Drink up little Rufous Humminbird! One flower down, 1,163 cans of Coke (hummingbird equivalent) to go!!

From Slate.com, there’s a nice feature today about the “fierceness” of hummingbirds:

Hummingbirds are Fierce, Deadly Gods of War

I can relate to this.  Pop (hey, I’m from the Midwest, it’s “pop”, not “soda” or anything else) is my downfall.  I don’t drink coffee, and especially during the week, a can of pop somehow makes it into my office.  Mostly it’s Coke.  If I’m really having a bad, tiring day, a Mountain Dew has been known to slip into my office.  But having an occasional can of Coke is nothing, if you read this story.

Given the metabolism of a hummingbird, they consume half their body weight in sugar every day.  As the article notes, an equivalent would be a human being drinking 1,163 cans of Coke a day, or 1,106 cans of Pepsi (Pepsi has more sugar).

Therefore, I have determined my occasional can of Coke isn’t bad.  It may actually be a health food, based on this comparison.  Not only am I drinking the “right” pop in Coke (the less sugary one), but I’m only drinking 0.09% of my daily allowance of sugar, in hummingbird terms.

It’s all a matter of perspective…