Flamingos are sometimes seen as peaceable waders, standing gracefully in shallow lakes with their heads dipped underwater. However beneath that calm floor, they’re executing a surprisingly refined and energetic searching approach.
Scientists learning Chilean flamingos on the Nashville Zoo have now documented how these birds use their floppy, webbed toes, L-shaped beaks, and plunging heads to engineer swirling tornadoes within the water. These tiny whirlpools pull prey like brine shrimp and copepods into attain.
The flamingo begins by stirring the sediment with its toes, which generate round currents that deliver meals nearer to the floor. On the identical time, the hen plunges its head downward and rapidly jerks it up, reinforcing the vortex and serving to focus the prey right into a tighter cluster. This searching approach permits the flamingo to catch its prey rather more successfully.
The creature’s distinctive beak performs a serious position right here. Whereas underwater and the other way up, the hen retains its higher beak nonetheless and quickly strikes the decrease half, chattering at a price of about 12 instances per second. This movement generates much more vortices, guiding meals into the mouth.
It’s a course of that turns feeding into an energetic, virtually mechanical system to seize prey. Researchers carried out assessments with 3D printed beak fashions confirmed this movement considerably will increase the variety of brine shrimp caught. Researchers additionally discovered that the form and suppleness of the flamingo’s toes are key to this searching technique.
Floppy toes scale back suction towards the muddy backside and are higher at producing forward-moving currents. Simulations and lab experiments demonstrated that inflexible toes created largely turbulence, whereas the pure foot design of flamingos pushed sediment and prey-laden water proper towards their beaks.
This superior searching approach makes the flamingo not solely a marvel of evolution however a supply of inspiration for robotic design and environmental cleanup methods. Engineers are already contemplating how these ideas might assist in eradicating microplastics from water or designing machines that may stroll effectively in mud.
