


title: BlackBerry content: In September 2012 RIM announced that the BlackBerry PIN would be replaced by users' BlackBerry ID starting in 2013 with the launch of the BlackBerry 10 platform. The primary competitors of the BlackBerry are Android smartphones and the iPhone. BlackBerry has struggled to compete against both and its market share has plunged since 2011, leading to speculation that it will be unable to survive as an independent going concern. However, it has managed to maintain significant positions in some markets. Despite market share loss, on a global basis, the number of active BlackBerry subscribers has increased substantially through the years.


title: BlackBerry content: For example, for the fiscal period during which the Apple iPhone was first released, RIM reported that they had a subscriber base of 10.5 million BlackBerry subscribers. At the end of 2008, when Android first hit the market, RIM reported that the number of BlackBerry subscribers had increased to 21 million. Finally, in the quarter ended June 28, 2012, RIM announced that the number of BlackBerry subscribers had reached 78 million globally. After the release of the Apple iPhone 5 in September 2012 RIM CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the current global subscribers is up to 80 million, which sparked


title: BlackBerry content: a 7% jump in shares price. However, since then, BlackBerry's global user base (meaning active accounts) has declined dramatically since its peak of 80 million in June 2012, dropping to 46 million users in September 2014. Its market share globally has also declined to less than 1 percent. In 2011, BlackBerry shipped 43% of all smartphones to Indonesia. By April 2014 this had fallen to 3%. The decline in the Indonesian market share mirrors a global trend for the company (0.6% of North America). The retail price of 2,199,000 Indonesian Rupiah ($189) failed to give BlackBerry the boost it needed


title: BlackBerry content: in Indonesia. The company launched the device with a discounted offer to the first 1000 purchasers, which resulted in a stampede in the capital in which several people were injured. BlackBerry lost market share in Indonesia despite the launch of the Z3 on May 13, 2014. The new device was given a worldwide launch in the city of Jakarta and came on the back of the news that Research in Motion (RIM) was to cut hardware production costs by outsourcing this to Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. During the report of its third quarter 2015 results on December 18, 2015, the company


title: BlackBerry content: said that approximately 700,000 handsets had been sold, down from 1.9 million in the same quarter in 2014, and down from 800,000 in Q2 of 2015. The average sale price per unit was up from $240 to $315, however. This should continue to increase with sales of the new Android Priv device which was selling at a premium price ($800 in Canada, for example). In Q3 of 2015, BlackBerry had a net loss of $89 million U.S. or 17 cents per share, but only a $15 million net loss, or three cents per share, when excluding restructuring charges and other


title: BlackBerry content: one-time items. Revenue was up slightly from a year earlier, at $557 million U.S. vs. $548 million, primarily because of software sales. Chief executive officer John Chen said that he expects the company's software business to grow at (14 percent) or above the market. At the time, the company was not ready to provide sales figures for the Android-based Priv handset which had been released only weeks earlier, and in only four countries at that time, but Chen offered this comment to analysts: "Depending on how Priv does ... there is a chance we could achieve or get closer to


title: BlackBerry content: break-even operating profitability for our overall device business in the (fourth) quarter". Due to a continuous reduction in BlackBerry users, in February 2016 the Blackberry Headquarter in Waterloo, Canada, slashed 35 percent of its workforce. By early 2016, Blackberry market share dropped to 0.2%. In Q4 2016, reports indicate Blackberry sold only 207,900 units—equivalent to a 0.0% market share. The number of active BlackBerry users since 2003 globally: Research in Motion agreed to give access to private communications to the governments of United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in 2010, and India in 2012. The Saudi and UAE governments had


title: BlackBerry content: threatened to ban certain services because their law enforcement agencies could not decrypt messages between people of interest. It was revealed as a part of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures that the American and British intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) respectively, have access to the user data on BlackBerry devices. The agencies are able to read almost all smartphone information, including SMS, location, e-mails, and notes through BlackBerry Internet Service, which operates outside corporate networks, and which, in contrast to the data passing through internal BlackBerry services (BES), only compresses but does


title: BlackBerry content: not encrypt data. Documents stated that the NSA was able to access the BlackBerry e-mail system and that they could "see and read SMS traffic". There was a brief period in 2009 when the NSA was unable to access BlackBerry devices, after BlackBerry changed the way they compress their data. Access to the devices was re-established by GCHQ. GCHQ has a tool named SCRAPHEAP CHALLENGE, with the capability of "Perfect spoofing of emails from Blackberry targets". In response to the revelations BlackBerry officials stated that "It is not for us to comment on media reports regarding alleged government surveillance of


title: BlackBerry content: telecommunications traffic" and added that a "back door pipeline" to their platform had not been established and did not exist. It should be noted that similar access by the intelligence agencies to other mobile devices exists, using similar techniques to hack into them. The BlackBerry software includes support for the Dual EC DRBG CSPRNG algorithm which, due to being probably backdoored by the NSA, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology "strongly recommends" no longer be used. BlackBerry Ltd. has however not issued an advisory to its customers, because they do not consider the probable backdoor a vulnerability. BlackBerry


title: BlackBerry content: Ltd. also owns US patent 2007189527, which covers the technical design of the backdoor. The (formerly) advanced encryption capabilities of the BlackBerry Smartphone made it eligible for use by government agencies and state forces. Former United States president Barack Obama, became known for his dependence on a BlackBerry device for communication during his 2008 Presidential campaign. Despite the security issues, he insisted on using it even after inauguration. This was seen by some as akin to a "celebrity endorsement", which marketing experts have estimated to be worth between $25 million and $50 million. His usage of BlackBerry continued until around


title: BlackBerry content: the end of his presidency. The Hillary Clinton email controversy is associated with Hillary Clinton continuing to use her BlackBerry after assuming the office of Secretary of State. An example is the West Yorkshire Police, which has allowed the increase in the presence of police officers along the streets and a reduction in public spending, given that each officer could perform desk work directly via the mobile device, as well as in several other areas and situations. The US Federal Government has been slow to move away from the Blackberry platform, a State Department spokesperson saying in 2013 that Blackberry


title: BlackBerry content: devices were still the only mobile devices approved for U.S. missions abroad by the State Department. The high encryption standard that made BlackBerry smartphones and the PlayBook tablet unique, have since been implemented in other devices, including most Apple devices released after the iPhone 4. The Bangalore City Police is one of the few police departments in India along with the Pune Police and Kochi Police to use BlackBerry devices. In the United Kingdom, South West Trains and Northern Rail have issued BlackBerry devices to guards in order to improve the communication between control, guards and passengers. In Canada, Toronto


title: BlackBerry content: and many other municipalities within Canada have issued BlackBerry devices to most of its employees including but not limited to transportation, technical, water and operations inspection staff and all management staff in order to improve the communication between contracted construction companies, its winter maintenance operations and to assist and successfully organize multimillion-dollar contracts. The devices are the standard mobile device to receive e-mail redirected from GroupWise. The City's e-mail environment is currently set up to support "ONLY" BlackBerry devices. As part of their Internet of Things endeavours, the company announced plans of moving into the shipping industry by adapting the


title: BlackBerry content: smartphones devices to the communication necessities of freight containers. Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, is a longtime BlackBerry user. Although smartphones running Google's Android mobile operating system compete with BlackBerry, Schmidt said in a 2013 interview that he uses a BlackBerry because he prefers its keyboard. The Italian criminal group known as the 'Ndrangheta was reported on February 2009 to have communicated overseas with the Gulf Cartel, a Mexican drug cartel, through the use of the BlackBerry Messenger, since the BBM Texts are "very difficult to intercept". BlackBerry BlackBerry is a line of smartphones, tablets, and services originally designed


title: "Brevard County, Florida" content: River. About 18,900 homes out of 164,000 single-family homes were in that area. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (34.8%) is water. Most of the water is the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Johns River and the Indian River Lagoon. The county is larger in area than the nation of Samoa and nearly the same size, and population, as Cape Verde. It is one-third the size of the state of Rhode Island. Located halfway between Jacksonville and Miami, Brevard County extends from north to south, and averages wide.


