Flamingos create water tornadoes to trap and suck up their prey: study

During the pandemic, Saad Bhamla watched the flamingos astatine the zoo execute unusual caput movements arsenic they ate, and recovered himself wondering: "What the heck is going on?"  

The birds would submerge their heads successful the water, with their beaks by their feet, portion stomping their webbed feet, walking sideways and moving their mandibles, splashing h2o everywhere. 

Bhamla and his colleagues decided to survey the movements. It turns out, helium says, the flamingos use their necks and beaks to make a vortex successful the h2o to trap and slurp up their prey — an evolutionary signifier seemingly chiseled to them. 

"We couldn't judge our eyes," Bhamla, an subordinate prof of bimolecular engineering astatine the Georgia Institute of Technology successful Atlanta, told As It Happens big Nil Köksal. 

"When they rise their heads underwater, they make a tornado, which traps these tiny shrimps and tiny invertebrates surviving successful the h2o that they privation to provender on, and makes their occupation easier to sift them done the mud and muddy things that they provender in."

The findings published successful the diary Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences amusement that these agleam pink, spindly-legged birds basal retired not conscionable for their whimsical aesthetic; but besides for quirky foraging habits and unsocial evolution.

How do flamingos eat?

As portion of their research, the squad observed 3D-printed models of the flamingos' feet and beaks, and studied the skull of a deceased flamingo.

But the existent 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 beryllium fed successful controlled conditions, the probe squad could observe these flamingos arsenic they ate with their heads upside down and submerged successful the tank.

Footage from a high-speed camera and different devices captured the velocity of these motions. 

WATCH | Compiled simulations of flamingos' foraging behaviours:

The squad confirmed that their head's anatomy — peculiarly their L-shaped beaks — assistance successful creating this whirlpool effect arsenic the birds rapidly propulsion their heads retired of the water. 

"They're moving their heads successful tens of milliseconds," Bhamla said. "And they're doing this constantly, implicit and implicit again."

The squad besides observed 2 different feeding techniques: chattering and stomping. 

Chattering is erstwhile the birds clap their precocious mandibles, oregon jaw bones, underwater. Mattie and Marty besides chattered their beaks erstwhile they stood still, oregon arsenic they stomped their feet to disturbance up the sediment below.

Stomping with their asymmetric webbed toes helps flamingos make complementary vortexes to drawback tiny prey and past easy swallow them with their beaks positioned adjacent their feet.

The Bhamla Lab website lists a elaborate breakdown of each of these techniques, including video clips and a comic publication illustration.

'They're not doing a comic dance' 

Jerry Lorenz, erstwhile probe manager of the vertebrate conservation enactment Audubon Florida who was not progressive with this project, said the squad "did an fantabulous occupation looking astatine the assorted travel patterns and movements" of some measure and tongue.

"We've known that flamingos had a precise absorbing mode of foraging and that their rima parts were conscionable benignant of a bizarre thing," helium said. "But the mode they enactment it unneurotic to marque consciousness of the improvement that created this … was conscionable truly astounding. I was really delighted by the full thing." 

From a conservation perspective, Lorenz says these findings are important to knowing however flamingos interact with their situation to cognize however to champion sphere it.

"Evolution doesn't bash accidents. If they're doing a behaviour and you don't recognize why, determination is an evolutionary crushed for them to beryllium doing that," helium said.

"They're not doing a comic dance. This is however they get their food."