We Have Data!!!!!!!

Isabelle has been working really hard sorting through all the infrared videos she and Anusha collected at the Southwestern Research Station back in June. If you don't work with this sort of imagery it is hard to imagine just how much information IR videos contain, and just how long it takes to do analysis on just a single frame. We will have many more results to share as we move forward, but wanted to give you all a glimpse of a very simple analysis illustrating the difference between a bird in torpor (the black-chinned hummingbird on the left) and a normothermic (not in torpor) bird (blue-throated hummingbird on the right). Note how the surface temperature of the bird in torpor is uniform and low (near air temperature). The uniformity in surface temperature can be seen in the bar graph below where maximum and minimum temperature vary by just 2 °C. The normothermic bird varies widely in temperature (20 °C difference between minimum and maximum temperature) due mostly to warm skin and cool feathers. The warmest areas are where the camera can see the skin through the feathers. Stay tuned for more later!!!!