Flamingos

Alex Re

Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you, we take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you, you're gonna come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before.

The animal that I'm going to be talking about on this week's episode is known for its bright pink color. But there are so many awesome things about these animals that you're definitely going to want to hear more about. So make sure you have your rain boots on because we're going to be stepping into some shallow water to talk about flamingos.

There are six different species of flamingos. Four flamingo species are found in the Caribbean and South America. And the other two are either found off of the southern coast of Europe, the outer part of Africa, or Western Asia.

And they're wading birds, meaning that they spend a lot of their time standing in shallow water. They're also tall and pink with thick downturned beaks. And even though they can be tall, they're also extremely light. They can be almost five feet tall, but they only weigh up to nine pounds. The average five foot tall person is 115 to 120 pounds. They also have long, slender legs that have knee joints that bend the opposite way of humans. flamingos also have long necks, large wings and short tails.

Here's a brief run through of all the species. The Greater Flamingo is the most widespread and the largest. And usually when there's a greater there's a lesser. The Lesser Flamingo tends to be more pink in color and has shorter legs. These two species are found in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The Chilean Flamingo is the only species to have gray legs with pink leg joints. The Andean and James's Flamingo are often confused because of their bright yellow beaks. But if you look closely, the James's Flamingo has red skin between their eyes and their beaks. And the Andean has a black triangle patch on its feathers. The last species is the American or Caribbean Flamingo. This species is also pretty large, but it has a lot more color than the Greater Flamingo. These last four species are found in the Western Hemisphere.

Flamingos can also live for a really long time, they can live for about 40 to 50 years. And as I'll talk about later on in the episode, flamingos are extremely social animals. If you've ever seen them in pictures, or at the zoo, you'll notice that they're always with their group. And another thing that flamingos are really well known for is standing on one leg.

Now if you're a longtime listener, you may remember this fact from a trivia question. But scientists think that one of the reasons that flamingos do this is to help them stay warm. As I said before, they like to stand in shallow water, which could cause them to lose a lot of heat through their legs. Scientists have also hypothesized that it could be to conserve energy, or to simply dry out their legs.

Okay, we're gonna take a short break, and when we get back, I'm going to talk about their eating habits.

The person that I want to recognize on this week's episode of notable figures in science is Dr. Barbara McClintock, who was a geneticist in the mid to late 1900s. She got her PhD from Cornell in agriculture, and studied the genes of corn. She made a groundbreaking discovery that genes on chromosomes could switch locations. This is the basis for much of what we know about genetics today.

She also faced a lot of adversity, and she tried to become a professor at Cornell, but they wouldn't hire a female professor at the time. And later on, not only was she the vice president of the Genetics Society of America, but she also won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in the 80s. She showed the scientific community that women deserve to be seen as equals, and proved her doubters wrong. her legacy should definitely not be forgotten. If you want to learn more about Dr. McClintock or the series in general, check out onwildlife.org

Okay, we're back. And here's the question I'm sure all of you have been waiting for. Why are flamingos pink? And this is actually another trivia question that I asked a few weeks ago. It comes from their food, which contains carotenoid pigment, a class of yellow, orange and red pigments.

When they digest their food, the pigments dissolve in their body fat, and they're deposited in the feathers becoming pink. These pigments are also responsible for giving bright tomatoes and autumn leaves their bright colors. And flamingos in zoos or in other forms of captivity have to be fed a special diet to ensure that they have a pink hue, including dye or pellets enriched with pigments.

In the wild, flamingos have really interesting feeding habits. They're filter feeders, which is kind of weird because most filter feeders are mollusks like clams, mussels, and oysters. flamingos eat diatoms, which are like algae, and they also eat invertebrates like shrimp. In order to get their food flamingos turn their heads upside down, and dip their bill under the water.

And then they use their beaks and their webbed feet to disturb all the stuff that's floating on the bottom of the water. They then use their tongue to help pump water into their mouth. And just a side note that in ancient Rome, Flamingo tongues were considered to be a delicacy.

Once they have a mouthful of water and the stuff that they stirred up, they swing their head side to side to strain the water out with their bill. And the opening of their bill contains something called lamella and lamella, our comb like plates that trap shrimp and other desirable food while allowing them to filter out the water. Another place that you'd be able to see similar structures is in the mouths of whales that feed on krill.

So they're definitely a lot different than other birds that usually hunt their prey with sharp beaks. And even though they don't need to hunt their prey, they still have amazing senses. They're able to hear sounds from a really long distance, and they can also pick up on the specific frequencies of their own young in such a large colony.

They aren't able to see as well as other animals like cats at night, but their night vision is still a lot better than humans. And this is important because a lot of flamingos like to feed at night instead of during the day.

Like I said before, flamingos are very social birds, some of their flocks, which are also called colonies can number in the 1000s. And they actually have subgroups within the larger groups. Some research has even shown evidence that they group with each other based on their personalities. So it's really like being in a high school clique. Researchers found that flamingos that are more aggressive tend to group with other flamingos that are aggressive as well and vice versa.

