A flamingo, running a bit hotter than the average human at 41 ☌ (106 ☏), will lose heat a little more quickly, as the temperature difference between a flamingo’s body and the surrounding air is greater than that of a human’s body with respect to the same air. If you, a human being with a resting body temperature of about 37 ☌ (98.6 ☏), were to stand naked while exposed to the outside air, you would lose your body heat to the surrounding environment at a particular rate. With heat transfer rates that are 25 times as great between the human body and water compared to the human body and air, the conventional wisdom to “get out of the pool in order to warm up” is borne out by both experience and the laws of physics. Under such conditions, small warm-blooded creatures will lose a large amount of their body heat to the watery environment. This image shows a familiar sight to most parents: a set of shivering, cold children who have spent too much consecutive time immersed in water that’s well below their body temperature. A dearth of the pigment in a flamingo’s diet results in paler, whiter flamingos. Flamingos have their characteristic pink-to-red color not because of any inherent pigments they produce, but rather because the crustaceans and algae that they eat - mainstays of a flamingo’s diet - are rich in carotenoid pigments.When food in the shallows becomes scarce, the flamingos that can feed, by muddying-the-water and then digging-with-their beaks, will be the ones that survive. Flamingos have both long legs and long necks in tandem, as biological evolution would favor those specimens that can reliably feed in both shallow and deep water without getting their bodies wet.Many of the traits that we think of as being inherent to the flamingo - both biologically and behaviorally - can be explained by some relatively simple science. In order to move a foot to manipulate or stir up a potential food source, so that the flamingo can attempt to bite it at a critical moment, the flamingo must keep its other foot on the ground underneath the water. And your long, flexible neck and bizarre bill, where the the lower portion is longer and thicker than the upper portion, is extremely well-adapted to feeding on the stirred-up algae, crustaceans, larvae, small fish, and other similarly-sized creatures.įlamingos, shown probing the water for food with their oddly shaped and uniquely adapted bills, will never stand on one leg while they feed. Your webbed feet enable you to stir up seafloor creatures, one foot at a time, by muddying the waters. Your long, skinny legs are excellent for enabling you to stand in water as deep as your legs are long while still keeping your body dry and warm. You travel as part of a flock for protection. While standing on one leg provides flamingos with heat-retention advantages over a flamingo standing on two legs in the water, there is no known advantage to engaging in this behavior on dry land, save for the fact that without feathers, keeping that leg tucked in may keep it warmer. A small flock of flamingos, as shown here on dry land, will often practice simply standing on one leg, rather than two.