Latest news with #flamingos
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Zoo flamingo breeding delayed by dry spring
The start of a zoo's flamingo breeding season has been delayed for the longest time on record by dry spring weather. Blackpool Zoo said it had shipped in four tonnes of sand to encourage the birds to construct their nests but it was only since the rain had returned that they had begun building. The nests, which are mounds made of sand and water, need to be located where they can stay wet as the flamingos continually build them throughout the incubation period. Keepers said it was "a sight to behold" when the birds finally began nesting and once the "most confident flamingo" decides to lay an egg the rest follow. Luke Forster from the zoo, said Caribbean flamingos were very social birds known for their "elaborate" nesting behaviours. "They build their nests in large colonies, carefully shaping the mounds to protect their eggs, which are incubated by both and male and female birds," he said. "Both genders also produce crop milk to feed the chicks once they have hatched and, in some cases, pairs of the same sex will take on the responsibility of incubating and raising a chick, even if the egg isn't theirs." When the chicks hatch they will have grey-white down and a straight beak. They develop their pink colour over a few years as they consume foods rich in the carotenoid pigments that make some plants, algae and crustaceans red, orange, pink and yellow. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230. Blackpool-born gorilla starts new life in India Zoo's delight at birth of endangered orangutan Blackpool's tourist numbers on the rise Pelican rescued after being found 65 miles from zoo Blackpool Zoo
BBC News
11 hours ago
- Science
- BBC News
Blackpool Zoo flamingo breeding delayed by dry spring
The start of a zoo's flamingo breeding season has been delayed for the longest time on record by dry spring Zoo said it had shipped in four tonnes of sand to encourage the birds to construct their nests but it was only since the rain had returned that they had begun nests, which are mounds made of sand and water, need to be located where they can stay wet as the flamingos continually build them throughout the incubation said it was "a sight to behold" when the birds finally began nesting and once the "most confident flamingo" decides to lay an egg the rest follow. Luke Forster from the zoo, said Caribbean flamingos were very social birds known for their "elaborate" nesting behaviours."They build their nests in large colonies, carefully shaping the mounds to protect their eggs, which are incubated by both and male and female birds," he said."Both genders also produce crop milk to feed the chicks once they have hatched and, in some cases, pairs of the same sex will take on the responsibility of incubating and raising a chick, even if the egg isn't theirs."When the chicks hatch they will have grey-white down and a straight beak. They develop their pink colour over a few years as they consume foods rich in the carotenoid pigments that make some plants, algae and crustaceans red, orange, pink and yellow. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
CBC
23-05-2025
- Science
- CBC
Flamingos create water tornadoes to trap and suck up their prey: study
During the pandemic, Saad Bhamla watched the flamingos at the zoo perform strange head movements as they ate, and found himself wondering: "What the heck is going on?" The birds would submerge their heads in the water, with their beaks by their feet, while stomping their webbed feet, walking sideways and moving their mandibles, splashing water everywhere. Bhamla and his colleagues decided to study the movements. It turns out, he says, the flamingos use their necks and beaks to create a vortex in the water to trap and slurp up their prey — an evolutionary practice apparently distinct to them. "We couldn't believe our eyes," Bhamla, an associate professor of bimolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "When they raise their heads underwater, they create a tornado, which traps these tiny shrimps and tiny invertebrates living in the water that they want to feed on, and makes their job easier to sift them through the mud and muddy things that they feed in." The findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that these bright pink, spindly-legged birds stand out not just for their whimsical aesthetic; but also for quirky foraging habits and unique evolution. How do flamingos eat? As part of their research, the team observed 3D-printed models of the flamingos' feet and beaks, and studied the skull of a deceased flamingo. But the real stars of the study, Bhamla says, were Marty and Mattie, a dynamic duo of Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) from the Nashville Zoo. Thanks to their willingness to be fed in controlled conditions, the research team could observe these flamingos as they ate with their heads upside down and submerged in the tank. Footage from a high-speed camera and other devices captured the velocity of these motions. WATCH | Compiled simulations of flamingos' foraging behaviours: The team confirmed that their head's anatomy — particularly their L-shaped beaks — help in creating this whirlpool effect as the birds quickly pull their heads out of the water. "They're moving their heads in tens of milliseconds," Bhamla said. "And they're doing this constantly, over and over again." The team also observed two other feeding techniques: chattering and stomping. Chattering is when the birds clap their upper mandibles, or jaw bones, underwater. Mattie and Marty also chattered their beaks when they stood still, or as they stomped their feet to stir up the sediment below. Stomping with their asymmetric webbed toes helps flamingos generate complementary vortexes to catch small prey and then easily swallow them with their beaks positioned near their feet. The Bhamla Lab website lists a detailed breakdown of each of these techniques, including video clips and a comic book illustration. 'They're not doing a funny dance' Jerry Lorenz, former research director of the bird conservation organization Audubon Florida who was not involved with this project, said the team "did an excellent job looking at the various flow patterns and movements" of both bill and tongue. "We've known that flamingos had a very interesting way of foraging and that their mouth parts were just kind of a bizarre thing," he said. "But the way they put it together to make sense of the evolution that created this … was just really astounding. I was actually delighted by the whole thing." From a conservation perspective, Lorenz says these findings are significant to understanding how flamingos interact with their environment to know how to best preserve it. "Evolution doesn't do accidents. If they're doing a behaviour and you don't understand why, there is an evolutionary reason for them to be doing that," he said.
