Why is a flamingos feathers pink

Flamingos at a Caribbean coastal lagoon. Flamingo feather coloration ranges from pale pink to crimson according to species. The Caribbean flamingos Phoenicopterus ruber rubber are the brightest, showing their colors of red, pink, or orange on their legs, bills, and faces.

Flamingos are filter feeders, living off algae and tiny animals such as shrimp, mollusks, and insect larvae that live in the mud at the bottom of shallow pools. Their long legs allow them to wade into deep water to forage. Their unusually shaped bill, held upside down, contains lamellae, plates that act like tiny filters to trap shrimp and other water creatures. They use their tongues to suck water in at the front of the bill and pump it out through the sides.

Lesser, James, and Andean flamingos eat algae, cyanobacteria, and hard-shelled, single-celled plants. They have larger bills and stiff lamellae to filter fine particles from the water. Caribbean, Chilean, and Greater flamingos eat larger organisms, such as insects, invertebrates, and small fish, using their feet to stir up shrimp and larvae from the waterbed. Flamingo feathers obtain their wonderful rosy pink color from pigments in the organisms they eat.

Carotenoids in crustaceans such as those in the flamingo diet are frequently linked to protein molecules, and may be blue or green. After being digested, the carotenoid pigments dissolve in fats and are deposited in the growing feathers, becoming orange or pink. Carotenoids give carrots their orange color or turn ripe tomatoes red.

They are also found in the microscopic algae that brine shrimp eat. As a flamingo dines on algae and brine shrimp, its body metabolizes the pigments — turning its feathers pink. The term filter feeder may conjure images of baleen whales or oyster reefs, but flamingos are filter feeders too.

They eat algae, small seeds, tiny crustaceans like brine shrimp , fly larvae, and other plants and animals that live in shallow waters. It then sweeps its head side-to-side, using its tongue to pump water in and out of its bill.

Comb-like plates along the edge of the bill create a filter for water to rush out, while trapping food inside. In warm climates, flamingos keep cool by standing in water.

A group of crows is called a murder, and a group of geese is called a gaggle. So, what is a group of flamingos called? A flamboyance! Other collective nouns for flamingos include stand, colony and pat.

In the wild, flamingos sometimes gather by the thousands! Greater flamingos are found in parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe. They are the largest and tallest flamingo species. Andean flamingos are the rarest of the six species, with fewer than 40, birds. Lesser flamingos are found in parts of Africa and southern Asia. They are the smallest flamingos and the most abundant.

There are more than 2 million lesser flamingos brightening skies and shores with their pink plumage. Flamingo legs actually bend just like human legs. A flamingo chick… most definitely not pink! Flamingos live by lakes, wetlands, and swamps, filter-feeding to obtain their diet, primarily made up of insect larvae, algae, and small crustaceans and invertebrates, particularly brine shrimp and mollusks.

To feed they hold their beaks upside down, suck water in at the front of the bill, and pump it out through the sides. While pumping water they use their lamellae plates that act like tiny filters to sieve out algae and water creatures to eat. Their algae and crustacean diet contains extremely high concentrations of beta carotene and other carotenoids — an organic protein.

Given that flamingos are turned pink by the carotenoids in the food they eat, it makes sense that varieties in the type and quantity of food flamingos eat can determine their exact shade. Carotenoid levels in algae and crustaceans vary in different parts of the world. If a flamingo were to stop eating food containing carotenoids, their new feathers would start to grow in a much more pale shade — eventually growing in grey or white — at the same time as their pink feathers were lost to molting.

To this point, when flamingos were first kept in captivity, zookeepers found that they started losing most of their colouration though maintained their one-legged standing position. Captive flamingos are now generally fed a special diet with additives including beta carotene or canthaxanthin along with their prawns, to ensure they keep their bright pink colour.

There are some internet hoaxes out there that suggest blue flamingos or green flamingos exist. Sadly, this is a hoax, and not true. These hoaxes are potentially appealing because flamingos frequently eat blue green algae. However, the flamingo metabolism processes carotenoid pigments from these blue green algae to turn them pink rather than green or blue… even if these photoshopped flamingos do look pretty cool!