title: "The Beach (novel)" content: a huge amount of cannabis to immobilize the group. Richard and his friends are about to slip away when the Thai farmers arrive. The farmers threaten all of them with guns as they believe that the beach dwellers invited the recent arrivals. The farmers beat up Richard, while leaving the bloodied corpses of the American/German backpackers as a warning. At the sight of this, the extremely intoxicated group experience a collective mental breakdown and start to rip the corpses apart in a frenzy. Sal discovers that Richard has spread the secret of the beach when she picks up the map


title: "Cetonia aurata" content: Cetonia aurata Cetonia aurata, called the rose chafer or the green rose chafer, is a beetle, long, that has a metallic structurally coloured green and a distinct V-shaped scutellum. The scutellum is the small V-shaped area between the wing cases; it may show several small, irregular, white lines and marks. The underside of the beetle has a coppery colour, and its upper side is sometimes bronze, copper, violet, blue/black, or grey. "Cetonia aurata" should not be confused with the North American rose chafer, "Macrodactylus subspinosus", or with the rarely seen noble chafer, "Gnorimus nobilis", which is very similar to the


title: "Cetonia aurata" content: rose chafer. One way to identify "Cetonia aurata" is to look at its scutellum; on the noble chafer the scutellum is an equilateral triangle, but on the rose chafer it is an isosceles triangle. Rose chafers are capable of fast flight; they fly with their wing cases down. They feed on pollen, nectar, and flowers, especially roses. They can be found among roses on warm sunny days from May until June or July, and occasionally as late as September. Rose chafers are found in southern and central Europe and in the southern part of the United Kingdom, where they sometimes


title: "Cetonia aurata" content: seem to be very localized. They can also be found in South East Asia, in the countryside and outlying islands of Hong Kong. They are a beneficial saprophagous species (detritivores). The larvae are C–shaped and have a firm, wrinkled, hairy body, a small head, and tiny legs. The larvae overwinter wherever they have been feeding, which may be in compost, manure, leaf mould, or rotting wood. They grow very quickly and will have moulted twice before the end of autumn. They have a two-year life cycle. They pupate in June or July. Some adult beetles may emerge in autumn, but


title: "Cetonia aurata" content: the main emergence is in spring, when the beetles mate. After mating, the female beetles lay their eggs in decaying organic matter and then die. The metallic green coloration of the beetle is created structurally, caused by the reflection of mostly circularly polarised light; like other scarabs this is left circularly polarised. When viewed through a right circular polariser, the beetle appears to be colorless. It has been described as a left-hand narrow-band elliptical polarizer. Cetonia aurata Cetonia aurata, called the rose chafer or the green rose chafer, is a beetle, long, that has a metallic structurally coloured green and


title: "Bombyx mori" content: Bombyx mori The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth, Bombyx mori (Latin: "silkworm of the mulberry tree"). It is an economically important insect, being a primary producer of silk. A silkworm's preferred food is white mulberry leaves, though they may eat other mulberry species and even osage orange. Domestic silkmoths are closely dependent on humans for reproduction, as a result of millennia of selective breeding. Wild silkmoths are different from their domestic cousins as they have not been selectively bred; they are not as commercially viable in the production of silk. Sericulture, the practice of breeding


title: "Bombyx mori" content: silkworms for the production of raw silk, has been under way for at least 5,000 years in China, from where it spread to India, Korea, Japan, and the West. The silkworm was domesticated from the wild silkmoth "Bombyx mandarina", which has a range from northern India to northern China, Korea, Japan, and the far eastern regions of Russia. The domesticated silkworm derives from Chinese rather than Japanese or Korean stock. Silkworms were unlikely to have been domestically bred before the Neolithic age. Before then, the tools to manufacture quantities of silk thread had not been developed. The domesticated "B. mori"


title: "Bombyx mori" content: and the wild "B. mandarina" can still breed and sometimes produce hybrids. Domestic silkmoths are very different from most members in the genus "Bombyx"; not only have they lost the ability to fly, but their color pigments are also lost. Mulberry silkworms can be categorized into three different but connected groups or types. The major groups of silkworms fall under the univoltine ("uni-"=one, "voltine"=brood frequency) and bivoltine categories. The univoltine breed is generally linked with the geographical area within greater Europe. The eggs of this type hibernate during winter due to the cold climate, and cross-fertilize only by spring, generating


title: "Bombyx mori" content: silk only once annually. The second type is called bivoltine and is normally found in China, Japan, and Korea. The breeding process of this type takes place twice annually, a feat made possible through the slightly warmer climates and the resulting two life cycles. The polyvoltine type of mulberry silkworm can only be found in the tropics. The eggs are laid by female moths and hatch within nine to 12 days, so the resulting type can have up to eight separate life cycles throughout the year. Eggs take about 14 days to hatch into larvae, which eat continuously. They have


title: "Bombyx mori" content: a preference for white mulberry, having an attraction to the mulberry odorant cis-jasmone. They are not monophagous since they can eat other species of "Morus", as well as some other Moraceae, mostly Osage orange. They are covered with tiny black hairs. When the color of their heads turns darker, it indicates they are about to molt. After molting, the larval phase of the silkworms emerge white, naked, and with little horns on their backs. After they have molted four times, their bodies become slightly yellow and the skin becomes tighter. The larvae then prepare to enter the pupal phase of


title: "Bombyx mori" content: their lifecycle, and enclose themselves in a cocoon made up of raw silk produced by the salivary glands. The final molt from larva to pupa takes place within the cocoon, which provides a vital layer of protection during the vulnerable, almost motionless pupal state. Many other Lepidoptera produce cocoons, but only a few—the Bombycidae, in particular the genus "Bombyx", and the Saturniidae, in particular the genus "Antheraea"—have been exploited for fabric production. If the animal is allowed to survive after spinning its cocoon and through the pupal phase of its lifecycle, it releases proteolytic enzymes to make a hole in


title: "Bombyx mori" content: the cocoon so it can emerge as an adult moth. These enzymes are destructive to the silk and can cause the silk fibers to break down from over a mile in length to segments of random length, which seriously reduces the value of the silk threads, but not silk cocoons used as "stuffing" available in China and elsewhere for doonas, jackets etc. To prevent this, silkworm cocoons are boiled. The heat kills the silkworms and the water makes the cocoons easier to unravel. Often, the silkworm itself is eaten. As the process of harvesting the silk from the cocoon kills


title: "Bombyx mori" content: the larva, sericulture has been criticized by animal welfare and rights activists. Mahatma Gandhi was critical of silk production based on the Ahimsa philosophy "not to hurt any living thing". This led to Gandhi's promotion of cotton spinning machines, an example of which can be seen at the Gandhi Institute. He also promoted Ahimsa silk, wild silk made from the cocoons of wild and semiwild silkmoths. The moth – the adult phase of the lifecycle – is not capable of functional flight, in contrast to the wild "B. mandarina" and other "Bombyx" species, whose males fly to meet females and


title: "Bombyx mori" content: for evasion from predators. Some may emerge with the ability to lift off and stay airborne, but sustained flight cannot be achieved. This is because their bodies are too big and heavy for their small wings. However, some silkmoths can still fly. Silkmoths have a wingspan of and a white, hairy body. Females are about two to three times bulkier than males (for they are carrying many eggs), but are similarly colored. Adult Bombycidae have reduced mouth parts and do not feed, though a human caretaker can feed them. The cocoon is made of a thread of raw silk from


