The long and the short of humming bird bills

Although nobody knows what the earliest humming bird bills were like, experts suspect that their dimensions were generally much the same as the bill of the hermit since most modern humming birds bill are similar to it. However, others have diverged in remarkable ways. The sicklebill has the most extreme curve of any species, the thornbill is the shortest and the swordbill at five inches is the longest. Each is specially adapted for feeding from flowers of a particular size and shape.