On Wednesdays we wear pink!

I’m on a little Mean Girls kick today. I woke up thinking about the movie for some reason (don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining) and have now decided, in honor of the rules of the cafeteria, to post about wearing pink on Wednesdays. Bring on the flamingos…

There are 6 flamingo species (4 species found in the US), all in the genus Phoenicopterus. These pretty birds are socialites and live in large colonies. They can be found at the top of the Andes Mountains, all the way down to the tidal flats of the Caribbean.

One of the most distinctive features of a flamingo is its color. Flamingos are born white, but turn various shades of pink (anywhere from a light/pastel pink to deep crimson and vermilion).

[Reader: scratches head and thinks, “Robert, but why are flamingos pink?”]

Well let me tell you!

Flamingos are filter feeders. They will wade out into the water and lower and tilt their heads, allowing their bill to be upside-down under water. After stomping their feet a few times to stir up the mud, the flamingo will swish its head side to side to get the murky water moving through its bill. A pointy tongue acts like a piston to help circulate the water within the bill. Small hair-like structures called lamellae line the bill and filter out food from the water. Flamingos like to eat things like brine shrimp, algae, plankton, insect larvae, etc (small stuff). Anything too big or too small or that doesn’t seem appetizing is filtered through the lamellae and then pushed out of the bill.

Eating a lot of algae and plankton means that flamingos are taking in a lot of carotenoid proteins, mainly beta-carotene (the protein also found in carrots) and alpha-carotene. Once ingested, these chemicals are broken down in the liver. The byproduct, in flamingos, is a pink chemical that can be dissolved in fats and deposited in growing feathers. The amount and types of algae eaten are what affect how light or intense the color is. That’s why flamingos found in different locations vary in color.

This is similar to the reason people can start to turn orange if they eat enough carrots.

No matter where the flamingo lives, it wants to be the brightest one in its colony. A good, solid, intense color means that flamingo is well fed and happy – the perfect mate and parent.