title: "Bombyx mori" content: 300 to about 900 m (1,000 to 3,000 ft) long. The fibers are very fine and lustrous, about 10 μm (0.0004 in) in diameter. About 2,000 to 3,000 cocoons are required to make a pound of silk (0.4 kg). At least 70 million pounds of raw silk are produced each year, requiring nearly 10 billion cocoons. Due to its small size and ease of culture, the silkworm has become a model organism in the study of lepidopteran and arthropod biology. Fundamental findings on pheromones, hormones, brain structures, and physiology have been made with the silkworm. One example of this was


title: "Bombyx mori" content: the molecular identification of the first known pheromone, bombykol, which required extracts from 500,000 individuals, due to the very small quantities of pheromone produced by any individual worm. Currently, research is focusing on genetics of silkworms and the possibility of genetic engineering. Many hundreds of strains are maintained, and over 400 Mendelian mutations have been described. Another source suggests 1,000 inbred domesticated strains are kept worldwide. One useful development for the silk industry is silkworms that can feed on food other than mulberry leaves, including an artificial diet. Research on the genome also raises the possibility of genetically engineering silkworms


title: "Bombyx mori" content: to produce proteins, including pharmacological drugs, in the place of silk proteins. "Bombyx mori" females are also one of the few organisms with homologous chromosomes held together only by the synaptonemal complex (and not crossovers) during meiosis. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories has used research from the Universities of Wyoming and Notre Dame in a collaborative effort to create a silkworm that is genetically altered to produce spider silk. In September 2010, the effort was announced as successful. Researchers at Tufts developed scaffolds made of spongy silk that feel and look similar to human tissue. They are implanted during reconstructive surgery to


title: "Bombyx mori" content: support or restructure damaged ligaments, tendons, and other tissue. They also created implants made of silk and drug compounds which can be implanted under the skin for steady and gradual time release of medications. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab experimented with silkworms to see what they would weave when left on surfaces with different curvatures. They found that on particularly straight webs of lines, the worms would connect neighboring lines with silk, weaving directly onto the given shape. Using this knowledge they built a silk pavilion with 6,500 silkworms over a number of days. Silkworms have been used in


title: "Bombyx mori" content: antibiotics discovery as they have several advantageous traits compared to other invertebrate models. Antibiotics such as lysocin E, a non-ribosomal peptide synthesized by Lysobacter sp. RH2180-5 and GPI0363 are among the notable antibiotics discovered using silkworms. The domesticated form, compared to the wild form, has increased cocoon size, body size, growth rate, and efficiency of its digestion. It has gained tolerance to human presence and handling, and also to living in crowded conditions. The domesticated moth cannot fly, so it needs human assistance in finding a mate, and it lacks fear of potential predators. The native color pigments are also


title: "Bombyx mori" content: lost, so the domesticated moths are leucistic since camouflage isn't useful when they only live in captivity. These changes have made the domesticated strains entirely dependent upon humans for survival. The eggs are kept in incubators to aid in their hatching. Silkworms were first domesticated in China over 5,000 years ago. Since then, the silk production capacity of the species has increased nearly tenfold. The silkworm is one of the few organisms wherein the principles of genetics and breeding were applied to harvest maximum output . It is second only to maize in exploiting the principles of heterosis and cross


title: "Bombyx mori" content: breeding. Silkworm breeding is aimed at the overall improvement of silkworm from a commercial point of view. The major objectives are improving fecundity (the egg-laying capacity of a breed), the health of larvae, quantity of cocoon and silk production, and disease resistance. Healthy larvae lead to a healthy cocoon crop. Health is dependent on factors such as better pupation rate, fewer dead larvae in the mountage, shorter larval duration (shorter larval duration lessens the chance of infection) and bluish-tinged fifth-instar larvae (which are healthier than the reddish-brown ones). Quantity of cocoon and silk produced are directly related to the pupation


title: "Bombyx mori" content: rate and larval weight. Healthier larvae have greater pupation rates and cocoon weights. Quality of cocoon and silk depends on a number of factors including genetics. In the US, teachers may sometimes introduce the insect life cycle to their students by raising silkworms in the classroom as a science project. Students have a chance to observe complete life cycles of insect from egg stage to larvae, pupa, moth. The silkworm has been raised as a hobby in countries such as China, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Iran. Children often pass on the eggs, creating a non-commercial population. The experience provides children


title: "Bombyx mori" content: with the opportunity to witness the life cycle of silkworms. The practice of raising silkworms by children as pets has, in non-silk farming South Africa, led to the development of extremely hardy landraces of silkworms, because they are invariably subjected to hardships not encountered by commercially farmed members of the species. However, these worms, not being selectively bred as such, are possibly inferior in silk production and may exhibit other undesirable traits. The full genome of the silkworm was published in 2008 by the International Silkworm Genome Consortium. Draft sequences were published in 2004. The genome of the silkworm is


title: "Bombyx mori" content: mid-range with a genome size around 432 megabase pairs. High genetic variability has been found in domestic lines of silkworms, though this is less than that among wild silkmoths (about 83 percent of wild genetic variation). This suggests a single event of domestication, and that it happened over a short period of time, with a large number of wild worms having been collected for domestication. Major questions, however, remain unanswered: "Whether this event was in a single location or in a short period of time in several locations cannot be deciphered from the data". Research also has yet to identify


title: "Bombyx mori" content: the area in China where domestication arose. Silkworm pupae are eaten in some cultures. In China, a legend indicates the discovery of the silkworm's silk was by an ancient empress Lei Zu, the wife of the Yellow Emperor and the daughter of XiLing-Shi. She was drinking tea under a tree when a silk cocoon fell into her tea. As she picked it out and started to wrap the silk thread around her finger, she slowly felt a warm sensation. When the silk ran out, she saw a small larva. In an instant, she realized this caterpillar larva was the source


title: "Bombyx mori" content: of the silk. She taught this to the people and it became widespread. Many more legends about the silkworm are told. The Chinese guarded their knowledge of silk, but, according to one story, a Chinese princess given in marriage to a Khotan prince brought to the oasis the secret of silk manufacture, "hiding silkworms in her hair as part of her dowry", probably in the first half of the first century AD. About AD 550, Christian monks are said to have smuggled silkworms, in a hollow stick, out of China and sold the secret to the Byzantine Empire. In traditional


title: "Bombyx mori" content: Chinese medicine, silkworm is the source of the "stiff silkworm", which is made from dried fourth- or fifth-instar larvae which have died of "white muscardine disease", the "Beauveria bassiana" fungal infection mentioned above. It is believed to dispel flatulence, dissolve phlegm, and relieve spasms. Bombyx mori The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth, Bombyx mori (Latin: "silkworm of the mulberry tree"). It is an economically important insect, being a primary producer of silk. A silkworm's preferred food is white mulberry leaves, though they may eat other mulberry species and even osage orange. Domestic silkmoths are closely


title: "Nathuram Godse" content: had three sons and a daughter, with all three boys dying in their infancy. Fearing a curse that targeted male children, young Ramachandra was brought up as a girl for the first few years of his life, including having his nose pierced and being made to wear a nose-ring ("nath" in Marathi). It was then that he earned the nickname "Nathuram" (literally "Ram with a nose-ring"). After his younger brother was born, they switched to treating him as a boy. Godse attended the local school at Baramati through the fifth standard, after which he was sent to live with an


