Although their bills are thin and the manner in which they consume food is by swallowing and not chewing, hummingbirds do infact have teeth. The amount they have will vary based on the breed but, most will have 20+ small thorn shaped denchers can positioned at their ends of their bills, often used as weapon when fighting others.

In essence their isn’t a lot of practical benefits to hummingbirds having teeth other than to grip food sources or to fend of other critters. Continue reading if you want a more detailed look at how these thorny, shark based teeth actually benefit these small hovering birds on their day to day.

Do Hummingbirds Use Their Teeth To Chew Food?

Although the teeth at the end of their bills look as if they could break food down to some degree, they are still extremely small and the food that hummingbirds typically consume such as smaller insects, sugar water, nectar and beyond are either to big for their small teeth to chew or are liquid based and don’t need to be chewed.

Instead these hovering birds with suck in their food or swallow them, with their tongue being the most used asset in the arsenal when doing so.

The teeth may help in providing added grip when carrying solid objects or food that hummingbirds may for example bring to their babies but, they are still very unlikely to help in breaking larger food sources down.

Do Hummingbirds Use Their Beaks As Weapons?

 

Their beaks along with the teeth at the ends of their beaks have to some degree evolved to be used as weapons. After all, it does not seem that their practical benefits have been realized.

Hummingbirds will often get into fights with others, especially around breeding season when male hummingbirds will fight other males for territory in preparation for when the female hummingbirds start making their way.

Furthermore, they could also use it when protecting their food sources from other animals and when fending off potential predators from their babies.

In fact the battles that the males have can be very brutal where the action that each bird performs is similar to that of swordfight between two samurai dueling in the Edo period within Japan.

These small migratory birds will use their beaks to parry, to stab, dismember the feathers on their opposition and even on occasion just shove their opponent off the perch on which they stand. This whole ordeal was looked at and researched over a 10 year period by Alejandro Rico-Guevara and his colleagues and the outcome showed male hummingbirds could become quite violent.

Despite appearances, you could say that these beaks are very deadly as weapons amongst peers similar to them in size.

Can Hummingbirds Bite You?

This is certainly a possibility and some may bite if you irritate them enough and of course based on if their general temperament is more on the violent side however, they wouldn’t go out of their way to bite us, especially when you take into account how much bigger we are than them.

Say for example they were to actually bite you, it wouldn’t be as a result of their intent to harm but more so to warn and inform us that they are uncomfortable.

When it comes down to pure intent to harm, despite the thorn, shark teeth like appearance of their teeth, their lack of size wouldn’t affect us very much at all, although the ability to draw blood isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.

Summary

All in all hummingbirds to actually have teeth however, they aren’t designed to function as teeth would for most animals.

Although they have a thorny shark like shape to them, their miniscule size along with the fact hummingbirds mostly use their tongues and a sucking motion to consume their food. Ultimately. this means that their beak and teeth are more so suited for times of war, particularly between males who fight each other for territory around mating season.