Surprising Facts about Flamingos Many People Don’t Know
FLAMINGOS – There is actually a lot of surprising and fun facts about this pink-feathered bird that many people do not know.
There are countless species of birds in the world. Undeniably, there are those that are more popular as sort of tourist attractions in certain countries. One of these species is the Flamingo which is distributed throughout the Americas and Afro-Asia.
Undeniably, Flamingos are most popular as birds with pink feathers. They are wading birds belonging to the family Phoenicopteridae which was introduced by French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte way back in 1831. The species of this type of bird includes the Greater Flamingo which is native to Africa, Southern Europe, and Southwest Asia.
There is also the Lesser Flamingo that is native to Africa and Northwest India and the Chilean Flamingo in South America. There are also the James’s Flamingos that are native in Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The last but not the least is the American Flamingo that can be found in the Carribean islands, southern Florida, coastal Colombia, Galapagos Islands, Venezuela, and northern Brazil.
Here’s a list of what you should know about Flamingos — they are more than just their pink feathers:
- “Flamingo” came from the Spanish-Latin word “Flamenco” which means fire.
- Flamingos are either born gray or white — never pink.
- The reason why flamingos have pink, orange, and red feathers is because of the carotene, the same pigment that colors the tomatoes, in their foods. They usually eat shrimp, crustaceans, plankton, and algae.
- Among the many types of flamingo birds, the Greater Flamingo is the biggest and it can stand up to five (5) feet tall.
- The knee of flamingos are actually close to their bodies and their back-bending knee are actually their ankles.
- Chicks are feed by the adult flamingo birds with crop milk in the first 5 to 12 days.
- A flock of flamingo birds is called “flamboyance”.
- They can live between 20 to 30 years in the wild.