Are hummingbirds mammals? Actually, hummingbirds belong to the birds
Hummingbirds belong to the class Aves and are the general name for the various species of the family Trochilidae. In fact, hummingbirds comprise 1 family, 2 subfamilies, 104 genera and 355 species. Their body sizes vary greatly, the large ones resembling swallows, the small ones smaller than wasps. And some friends may wonder: are hummingbirds mammals?
Hummingbirds are not mammals; hummingbirds are oviparous, and hummingbirds generally lay 2 (rarely 1) white oval eggs, which are the smallest among bird eggs, but the egg weight is about 10% of the female bird's body weight. Newly hatched chicks have no vision and no feathers on their bodies, and are fed by the parent birds, with feathers becoming full about 3 weeks later. Mammals, generally speaking, refers to the biological phenomenon in which an animal, after giving birth to its young, suckles them with milk secreted by its own mammary glands. Hummingbirds have no mammary glands and cannot secrete milk, so they are not mammals.
The distribution range of hummingbirds is not particularly wide; they mainly inhabit tropical and subtropical regions, and their distribution is limited to the Americas. The Old World has no hummingbirds, but there are some birds similar to hummingbirds, such as sunbirds and flowerpeckers. Most hummingbird species are concentrated between 10° north latitude and 25° south latitude. There is no distribution of hummingbirds within our country; most of the rumors about hummingbirds are large hawk moths that are mistaken for hummingbirds when feeding on nectar, such as the hummingbird hawk-moth.
Although there are still quite a few species of hummingbirds, all species in the family Trochilidae have been included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This is because, with forest felling and the development of farming, the habitats on which hummingbirds depend for survival are gradually being destroyed by humans, and some hummingbirds also face the danger of extinction.