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Feeding Flamingos Create Underwater Tornado-Like Vortices to Capture Their Prey, Study Finds
Feeding Flamingos Create Underwater Tornado-Like Vortices to Capture Their Prey, Study Finds
Rather than passively filter-feeding, the birds use their heads, beaks and feet to generate motion in the water that funnels invertebrates into their mouths
A new study reveals how Chilean flamingos are so adept at finding food.
Victor Ortega Jiménez / UC Berkeley
Flamingos have a natural ability to filter out food, like shrimp and worms, from the surrounding water, even in the most food-poor environments.
Now, a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals how the birds use the power of physics to nab their elusive prey.
Victor Ortega Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study, first became interested in flamingos’ eating behavior after a visit to Zoo Atlanta in 2019.
The pink birds stomped their feet and submerged their beaks, but from the surface, he saw only ripples.
The researcher wanted to know what was happening underwater.
“We don’t know anything about what is happening inside,” he says in a statement.
“That was my question.”
Flamingo model tornado vortex
Watch on
So, Ortega Jiménez and his team took a closer look with the help of three Chilean flamingos at the Nashville Zoo.
They trained the animals to feed from a water-filled tray over several weeks and used high-speed cameras and lasers to monitor the process.
Then, the researchers created 3D printed models of the birds’ heads, feet and bills to more closely study how they make the water and particles move.
The final step of the work involved attaching a real flamingo beak to a machine that snaps it open and shut, with a small pump to simulate the bird’s tongue.
The researchers found that the flamingos use the motion of water to their advantage, combining techniques to funnel water—and the invertebrates within it—to their mouths.
They’ll stomp their feet in dance-like motions to bring food up to the surface.
Then, they’ll quickly bob their heads up and down to create tornado-like underwater vortices that help catch their prey more efficiently.
The birds also snap or “chatter” their beaks and move their tongues in and out—and that chattering allows flamingos to capture seven times more brine shrimp.
“We are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,” says Ortega Jiménez to Rachel Nuwer at the New York Times.
“Just as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.”
Tornado flamingo chattering
Watch on
The team calculated just how quickly the flamingos chattered their beaks and bobbed their heads.
To create a tornado-like vortex, a bird would retract its head in a short burst of speed at nearly 16 inches per second.
The chattering motion involved the lower beak snapping about 12 times per second.
The study is “an outstanding demonstration of how biological form and motion can control the surrounding fluid to serve a functional role,” adds Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, to the New York Times.
Flamingo brine filtering foot
Watch on
Flamingos’ feeding prowess can even benefit other birds: A 2018 study found that Wilson’s phalaropes can double their food intake by following behind a stomping flamingo.
Next, Ortega Jiménez wants to study what goes on inside flamingos’ beaks during feeding, in hopes that it can inspire new technologies that harness the strength of vortices to capture toxic algae or microplastics from water.
“These behaviors that look kind of silly are generating these really useful water flows,” Elizabeth Brainerd, a functional morphologist at Brown University who was not involved with the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science when the work was presented at a conference in 2023.
“That’s unexpected … and quite elegant.”
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Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/feeding-flamingos-create-underwater-tornado-like-vortices-to-capture-their-prey-study-finds-180986614/" style="color: #0066cc;">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/feeding-flamingos-create-underwater-tornado-like-vortices-to-capture-their-prey-study-finds-180986614/
#feeding #flamingos #create #underwater #tornadolike #vortices #capture #their #prey #study #finds
Feeding Flamingos Create Underwater Tornado-Like Vortices to Capture Their Prey, Study Finds
Feeding Flamingos Create Underwater Tornado-Like Vortices to Capture Their Prey, Study Finds
Rather than passively filter-feeding, the birds use their heads, beaks and feet to generate motion in the water that funnels invertebrates into their mouths
A new study reveals how Chilean flamingos are so adept at finding food.
Victor Ortega Jiménez / UC Berkeley
Flamingos have a natural ability to filter out food, like shrimp and worms, from the surrounding water, even in the most food-poor environments.
Now, a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals how the birds use the power of physics to nab their elusive prey.
Victor Ortega Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study, first became interested in flamingos’ eating behavior after a visit to Zoo Atlanta in 2019.
The pink birds stomped their feet and submerged their beaks, but from the surface, he saw only ripples.
The researcher wanted to know what was happening underwater.
“We don’t know anything about what is happening inside,” he says in a statement.
“That was my question.”
Flamingo model tornado vortex
Watch on
So, Ortega Jiménez and his team took a closer look with the help of three Chilean flamingos at the Nashville Zoo.
They trained the animals to feed from a water-filled tray over several weeks and used high-speed cameras and lasers to monitor the process.
Then, the researchers created 3D printed models of the birds’ heads, feet and bills to more closely study how they make the water and particles move.
The final step of the work involved attaching a real flamingo beak to a machine that snaps it open and shut, with a small pump to simulate the bird’s tongue.
The researchers found that the flamingos use the motion of water to their advantage, combining techniques to funnel water—and the invertebrates within it—to their mouths.
They’ll stomp their feet in dance-like motions to bring food up to the surface.
Then, they’ll quickly bob their heads up and down to create tornado-like underwater vortices that help catch their prey more efficiently.
The birds also snap or “chatter” their beaks and move their tongues in and out—and that chattering allows flamingos to capture seven times more brine shrimp.
“We are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,” says Ortega Jiménez to Rachel Nuwer at the New York Times.
“Just as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.”
Tornado flamingo chattering
Watch on
The team calculated just how quickly the flamingos chattered their beaks and bobbed their heads.
To create a tornado-like vortex, a bird would retract its head in a short burst of speed at nearly 16 inches per second.
The chattering motion involved the lower beak snapping about 12 times per second.
The study is “an outstanding demonstration of how biological form and motion can control the surrounding fluid to serve a functional role,” adds Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, to the New York Times.
Flamingo brine filtering foot
Watch on
Flamingos’ feeding prowess can even benefit other birds: A 2018 study found that Wilson’s phalaropes can double their food intake by following behind a stomping flamingo.
Next, Ortega Jiménez wants to study what goes on inside flamingos’ beaks during feeding, in hopes that it can inspire new technologies that harness the strength of vortices to capture toxic algae or microplastics from water.
“These behaviors that look kind of silly are generating these really useful water flows,” Elizabeth Brainerd, a functional morphologist at Brown University who was not involved with the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science when the work was presented at a conference in 2023.
“That’s unexpected … and quite elegant.”
Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/feeding-flamingos-create-underwater-tornado-like-vortices-to-capture-their-prey-study-finds-180986614/
#feeding #flamingos #create #underwater #tornadolike #vortices #capture #their #prey #study #finds
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