title: "Colorado Avalanche" content: burgundy, outside those lines it is dark blue. Similar lines exist around the neck. The Avalanche logo is in the center of the jersey. On top of the shoulders, there is the alternate logo, one on each side. The away jersey is similar but with different colors. The burgundy part on the home jersey is white on the away jersey, the light blue part is burgundy and the black and white lines became gray and blue. The Avalanche introduced a third jersey during the 2001–02 season. It is predominantly burgundy. "Colorado" is spelled in a diagonal across the jersey where


title: Clove content: Clove Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum. They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice. Cloves are commercially harvested primarily in Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania (Zanzibar). Cloves are available throughout the year due to different harvest seasons in different countries. The clove tree is an evergreen that grows up to 8–12 m tall, with large leaves and crimson flowers grouped in terminal clusters. The flower buds initially have a pale hue, gradually turn green, then transition


title: Clove content: to a bright red when ready for harvest. Cloves are harvested at 1.5–2.0 cm long, and consist of a long calyx that terminates in four spreading sepals, and four unopened petals that form a small central ball. Cloves are used in the cuisine of Asian, African, and the Near and Middle East countries, lending flavor to meats, curries, and marinades, as well as fruit such as apples, pears or rhubarb. Cloves may be used to give aromatic and flavor qualities to hot beverages, often combined with other ingredients such as lemon and sugar. They are a common element in spice


title: Clove content: blends such as pumpkin pie spice and speculoos spices. In Mexican cuisine, cloves are best known as "clavos de olor", and often accompany cumin and cinnamon. They are also used in Peruvian cuisine, in a wide variety of dishes as "carapulcra" and "arroz con leche". A major component of clove taste is imparted by the chemical eugenol, and the quantity of the spice required is typically small. It pairs well with cinnamon, allspice, vanilla, red wine and basil, as well as onion, citrus peel, star anise, or peppercorns. The spice is used in a type of cigarette called "kretek" in


title: Clove content: Indonesia. Clove cigarettes have been smoked throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Starting in 2009, clove cigarettes must be classified as cigars in the US. Because of the bioactive chemicals of clove, the spice may be used as an ant repellent. Cloves can be used to make a fragrance pomander when combined with an orange. When given as a gift in Victorian England, such a pomander indicated warmth of feeling. Though long-used in traditional medicine, there is little evidence that clove oil containing eugenol is effective for toothache pain or other types of pain, although one review reported efficacy


title: Clove content: of eugenol combined with zinc oxide as an analgesic for alveolar osteitis. Studies to determine its effectiveness for fever reduction, as a mosquito repellent, and to prevent premature ejaculation have been inconclusive. It remains unproven whether using cloves or clove oil reduces blood sugar levels. Use of clove for any medicinal purpose has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, and its use may cause adverse effects if taken orally by people with liver disease, blood clotting and immune system disorders, or food allergies. Cloves are used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, and western herbalism and


title: Clove content: dentistry where the essential oil is used as an anodyne (painkiller) for dental emergencies and various other disorders. The essential oil is used in aromatherapy. In Chinese medicine, cloves or "ding xiang" are considered acrid, warm, and aromatic, entering the kidney, spleen and stomach meridians, and are notable in their ability to warm the middle, direct stomach "qi" downward, to treat hiccup and to fortify the kidney "yang". Clove stalks are slender stems of the inflorescence axis that show opposite decussate branching. Externally, they are brownish, rough, and irregularly wrinkled longitudinally with short fracture and dry, woody texture. Mother cloves


title: Clove content: (anthophylli) are the ripe fruits of cloves that are ovoid, brown berries, unilocular and one-seeded. This can be detected by the presence of much starch in the seeds. Brown cloves are expanded flowers from which both corollae and stamens have been detached. Exhausted cloves have most or all the oil removed by distillation. They yield no oil and are darker in color. Archeologists have found cloves in a ceramic vessel in Syria, with evidence that dates the find to within a few years of 1721 BCE. In the third century BCE, a Chinese leader in the Han Dynasty required those


title: Clove content: who addressed him to chew cloves to freshen their breath. Cloves were traded by Muslim sailors and merchants during the Middle Ages in the profitable Indian Ocean trade, the clove trade is also mentioned by Ibn Battuta and even famous "Arabian Nights" characters such as Sinbad the Sailor are known to have bought and sold cloves from India. Until modern times, cloves grew only on a few islands in the Moluccas (historically called the Spice Islands), including Bacan, Makian, Moti, Ternate, and Tidore. In fact, the clove tree that experts believe is the oldest in the world, named "Afo", is


title: Clove content: on Ternate. The tree is between 350 and 400 years old. Tourists are told that seedlings from this very tree were stolen by a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre in 1770, transferred to the Isle de France (Mauritius), and then later to Zanzibar, which was once the world's largest producer of cloves. Until cloves were grown outside of the Maluku Islands, they were traded like oil, with an enforced limit on exportation. As the Dutch East India Company consolidated its control of the spice trade in the 17th century, they sought to gain a monopoly in cloves as they had in


title: Clove content: nutmeg. However, "unlike nutmeg and mace, which were limited to the minute Bandas, clove trees grew all over the Moluccas, and the trade in cloves was way beyond the limited policing powers of the corporation." Eugenol composes 72–90% of the essential oil extracted from cloves and is the compound most responsible for clove aroma. Other important essential oil constituents of clove oil include acetyl eugenol, beta-caryophyllene and vanillin, crategolic acid, tannins such as bicornin, gallotannic acid, methyl salicylate (painkiller), the flavonoids eugenin, kaempferol, rhamnetin, and eugenitin, triterpenoids such as oleanolic acid, stigmasterol, and campesterol and several sesquiterpenes. Eugenol is toxic


title: Clove content: in relatively small quantities; for example, a dose of 5–10 ml has been reported as being a near fatal dose for a two-year-old child. Clove Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum. They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice. Cloves are commercially harvested primarily in Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania (Zanzibar). Cloves are available throughout the year due to different harvest seasons in different countries. The clove tree is an evergreen that grows up to 8–12 m


title: "Andrew Fisher" content: ordered three torpedo boat destroyers, and assumed local naval defence responsibility and placed the Australian Navy at the disposal of the Royal Navy in wartime. Fisher committed Labour to amending the Constitution to give the Commonwealth power over labour, wages and prices, to expanding the navy and providing compulsory military training for youths, to extending pensions, to a land tax, to the construction of a transcontinental railway, to the replacement of pound sterling with Australian currency and to tariffs to protect the sugar industry. In May 1909, the more conservative Protectionists and Freetraders merged to form the Commonwealth Liberal Party,


title: "Hydra (island)" content: flat areas that are not visible from the sea. Obsidian from Milos has also been found. During the Helladic period, Hydra probably served as a maritime base for the kingdoms on the Greek peninsula. Fragments of vases, tools, and the head of an idol have been found on Mount Chorissa. The large-scale Dorian invasion of Greece around the 12th century BCE appears to have depopulated the island. Hydra was repopulated by farmers and herders, perhaps sailing from the mainland port of Ermioni, in the 8th century BCE. Herodotus reports that toward the 6th century BCE, the island belonged to Ermioni,


title: Miletus content: the Ionian Greeks. Legend offers an Ionian foundation event sponsored by a founder named Neleus from the Peloponnesus. The Greek Dark Ages were a time of Ionian settlement and consolidation in an alliance called the Ionian League. The Archaic Period of Greece began with a sudden and brilliant flash of art and philosophy on the coast of Anatolia. In the 6th century BC, Miletus was the site of origin of the Greek philosophical (and scientific) tradition, when Thales, followed by Anaximander and Anaximenes (known collectively, to modern scholars, as the Milesian School) began to speculate about the material constitution of


title: Hummingbird content: Hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and constitute the biological family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring in length. Indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the bee hummingbird weighing less than . They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, which vary from around 12 beats per second in the largest species, to in excess of 80 in some of the smallest. Of those species that have


