Facts about Flamingos you never knew

Did you know there are 6 different types of Flamingos!?:

Greater Flamingo - largest of the flamingos, has deep pink wings.
Caribbean Flamingo - slightly smaller than sir Greatness above.
Chilean Flamingo - slightly smaller than Caribbean, has gray legs with pink bands at joints.
James Flamingo - all black flight feathers including the secondary flight feathers (normally red in other flamingos).
Andean Flamingo - only species of flamingo with yellow legs and feet. Has a red spot between the nostrils.
Lesser Flamingo - smallest of all flamingos, yet the color is brighter that even the Greater Flamingo!

Why are Flamingos Pink in color?

The simple answer is diet. A flamingo's pink or reddish feather, leg, and facial coloration comes from a diet high in alpha and beta carotenoid pigments, including canthaxanthin. The richest sources of carotenoids are found in the algae and various insects that make up the staples of a flamingo's diet.

Random Facts about Flamingos

- Male flamingos are slightly larger than females; however, visual sex determination of flamingos is unreliable.

- Flamingos have good hearing and use vocalizations to keep flocks together and for parent-chick recognition.

- Vision plays an important role in helping flamingos synchronize collective displays (social behaviors) of several hundred to several thousand birds.

- Flamingos have little or no sense of smell.

- Tactile organs on their tongues are used to examine food taken in.

- They are capable of drinking water at temperatures that approach the boiling point.

- When flamingos are resting, they may sit down with their legs tucked beneath them or stand on one leg.

- While resting, flamingos face into the wind. This stops wind and rain from penetrating their feathers.

- A flamingo flies with its head and neck stretched out in front and its legs trailing behind.

- Flamingos excrete salt through salt glands in the nostrils.

- Flamingos are very social birds. Breeding colonies of a few individual flamingos are rare, while colonies of tens of thousands of birds are common.

- Flamingos devote considerable time to collective displays before, during, and after breeding.

- Several hundred to several thousand flamingos are all involved simultaneously with ritualized postures and movements to synchronize breeding.

- An oil gland near the base of the tail secretes oil that the flamingo distributes throughout its feathers.

- Through slow-motion photography, researchers discovered that "Lesser Flamingo" birds pump water through their bills 20 times a second to filter their food.

- Flamingos seek out fresh water for drinking.

- Flamingos reach sexual maturity several years after hatching and usually begin to breed at about six years of age.

- Flamingos most often lay one large egg. Females have been known to lay two eggs, but it is rare for both to hatch. If an egg is lost early in incubation, a second replacement egg may be laid. This process is called double clutching.

- Both the male and female take turns incubating the egg by sitting on top of the nest mound.

- Eggs that fall from the nesting mound are not retrieved.

- Because there are no regular breeding seasons, chicks hatch throughout the year

- Egyptians revered the flamingo as the living embodiment of the sun god Ra.

- When hatching, the flamingo chick breaks through the shell using a growth on its bill called an egg tooth. The egg tooth is not a true tooth and falls off soon after hatching.

- Parents are able to recognize their own chick by sight and vocalizations. They will feed no other chick.

- Adults feed their chicks a secretion of the upper digestive tract referred to as milk. Milk secretion is caused by the hormone prolactin, which both the male and female flamingo produce.

- Flamingo vocalizations range from nasal honking to grunting or growling. Flamingos are generally very noisy birds.

- Experts have not yet determined how long flamingos live. At the Philadelphia Zoo, one flamingo lived 44 years.

- In early Roman times, flamingo tongues were carefully prepared, pickled, and served as a delicacy.

- Andean miners have killed flamingos for their fat, believed to be a cure for tuberculosis.

- SeaWorld feeds flamingos a special diet using submerged food trays used to accommodate flamingos' filter-feeding habits.

- If it is a murder of crows, then what is the term for a flock of flamingos? It's a pat of flamingos.

- Flamingos have knees that can bend backward. However, what we refer to as their knee, is actually their ankle.

- The word flamingo is most likely derived from the Latin, flamma, flame.

- Flamingos molt (shed and replace) their wing and body feathers at irregular intervals ranging from twice a year to once every two years.

- A flamingo's eye is actually larger than it's brain!

Credit: gardenfun.com