Australia has flowers that look shockingly like hummingbirds

Geeking out to nature.

Melanie Lim | June 30, 2019, 02:52 PM

On June 24, 2019, Reddit user OctopusPrime shared a photograph of a plant with flowers that look like a group of hummingbirds:

Image via OctopusPrime on Reddit

In just one day, the post garnered more than 47,500 upvotes and an equally engaging 400 comments.

While most users were wondering if the flowers came to look like hummingbirds because of adaptation or evolution, Reddit user SolitaryBee tried to provide some answers:

Image via SolitaryBee on Reddit

He explained that the plant, whose Latin name is Crotalaria cunninghamii, comes from Australia:

Image via SolitaryBee on Reddit

The flowers only look like hummingbirds to humans and not other animals because humans have different visions:

Image via SolitaryBee on Reddit

Its shape is also determined from the angle that we view it by, so there are angles in which the flowers look less like  hummingbirds:

Image via Australian Seed

It is unlikely that the flowers look the way they do because of adaptive evolution as there are no hummingbirds in Australia, and also because pollinators like bees are attracted to flowers, not birds, which are their predators:

Image via SolitaryBee on Reddit

Image via SolitaryBee on Reddit

Cool.

Top image via OctopusPrime on Reddit