title: Hummingbird content: been measured in wind tunnels, their top speed exceeds and some species can dive at speeds in excess of . Hummingbirds have the greatest mass-specific metabolic rate of any homeothermic animal. To conserve energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they can go into torpor, a state similar to hibernation, slowing metabolic rate to 1/15th of its normal rate. A map of the hummingbird family tree—reconstructed from analysis of 284 of the world's 338 known species—shows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago. Hummingbirds fall into nine main clades, the Topazes, Hermits, Mangoes, Brilliants, Coquettes, "Patagona," Mountain


title: Hummingbird content: Gems, Bees, and Emeralds, defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering plants and the birds' continued spread into new geographic areas. While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to fuel their high metabolisms and hovering flight, coordinated changes in flower- and bill shape stimulated the formation of new species of hummingbirds and plants. Due to this exceptional evolutionary pattern, as many as 140 hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, such as the Andes range. The hummingbird evolutionary tree shows ancestral hummingbirds splitting from insectivorous swifts (family Apodidae) and treeswifts (family Hemiprocnidae) about 42 million years ago, probably in Eurasia.


title: Hummingbird content: One key evolutionary factor appears to be an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar. By 22 million years ago the ancestral species of current hummingbirds became established in South America, where environmental conditions stimulated further diversification. The Andes Mountains appear to be a particularly rich environment for hummingbird evolution because diversification occurred simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past 10 million years. Hummingbirds remain in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological regions across South America, North America, and the Caribbean, indicating an enlarging evolutionary radiation. Within the same geographic region, hummingbird clades co-evolved with nectar-bearing plant clades, affecting mechanisms


title: Hummingbird content: of pollination. The same is true for the sword-billed hummingbird ("Ensifera ensifera"), one of the morphologically most extreme species, and one of its main food plant clades ("Passiflora" section "Tacsonia"). Hummingbirds exhibit sexual size dimorphism according to Rensch's rule, in which males are smaller than females in small species, and males are larger than females in large-bodied species. The extent of this sexual size difference varies among clades of hummingbirds. For example, the Mellisugini clade exhibits a large size dimorphism, with females being larger than males. Conversely, the Lophomithini clade displays very little size dimorphism; males and females are similar


title: Hummingbird content: in size. Sexual dimorphisms in bill size and shape are also present between male and female hummingbirds, where in many clades, females have longer, more curved bills favored for accessing nectar from tall flowers. For males and females of the same size, females will tend to have larger bills. Sexual size and bill differences likely evolved due to constraints imposed by courtship because mating displays of male hummingbirds require complex aerial maneuvers. Males tend to be smaller than females, allowing conservation of energy to forage competitively and participate more frequently in courtship. Thus, sexual selection will favor smaller male hummingbirds.


title: Hummingbird content: Female hummingbirds tend to be larger, requiring more energy, with longer beaks that allow for more effective reach into crevices of tall flowers for nectar. Thus females are better at foraging, acquiring flower nectar, and supporting the energy demands of their larger body size. Directional selection will thus favor the larger hummingbirds in terms of acquiring food. Another evolutionary cause of this sexual bill dimorphism is that the selective forces from competition for nectar between the sexes of each species are what drive the sexual dimorphism. Depending on which sex holds territory in the species, it is advantageous for the


title: Hummingbird content: other sex to have a longer bill and be able to feed on a wide variety of flowers, decreasing intraspecific competition. For example, in species of hummingbirds where males have longer bills, males do not hold a specific territory and have a lek mating system. In species where males have shorter bills than females, males defend their resources and therefore females must have a longer bill in order to feed from a broader range of flower. Hummingbirds are specialized nectarivores and are tied to the ornithophilous flowers upon which they feed. Some species, especially those with unusual bill shapes such


title: Hummingbird content: as the sword-billed hummingbird and the sicklebills, are co-evolved with a small number of flower species. The bee hummingbird ("Mellisuga helenae") – the world's smallest bird – evolved to dwarfism likely because it had to compete with long-billed hummingbirds having an advantage for nectar foraging from specialized flowers, consequently leading the bee hummingbird to more successfully compete for flower foraging against insects. Many plants pollinated by hummingbirds produce flowers in shades of red, orange, and bright pink, though the birds will take nectar from flowers of other colors as well. Hummingbirds can see wavelengths into the near-ultraviolet, but hummingbird-pollinated flowers


title: Hummingbird content: do not reflect these wavelengths as many insect-pollinated flowers do. This narrow color spectrum may render hummingbird-pollinated flowers relatively inconspicuous to most insects, thereby reducing nectar robbing. Hummingbird-pollinated flowers also produce relatively weak nectar (averaging 25% sugars w/w) containing a high proportion of sucrose, whereas insect-pollinated flowers typically produce more concentrated nectars dominated by fructose and glucose. Upon maturity, males of one species, "Phaethornis longirostris," the long-billed hermit, appear to be evolving a dagger-like weapon on the beak tip as a secondary sexual trait to defend mating areas. In traditional taxonomy, hummingbirds are placed in the order Apodiformes, which also


title: Hummingbird content: contains the swifts. However, some taxonomists have separated them into their own order, the Trochiliformes. Hummingbirds' wing bones are hollow and fragile, making fossilization difficult and leaving their evolutionary history poorly documented. Though scientists theorize that hummingbirds originated in South America, where species diversity is greatest, possible ancestors of extant hummingbirds may have lived in parts of Europe to what is southern Russia today. Between 325 and 340 species of hummingbirds are described, depending on taxonomic viewpoint, divided into two subfamilies, the hermits (subfamily Phaethornithinae, 34 species in six genera), and the typical hummingbirds (subfamily Trochilinae, all the others). However,


title: Hummingbird content: recent phylogenetic analyses suggest that this division is slightly inaccurate, and that there are nine major clades of hummingbirds: the topazes and jacobins, the hermits, the mangoes, the coquettes, the brilliants, the giant hummingbird ("Patagona gigas"), the mountain-gems, the bees, and the emeralds. The topazes and jacobins combined have the oldest split with the rest of the hummingbirds. The hummingbird family has the second-greatest number of species of any bird family (after the tyrant flycatchers). Fossil hummingbirds are known from the Pleistocene of Brazil and the Bahamas; however, neither has yet been scientifically described, and fossils and subfossils of a


title: Hummingbird content: few extant species are known. Until recently, older fossils had not been securely identifiable as those of hummingbirds. In 2004, Dr Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main identified two 30-million-year-old hummingbird fossils. The fossils of this primitive hummingbird species, named "Eurotrochilus inexpectatus" ("unexpected European hummingbird"), had been sitting in a museum drawer in Stuttgart; they had been unearthed in a clay pit at Wiesloch–Frauenweiler, south of Heidelberg, Germany, and because it was assumed that hummingbirds never occurred outside the Americas, were not recognized to be hummingbirds until Mayr took a closer look at them. Fossils of


title: Hummingbird content: birds not clearly assignable to either hummingbirds or a related, extinct family, the Jungornithidae, have been found at the Messel pit and in the Caucasus, dating from 40–35 mya; this indicates that the split between these two lineages indeed occurred at that date. The areas where these early fossils have been found had a climate quite similar to that of the northern Caribbean or southernmost China during that time. The biggest remaining mystery at the present time is what happened to hummingbirds in the roughly 25 million years between the primitive "Eurotrochilus" and the modern fossils. The astounding morphological adaptations,


