The "backspace" escape character '\b': unexpected behavior?

So I'm finally reading through K&R, and I learned something within the first few pages, that there is a backspace escape character, \b.

So I go to test it out, and there is some very odd behavior:

#include <stdio.h>

main ()
{
    printf("hello worl\b\bd\n");
}

The output is

hello wodl

Can anyone explain this?