New York Times
12-05-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Flamingos Summon Mini-Twisters to Suck Up Prey
If you've ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels. Victor Ortega-Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers being fascinated by this behavior the first time he saw it in 2019, during a trip with his wife and child to the Atlanta zoo. Ever since, he has been wondering what, exactly, was going on beneath the surface. 'The birds looked beautiful, but the big question for me was, 'What's happening with the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in flamingos' filter feeding?'' he said. Back home, he was surprised to find no explanation in the scientific literature — so he decided to produce one himself. Several years of meticulous research later, he and his colleagues arrived at a surprising discovery, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Flamingos, they found, are active predators that harness the physics of how water flows to sweep up prey and funnel it directly into their mouths. 'We are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said. 'Just as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez's collaborators included three exceptionally cooperative flamingos from the Nashville Zoo: Mattie, Marty and Cayenne. Zookeepers trained the birds to feed in a clear container, which allowed the researchers to record what was happening using high-speed cameras and fluid dynamic methods. The scientists generated oxygen bubbles and added food particles to measure and visualize the flow of the water as the birds fed. After initial observations with the live birds, the team built a 3-D model of a flamingo head and used it to more precisely explore the birds' biomechanics. Flamingos, they found, frequently and quickly retract their heads as they feed. Each of those motions creates a tornado-like vortex and an upwelling of particles from the bottom toward the water's surface. Further observation and experiments with the mechanical beak revealed that chattering, in which flamingos rapidly clap their beaks while their heads are lifted but still underwater, is responsible for causing the mini-twisters to flow directly toward the birds' mouths, helping them capture prey. Their bent, L-shaped beaks were also critical for generating vortices and recirculating eddies as they fed at the water's surface, reaping the rewards of those engineered flows. Another 'amazing finding,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said, was what the birds do with their feet, which the researchers explored using a mechanical flamingo foot and computational modeling. The dancing-like motion of their webbed appendages underwater produced yet more vortices that pushed additional particles toward the birds' waiting mouths as they fed upside down in the water. Taken together, these findings suggest that flamingos are 'highly specialized, super feeding machines that use their entire body for feeding,' Dr. Ortega-Jiménez said. Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, praised the work for being 'an outstanding demonstration of how biological form and motion can control the surrounding fluid to serve a functional role.' Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, also not involved in the work, agreed that the new paper puts to rest the notion that flamingos are passive in the way they filter feed. 'There have been many hypotheses surrounding how their odd bills could work,' he said, 'but until recently we didn't have the tools to study it.' In addition to solving that mystery and revealing 'a uniquely evolved way to capture tiny and evasive prey,' he continued, the research suggests another evolutionary reason for webbed feet in birds, beyond just being good paddles. Now that Dr. Ortega-Jiménez's curiosity about flamingo-instigated fluid dynamics has been satisfied, he plans to turn his attention to what is going on inside the birds' beaks during feeding. Taken together, such findings could eventually lead to bioinspired technologies that capture things like toxic algae or microplastics, he said. 'What's at the heart of filter feeding in flamingos?' he said. 'We as scientists want to understand both the form and function of these fascinating and mysterious birds as they interact with their fluid environment.'
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Hong Kong's Bun festival and Seoul martial arts: photos of the day
People clad in traditional military attire take part in a Joseon-era martial arts performance Photograph: Yonhap/EPA A man fires a rifle loaded with blanks during a parade honouring the battle of Puebla, which commemorates the clash between Mexican and French troops in 1862 Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images Police officers take part in Cops Combat, a nationwide martial arts competition to help improve self-defence skills Photograph: Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters A boy performs a lion dance at the Piu Sik parade during celebrations of the Bun festival at Cheung Chau Island Photograph: Bertha Wang/EPA King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden stops to pick up an Icelandic flag to hand it to Iceland's president, Halla Tómasdóttir, at the inner courtyard of the royal palace Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Demi Moore arrives on the red carpet at the 2025 Met Gala celebrating the opening of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Flamingos walk through Lake Mogan as they stop at the wetlands during their migration Photograph: Hamit Yalcin/Anadolu/Getty Images East Timorese cardinal Virgílio do Carmo da Silva gestures to members of the press as he arrives for a congregation meeting Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/AFP/Getty Images A large plume of smoke rises after explosions at a fuel depot Photograph: Khalid Abdelaziz/Reuters A person takes a picture of a projection of names of victims of the bombing of Rotterdam. The installation runs until 14 May, the date that marks 85 years since the Germans bombed the city Photograph: Robin van Lonkhuijsen/EPA Workers carry official sealed ballots for storage at city hall in Quezon City, as about 68 million Filipinos are expected to cast their votes for upcoming elections with 18,000 government positions to fill Photograph: Rolex dela Peña/EPA Voting cards for the election of German chancellor at the Bundestag Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/EPA Palestinian baby Yusuf al-Najjar receives treatment for severe malnutrition at al-Nasser hospital Photograph: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu/Getty Images Emergency services tackle a blaze at the site of a Russian drone strike on the Barabashovo market Photograph: Sergey Kozlov/EPA