title: Hummingbird content: the decrease in size, and the dispersal to the Americas and extinction in Eurasia all occurred during this timespan. DNA-DNA hybridization results suggest that the main radiation of South American hummingbirds took place at least partly in the Miocene, some 12 to 13 million years ago, during the uplifting of the northern Andes. In 2013, a 50-million-year-old fossil bird unearthed in Wyoming was found to be a predecessor to both hummingbirds and swifts before the groups diverged. During evolution, hummingbirds have adapted to the navigational needs of visual processing while in rapid flight or hovering by development of an exceptionally


title: Hummingbird content: dense array of retinal neurons allowing for increased spatial resolution in the lateral and frontal visual fields. Morphological studies showed that neuronal hypertrophy, relatively the largest in any bird, exists in a brain region called the pretectal nucleus lentiformis mesencephali (or nucleus of the optic tract in mammals) responsible for refining dynamic visual processing while hovering and during rapid flight. The enlargement of this brain region responsible for visual processing indicates enhanced ability for perception and processing of fast-moving visual stimuli which hummingbirds encounter during rapid forward flight, insect foraging, competitive interactions, and high-speed courtship. Hummingbirds are highly sensitive to


title: Hummingbird content: stimuli in their visual fields, responding to even minimal motion in any direction by reorienting themselves in midflight. Hummingbirds' visual sensitivity allows them to precisely hover in place while in complex and dynamic natural environments, functions enabled by the lentiform nucleus which is tuned to fast-pattern velocities, enabling highly tuned control and collision avoidance during forward flight. With the exception of insects, hummingbirds while in flight have the highest metabolism of all animals – a necessity to support the rapid beating of their wings during hovering and fast forward flight. Their heart rate can reach as high as 1,260 beats


title: Hummingbird content: per minute, a rate once measured in a blue-throated hummingbird, with a breathing rate of 250 breaths per minute, even at rest. During flight, oxygen consumption per gram of muscle tissue in a hummingbird is about 10 times higher than that measured in elite human athletes. Hummingbirds are rare among vertebrates in their ability to rapidly make use of ingested sugars to fuel energetically expensive hovering flight, powering up to 100% of their metabolic needs with the sugars they drink (in comparison, human athletes max out at around 30%). Hummingbirds can use newly ingested sugars to fuel hovering flight within


title: Hummingbird content: 30–45 minutes of consumption. These data suggest that hummingbirds are able to oxidize sugar in flight muscles at rates high enough to satisfy their extreme metabolic demands. By relying on newly ingested sugars to fuel flight, hummingbirds can reserve their limited fat stores to sustain their overnight fasting or to power migratory flights. Studies of hummingbirds' metabolisms are relevant to the question of how a migrating ruby-throated hummingbird can cross of the Gulf of Mexico on a nonstop flight. This hummingbird, like other birds preparing to migrate, stores fat as a fuel reserve, thereby augmenting its weight by as much


title: Hummingbird content: as 100%, hence increasing potential flying time over open water. The dynamic range of metabolic rates in hummingbirds requires a parallel dynamic range in kidney function. During a day of nectar consumption with corresponding high water intake that may total five times the body weight per day, hummingbird kidneys process water via glomerular filtration rates (GFR) in amounts proportional to water consumption, thereby avoiding overhydration. During brief periods of water deprivation, however, such as in nighttime torpor, GFR ceases, preserving body water. Hummingbird kidneys also have a unique ability to control the levels of electrolytes after consuming nectars with high


title: Hummingbird content: amounts of sodium and chloride or none, indicating that kidney and glomerular structures must be highly specialized for variations in nectar mineral quality. Morphological studies on Anna's hummingbird kidneys showed adaptations of high capillary density in close proximity to nephrons, allowing for precise regulation of water and electrolytes. During turbulent airflow conditions created experimentally in a wind tunnel, hummingbirds exhibit stable head positions and orientation when they hover at a feeder. When wind gusts from the side, hummingbirds compensate by increasing the amplitude of their wing strokes plane angle and by varying the orientation and enlarging the collective surface area


title: Hummingbird content: of their tail feathers into the shape of a fan. While hovering, the visual system of a hummingbird is able to separate apparent motion caused by the movement of the hummingbird itself from motions caused by external sources, such as an approaching predator. In natural settings full of highly complex background motion, hummingbirds are able to precisely hover in place by rapid coordination of vision with body position. Consisting of chirps, squeaks, whistles and buzzes, hummingbird songs originate from at least seven specialized nuclei in the forebrain. In a genetic expression study, it was shown that these nuclei enable vocal


title: Hummingbird content: learning (ability to acquire vocalizations through imitation), a rare trait known to occur in only two other groups of birds (parrots and songbirds) and a few groups of mammals (including humans, whales and dolphins and bats). Within the past 66 million years, only hummingbirds, parrots and songbirds out of 23 bird orders may have independently evolved seven similar forebrain structures for singing and vocal learning, indicating that evolution of these structures is under strong epigenetic constraints possibly derived from a common ancestor. The blue-throated hummingbird’s song differs from typical oscine songs in its wide frequency range, extending from 1.8 kHz


title: Hummingbird content: to approximately 30 kHz. It also produces ultrasonic vocalizations which do not function in communication. As blue-throated hummingbirds often alternate singing with catching small ﬂying insects, it is possible the ultrasonic clicks produced during singing disrupt insect ﬂight patterns, making insects more vulnerable to predation. The metabolism of hummingbirds can slow at night or at any time when food is not readily available: the birds enter a hibernation-like, deep-sleep state (known as torpor) to prevent energy reserves from falling to a critical level. During night-time torpor, body temperature falls from 40 to 18 °C, with heart and breathing rates both


title: Hummingbird content: slowed dramatically (heart rate to roughly 50 to 180 beats per minute from its daytime rate of higher than 1000). During torpor, to prevent dehydration, the GFR ceases, preserving needed compounds such as glucose, water, and nutrients. Further, body mass declines throughout nocturnal torpor at a rate of 0.04 g per hour, amounting to about 10% of weight loss each night. The circulating hormone, corticosterone, is one signal that arouses a hummingbird from torpor. Use and duration of torpor vary among hummingbird species and are affected by whether a dominant bird defends territory, with nonterritorial subordinate birds having longer periods


title: Hummingbird content: of torpor. Hummingbirds have long lifespans for organisms with such rapid metabolisms. Though many die during their first year of life, especially in the vulnerable period between hatching and fledging, those that survive may occasionally live a decade or more. Among the better-known North American species, the average lifespan is probably 3 to 5 years. For comparison, the smaller shrews, among the smallest of all mammals, seldom live longer than 2 years. The longest recorded lifespan in the wild relates to a female broad-tailed hummingbird that was banded (ringed) as an adult at least one year old, then recaptured 11


title: Hummingbird content: years later, making her at least 12 years old. Other longevity records for banded hummingbirds include an estimated minimum age of 10 years 1 month for a female black-chinned hummingbird similar in size to the broad-tailed hummingbird, and at least 11 years 2 months for a much larger buff-bellied hummingbird. As far as is known, male hummingbirds do not take part in nesting. Most species build a cup-shaped nest on the branch of a tree or shrub, although a few tropical species normally attach their nests to leaves. The nest varies in size relative to the particular species—from smaller than


title: Hummingbird content: half a walnut shell to several centimeters in diameter. Many hummingbird species use spider silk and lichen to bind the nest material together and secure the structure. The unique properties of the silk allow the nest to expand as the young hummingbirds grow. Two white eggs are laid, which despite being the smallest of all bird eggs, are in fact large relative to the adult hummingbird's size. Incubation lasts 14 to 23 days, depending on the species, ambient temperature, and female attentiveness to the nest. The mother feeds her nestlings on small arthropods and nectar by inserting her bill into


