In order to design and create better flying robots, a team at Stanford University needed to see things our pitiful human eyes can't--like, how exactly does a hummingbird hover? How does a swift dive? So they grabbed a high-speed camera and went in search of birds.

 

Birds are exceedingly fast-moving animals, especially the various species of hummingbird, moving far too fast for the human eye to see naturally. Luckily, our human brains and hands have managed to invent amazing high-speed cameras like the Phantom, with which we can capture fireworks, smash TVs, and watch puppies roll around all in crazy slow motion, at thousands of frames per second. The Stanford team aimed a Phantom at various birds to see how they fly, and came away with some surprising insights.