Does a hummingbird fly like an insect or a bird?
A bit like both. Many experts had argued that hummingbirds’ skill at hovering, of which insects are the undisputed masters, means that the two groups may stay aloft in the same way: by generating lift from a wing’s upstroke as well as the down. This turns out to be only partially true. Other birds get all of their lift from the downstroke (during slow flight and when hovering; not during faster flight), and insects manage to get equal lift from both up and down beats (check this short video), but hummingbirds lie somewhere in between and gett about 75% of their lift from the downstroke and 25% from the upstroke.