title: Hummingbird content: the open mouth of a nestling, and then regurgitating the food into its crop. To serve courtship and territorial competition, many male hummingbirds have plumage with bright, varied coloration resulting both from pigmentation in the feathers and from prism-like cells within the top layers of feathers of the head, gorget, breast, back and wings. When sunlight hits these cells, it is split into wavelengths that reflect to the observer in varying degrees of intensity, with the feather structure acting as a diffraction grating. Iridescent hummingbird colors result from a combination of refraction and pigmentation, since the diffraction structures themselves are


title: Hummingbird content: made of melanin, a pigment, and may also be colored by carotenoid pigmentation and more subdued black, brown or gray colors dependent on melanin. By merely shifting position, feather regions of a muted-looking bird can instantly become fiery red or vivid green. In courtship displays for one example, males of the colorful Anna's hummingbird orient their bodies and feathers toward the sun to enhance the display value of iridescent plumage toward a female of interest. One study of Anna's hummingbirds found that dietary protein was an influential factor in feather color, as birds receiving more protein grew significantly more colorful


title: Hummingbird content: crown feathers than those fed a low-protein diet. Additionally, birds on a high-protein diet grew yellower (higher hue) green tail feathers than birds on a low-protein diet. Hummingbird flight has been studied intensively from an aerodynamic perspective using wind tunnels and high-speed video cameras. Two studies of rufous or Anna's hummingbirds in a wind tunnel used particle image velocimetry techniques to investigate the lift generated on the bird's upstroke and downstroke. The birds produced 75% of their weight support during the downstroke and 25% during the upstroke, with the wings making a "figure 8" motion. Many earlier studies had assumed


title: Hummingbird content: that lift was generated equally during the two phases of the wingbeat cycle, as is the case of insects of a similar size. This finding shows that hummingbird hovering is similar to, but distinct from, that of hovering insects such as the hawk moth. Further studies using electromyography in hovering rufous hummingbirds showed that muscle strain in the pectoralis major (principal downstroke muscle) was the lowest yet recorded in a flying bird, and the primary upstroke muscle (supracoracoideus) is proportionately larger than in other bird species. Because of their flying technique, these birds no longer have an alula, while the


title: Hummingbird content: alula digit has evolved to become absent. The giant hummingbird's wings beat as few as 12 beats per second and the wings of typical hummingbirds beat up to 80 times per second. A slow-motion video has shown how the hummingbirds deal with rain when they are flying. To remove the water from their heads, they shake their heads and bodies, similar to a dog shaking, to shed water. Further, when raindrops collectively may weigh as much as 38% of the bird's body weight, hummingbirds shift their bodies and tails horizontally, beat their wings faster, and reduce their wings' angle of


title: Hummingbird content: motion when flying in heavy rain. When courting, the male Anna's hummingbird ascends some 35 meters before diving over an interested female at a speed of 27 m/s, equal to 385 body lengths/second, producing a high-pitched sound. This downward acceleration during a dive is the highest reported for any vertebrate undergoing a voluntary aerial maneuver; in addition to acceleration, the speed, relative to body length, is the largest known for any vertebrate. For instance, it is about twice the diving speed of peregrine falcons in pursuit of prey. At maximum descent speed, about 10 g of gravitational force occurs in


title: Hummingbird content: the courting hummingbird during a dive. By comparison to humans, this is a g-force acceleration causing near loss of consciousness in fighter pilots during flight of fixed-wing aircraft in a high-speed banked turn. The outer tail feathers of male Anna's ("Calypte anna") and "Selasphorus" hummingbirds (e.g., Allen's, calliope) vibrate during courtship display dives and produce an audible chirp caused by aeroelastic flutter. Hummingbirds cannot make the courtship dive sound when missing their outer tail feathers, and those same feathers could produce the dive-sound in a wind tunnel. The bird can sing at the same frequency as the tail feather chirp,


title: Hummingbird content: but its small syrinx is not capable of the same volume. The sound is caused by the aerodynamics of rapid air flow past tail feathers, causing them to flutter in a vibration which produces the high-pitched sound of a courtship dive. Many other species of hummingbirds also produce sounds with their wings or tails while flying, hovering or diving, including the wings of the calliope hummingbird, broad-tailed hummingbird, rufous hummingbird, Allen's hummingbird, and streamertail, as well as the tail of the Costa's hummingbird and the black-chinned hummingbird, and a number of related species. The harmonics of sounds during courtship dives


title: Hummingbird content: vary across species of hummingbirds. Male rufous and broad-tailed hummingbirds (genus "Selasphorus") have a distinctive wing feature during normal flight that sounds like jingling or a buzzing shrill whistle. The trill arises from air rushing through slots created by the tapered tips of the ninth and tenth primary wing feathers, creating a sound loud enough to be detected by female or competitive male hummingbirds and researchers up to 100 m away. Behaviorally, the trill serves several purposes: Hummingbirds are restricted to the Americas from south central Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, including the Caribbean. The majority of species occur in


title: Hummingbird content: tropical and subtropical Central and South America, but several species also breed in temperate climates and some hillstars occur even in alpine Andean highlands at altitudes up to . The greatest species richness is in humid tropical and subtropical forests of the northern Andes and adjacent foothills, but the number of species found in the Atlantic Forest, Central America or southern Mexico also far exceeds the number found in southern South America, the Caribbean islands, the United States, and Canada. While fewer than 25 different species of hummingbirds have been recorded from the United States and fewer than 10 from


title: Hummingbird content: Canada and Chile each, Colombia alone has more than 160 and the comparably small Ecuador has about 130 species. The migratory ruby-throated hummingbird breeds in a range from the southeastern United States to Ontario, while the black-chinned hummingbird, its close relative and another migrant, is the most widespread and common species in the southwestern United States. The rufous hummingbird is the most widespread species in western North America, and the only hummingbird to be recorded outside of the Americas, having occurred in the Chukchi Peninsula of Russia. Most North American hummingbirds migrate southward in fall to spend winter in Mexico,


title: Hummingbird content: the Caribbean Islands, or Central America. A few southern South American species also move north to the tropics during the southern winter. A few species are year-round residents of Florida, California, and the far southwestern desert regions of the USA. Among these are Anna's hummingbird, a common resident from southern Arizona and inland California, and the buff-bellied hummingbird, a winter resident from Florida across the Gulf Coast to southern Texas. Ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate in summer from as far north as Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, returning to Mexico, South America, southern Texas, and Florida to winter. During winter months in


title: Hummingbird content: southern Louisiana, black-chinned, buff-bellied, calliope, Allen's, Anna's, ruby-throated, rufous, broad-tailed, and broad-billed hummingbirds are present. The rufous hummingbird breeds farther north than any other species of hummingbird, often breeding in large numbers in temperate North America and wintering in increasing numbers along the coasts of subtropical Gulf of Mexico and Florida, rather than in western or central Mexico. By migrating in spring as far north as the Yukon or southern Alaska, the rufous hummingbird migrates more extensively and nests farther north than any other hummingbird species, and must tolerate occasional temperatures below freezing in its breeding territory. This cold hardiness


title: Hummingbird content: enables it to survive temperatures below freezing, provided that adequate shelter and food are available. As calculated by displacement of body size, the rufous hummingbird makes perhaps the longest migratory journey of any bird in the world. At just over 3 in long, rufous birds travel 3,900 miles one-way from Alaska to Mexico in late summer, a distance equal to 78,470,000 body lengths. By comparison, the 13-inch-long Arctic tern makes a one-way flight of about 11,185 miles, or 51,430,000 body lengths, just 65% of the body displacement during migration by rufous hummingbirds. The northward migration of rufous hummingbirds occurs along