Unfortunately, these large groups are only formed in the wild, zoos don't have the space or the funds to be able to take care of what can get to 200,000 birds. This means that there could be more individuals in one group than there are people living in Tallahassee, Florida.

And in the wild, different Flamingo species tend to remain separate from each other because of their different feeding habits. But in captivity, it's a different story. Different species of flamingos actually get along really well when they live together in captivity. This is extremely unique behavior compared to most other animals.

Within the colonies, flamingos interact with nonverbal movements. This is different from other birds who like to communicate a lot of the time with sound, they still make sounds, but body language is a main method of communication. Here are some cool behaviors that they do.

There's head flagging, which is when flamingos stretch their necks back as far as they can go, raising their head up and turning it from side to side. There's also a wink salute that acts the same as a friendly way between humans. And interestingly, flamingos have black feathers under their wings, which you can only see when their wings are spread out. The twist preen performed by males occurs during courting when they want to impress females. And we're going to talk more about that later on.

They show off by twisting their neck back and using their build to preen their feathers in a rapid pecking motion. But the most common behavior is marching, which a large number of flamingos will do at the same time. They'll march in one direction and then quickly turn to march in another direction.

It's amazing to watch the structure of these colonies because they perform these behaviors at the exact same time. In fact, those who observed flamingos for a long period of time can even predict what type of behaviors colonies will do based on the time of day.

When flamingos aren't involved in large group activities. They're oftentimes either feeding or printing their feathers. They spend most of their time eating primarily after dark and spend around 30% of their time, preening flamingos have a gland that releases oil and they use their built to spread the oil to their feathers. This is to make sure that their feathers are resistant to water.

Okay, we're gonna take another quick break. And when we get back, I'm going to start talking about their meeting displays.

Who's ready for today's trivia question? Which animal is not venomous?

A: a cobra B: a platypus. C: a brown recluse spider or D: an anaconda

The answer is D. Anacondas kill their prey by constricting and suffocating them. The others use their venom to immobilize their prey and also to protect themselves.

Okay, welcome back. Flamingo breeding displays are performed in large groups with sometimes 1000s of individuals, they open up their wings, lift them up and turn their heads. The dance ensures that all birds are ready to mate when the time is right.

And their nests, which are made by both males and females are a little out of the ordinary to, they look kind of like volcanoes, short cones of muddy clay that are piled up in a shallow lagoon. And Flamingo mating is highly correlated with the levels of rainfall that have to produce enough food.

And because of this, they have no set breeding season. And scientists have found that flamingos have been rubbing the oil that they get from their glands on themselves more frequently during mating season. And this actually makes them look more pink, which also makes them more attractive to potential mates. mating pairs are monogamous, so to flamingos like to stick together, and homosexuality is actually fairly common in flamingos.

The incubation period for one or two eggs laid in the hollow of the cone is about a month long, and both parents wash over the eggs. When the chicks hatch. They have whitish plumage that takes several years until they eventually molt to become pink. The chicks are also able to recognize the sounds of their parents from a very young age, which is really important for communication.

They also begin to recognize the sounds of other adults. Since flamingos are usually raised as a group, and like most other birds, the chicks are fed by regurgitation from the parents, but only for a week or two when the chick begins to walk and swim. Once it can move on its own, it joins a group of young flamingos known as a crèche.

So why are flamingos important to the ecosystems that they live in? Well, because they eat so much food, they help regulate the populations of the things that they eat, like invertebrates or algae. If there's too much algae in the water, it can cause a dead zone to occur. And this is where an entire body of water can lose all of its oxygen, making it uninhabitable by animals.

They also help to mix up nutrients and organisms in the water column from storing the water with their bills and their feet. Along with stirring the nutrients, it also adds oxygen into the water helping to avoid anoxic conditions.

So are flamingos facing any issues? Well, they aren't directly killed by humans for anything today, even though the ancient Romans would eat their tongues. So the biggest threat caused by humans is habitat destruction.

However, they're really resilient animals. And due to their large range, they can easily find a new habitat unlike shorter ranged animals, but there is a risk of disease in the colonies. Since they live so close together and it's such large numbers, disease can spread rapidly through the colonies. Also, they all have the same food source, so if it's contaminated, they all become sick.

No flamingo species is considered endangered or even threatened. The American and the Greater Flamingo are both listed as least concern. The Lesser James's and Chilean flamingos are near threatened. And the Andean Flamingo is vulnerable.

But just because they're not completely endangered doesn't mean we don't have to care, so here are some organizations to take a look at that helped flamingos. There's Birdlife International, the Reed Park Zoos Safe Initiative, and the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds.

Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of flamingos. You can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at on wildlife.org. You can also email us with any questions at onwildlife.podcast@gmail.com and you can follow us on Instagram @on_wildlife or on Tiktok @onwildlife. Don't forget to tune in next Wednesday for another awesome episode. And that's On Wildlife.

Jess Avellino

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai