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Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Hummingbirds Can hummingbirds get diabetes?

hummingbirds
by Schill

Question by Michigan: Can hummingbirds get diabetes?

Best answer:

Answer by dedum
they run at such a high metabolism and have such a high cal diet, that if they did they would not be long for this world. But generally, in studies, the answer is no.

Or he may work with UA physiologist Eldon Braun on another question that intrigues him: How do hummingbirds deal with all the sugar they consume?

“Floral nectars average between 20 percent and 30 percent by weight sucrose. Hummingbirds have very high blood sugar. If you had the blood sugar of a hummingbird that has fasted, you’d be in a diabetic coma. But these birds have none of the eye, liver, kidney or other problems associated with diabetes. If we can learn how birds deal with high levels of blood glucose, we might understand more about how to deal with diabetes.”

http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=5186

Hummingbirds and other nectar-feeding, migratory birds possess unusual adaptive traits that offer important lessons concerning obesity, diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. Hummingbirds consume a high sugar diet and have fasting glucose levels that would be severely hyperglycemic in humans, yet these nectar-fed birds recover most glucose that is filtered into the urine. Hummingbirds accumulate over 40% body fat shortly before migrations in the spring and autumn. Despite hyperglycemia and seasonally elevated body fat, the birds are not known to become diabetic in the sense of developing polyuria (glucosuria), polydipsia and polyphagia.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1325055

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Tags:diabetes, Hummingbirds

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