title: Hummingbird content: the Pacific flyway and may be time-coordinated with flower and tree leaf emergence in spring in early March, and also with availability of insects as food. Arrival at breeding grounds before nectar availability from mature flowers may jeopardize breeding opportunities. For nutrition, hummingbirds eat a variety of insects, including mosquitoes, fruit flies, and gnats in flight or aphids on leaves and spiders in their webs. The lower beak of hummingbirds is flexible and can bend as much as 25 degrees when it widens at the base, making a larger surface for catching insects. Hummingbirds hover within insect swarms in a


title: Hummingbird content: method called "hover-hawking" to facilitate feeding. To supply energy needs, hummingbirds drink nectar, a sweet liquid inside certain flowers. Like bees, they are able to assess the amount of sugar in the nectar they eat; they normally reject flower types that produce nectar that is less than 10% sugar and prefer those whose sugar content is higher. Nectar is a mixture of glucose, fructose, and sucrose, and is a poor source of nutrients, requiring hummingbirds to meet their nutritional needs by consuming insects. Hummingbirds do not spend all day flying, as the energy cost would be prohibitive; the majority of


title: Hummingbird content: their activity consists simply of sitting or perching. Hummingbirds eat many small meals and consume around half their weight in nectar (twice their weight in nectar, if the nectar is 25% sugar) each day. Hummingbirds digest their food rapidly due to their small size and high metabolism; a mean retention time less than an hour has been reported. Hummingbirds spend an average of 10–15% of their time feeding and 75–80% sitting and digesting. Because their high metabolism makes them vulnerable to starvation, hummingbirds are highly attuned to food sources. Some species, including many found in North America, are territorial and


title: Hummingbird content: will try to guard food sources (such as a feeder) against other hummingbirds, attempting to ensure a future food supply for itself. Additionally, hummingbirds have an enlarged hippocampus, a brain region facilitating spatial memory used to map flowers previously visited during nectar foraging. Hummingbird beaks are flexible and their shapes vary dramatically as an adaptation for specialized feeding. Some species, such as hermits ("Phaethornis" spp.) have long bills that allow them to probe deep into flowers with long corollae. Thornbills have short, sharp bills adapted for feeding from flowers with short corollae and piercing the bases of longer ones. The


title: Hummingbird content: sicklebills' extremely decurved bills are adapted to extracting nectar from the curved corollae of flowers in the family Gesneriaceae. The bill of the fiery-tailed awlbill has an upturned tip, as in the avocets. The male tooth-billed hummingbird has barracuda-like spikes at the tip of its long, straight bill. The two halves of a hummingbird's bill have a pronounced overlap, with the lower half (mandible) fitting tightly inside the upper half (maxilla). When a hummingbird feeds on nectar, the bill is usually opened only slightly, allowing the tongue to dart out and into the interior of flowers. Hummingbird bill sizes range


title: Hummingbird content: from about 5 mm to as long as 100 mm (about 4 in). When catching insects in flight, a hummingbird's jaw flexes downward to widen the gape for successful capture. Perception of sweetness in nectar evolved in hummingbirds during their genetic divergence from insectivorous swifts, their closest bird relatives. Although the only known sweet sensory receptor, called T1R2, is absent in birds, receptor expression studies showed that hummingbirds adapted a carbohydrate receptor from the T1R1-T1R3 receptor, identical to the one perceived as umami in humans, essentially repurposing it to function as a nectar sweetness receptor. This adaptation for taste enabled


title: Hummingbird content: hummingbirds to detect and exploit sweet nectar as an energy source, facilitating their distribution across geographical regions where nectar-bearing flowers are available. Hummingbirds drink with their long tongues by rapidly lapping nectar. Their tongues have tubes which run down their lengths and help the hummingbirds drink the nectar. While capillary action was believed to be what drew nectar into these tubes, high-speed photography has revealed that the tubes open down their sides as the tongue goes into the nectar, and then close around the nectar, trapping it so it can be pulled back into the beak. The tongue, which is


title: Hummingbird content: forked, is compressed until it reaches nectar, then the tongue springs open, the rapid action traps the nectar and the nectar moves up the grooves, like a pump action, with capillary action not involved. Consequently, tongue flexibility enables accessing, transporting and unloading nectar. In the wild, hummingbirds visit flowers for food, extracting nectar, which is 55% sucrose, 24% glucose and 21% fructose on a dry-matter basis. Hummingbirds also take sugar-water from bird feeders. Such feeders allow people to observe and enjoy hummingbirds up close while providing the birds with a reliable source of energy, especially when flower blossoms are less


title: Hummingbird content: abundant. A negative aspect of artificial feeders, however, is that the birds may seek less flower nectar for food, so reduce the amount of pollination their feeding naturally provides. White granulated sugar is the best sweetener to use in hummingbird feeders. A ratio of 1 part sugar to 4 parts water, or 25% concentration, is a common recipe, although hummingbirds will defend feeders more aggressively when sugar content is at 35%, indicating preference for nectar with higher sweetness and sugar content. Organic and "raw" sugars contain iron, which can be harmful, and brown sugar agave syrup, molasses and artificial sweeteners


title: Hummingbird content: also should not be used. Honey is made by bees from the nectar of flowers, but it is not good to use in feeders because when it is diluted with water, microorganisms easily grow in it, causing it to spoil rapidly. Red food dye was once thought to be a favorable ingredient for homemade solutions, but it is unnecessary, and there is no point in adding it to the nectar. Some people speculate red dye could be bad for the birds, although this claim has not received scientific attention. Commercial products sold as "instant nectar" or "hummingbird food" may also


title: Hummingbird content: contain preservatives and/or artificial flavors as well as dyes, and are not necessary, although the long-term effects of these additives on hummingbirds have not been systematically studied. Although some commercial products contain small amounts of nutritional additives, hummingbirds obtain all necessary nutrients from the insects they eat, rendering added nutrients unnecessary. Other animals also visit hummingbird feeders. Bees, wasps, and ants are attracted to the sugar-water and may crawl into the feeder, where they may become trapped and drown. Orioles, woodpeckers, bananaquits, raccoons and other larger animals are known to drink from hummingbird feeders, sometimes tipping them and draining the


title: Hummingbird content: liquid. In the southwestern United States, two species of nectar-drinking bats ("Leptonycteris yerbabuenae" and "Choeronycteris mexicana") visit hummingbird feeders to supplement their natural diet of nectar and pollen from saguaro cacti and agaves. Hummingbirds have exceptional visual acuity providing them with discrimination of food sources while foraging. Although it is commonly believed that hummingbirds are attracted to color while seeking food, such as red flowers or artificial feeders, experiments indicate that location and flower nectar quality are the most important "beacons" for foraging. Hummingbirds depended little on visual cues of flower color to beacon to nectar-rich locations, but rather they


title: Hummingbird content: used surrounding landmarks to find the nectar reward. In at least one hummingbird species – the green-backed firecrown ("Sephanoides sephaniodes") – flower colors preferred are in the red-green wavelength for the bird's visual system, providing a higher contrast than for other flower colors. Further, the crown plumage of firecrown males is highly iridescent in the red wavelength range (peak at 650 nanometers), possibly providing a competitive advantage of dominance when foraging among other hummingbird species with less-colorful plumage. The ability to discriminate colors of flowers and plumage is enabled by a visual system having four single cone cells and a


title: Hummingbird content: double cone screened by photoreceptor oil droplets which enhance color discrimination. Some species of sunbirds of Africa, southern and southeastern Asia, and Australia resemble hummingbirds in appearance and behavior, as do perhaps also the honeyeaters of Australia and Pacific islands. These two groups, however, are not related to hummingbirds, as their resemblance is due to convergent evolution. The hummingbird moth is often mistaken for a hummingbird. Hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and constitute the biological family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring in length. Indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a