Flamingos: The Water-Bending Physics Masters

Summary

Short Wave Podcast Summary Episode: Flamingos: The Water-Bending Physics Masters Release Date: May 23, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of NPR's Short Wave, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber delve into the intriguing world of flamingos, uncovering the sophisticated physics behind their unique feeding behaviors. This exploration reveals how these vibrant birds harness fluid dynamics to thrive in challenging environments.

The Intriguing Feeding Habits of Flamingos

Regina Barber introduces the topic with a vivid description of flamingos feeding, highlighting their distinctive behaviors. The hosts observe flamingos using their curved beaks and large tongues to feed by dipping their heads upside down into the water, a sight that piqued the interest of biophysicist Victor Ortega Jimenez.

Notable Quote:

"[Regina Barber, 00:34] 'Do you like flamingos?'"

Research Initiated by Victor Ortega Jimenez

Victor Ortega Jimenez, a specialist in biomechanics, was captivated by the flamingos' "chattering" feeding behavior—rapidly opening and closing their beaks at astonishing speeds. Noting the rarity of such behavior in the animal kingdom, Victor sought to understand the underlying mechanics.

Notable Quote:

"[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 01:34] 'How the mystery of these magnificent birds, what are they doing inside of the fluid?'"

Unveiling the Physics: Water Vortexes

Through meticulous research, including live observations and 3D modeling of flamingo beaks and feet, Victor and his team made a groundbreaking discovery. They found that flamingos create water vortexes—whirlpool-like formations—that aid in capturing their prey, primarily tiny organisms like algae and brine shrimp.

Notable Quotes:

"[Regina Barber, 02:33] 'Basically like they're swirling the water to hunt.'"

"[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 02:48] 'We observed that they were producing some tornado-like vortices...'"

Dissecting Flamingo Behaviors

Victor's research broke down the flamingos' feeding process into four main behaviors:

1. Chattering Beaks: The rapid opening and closing of their beaks, initially thought to be driven solely by the tongue, was revealed to be a primary mechanism for generating directional water flow. The unique, asymmetric shape of the flamingo beak allows one mandible to remain stationary while the other moves, creating effective vortexes without relying on the tongue.

   Notable Quote:

   "[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 07:27] 'The surprise is that we observe that directional flow without the tongue.'"

2. Head Dipping: Flamingos dip their heads in and out of the water, leveraging the beak's shape to further enhance vortex formation. Experiments with trained flamingos in aquarium settings confirmed that each dip creates small water tornadoes that funnel food towards their mouths.

   Notable Quote:

   "[Regina Barber, 08:18] 'They're creating vortexes with each dip of their beak.'"

3. Foot Stomping: The rhythmic stomping of flamingo feet in the water agitates the sediments, producing additional vortexes. Victor's team replicated this behavior with mechanical flamingo feet, demonstrating that the motion consistently generates water vortexes, aiding in food collection.

   Notable Quote:

   "[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 09:28] 'What they are doing is producing a vortex.'"

4. Skimming Behavior: Flamingos sometimes skim the water's surface, a movement that also contributes to the creation of vortexes, ensuring a steady supply of food particles.

Evolutionary Insights and Unique Adaptations

The conversation touches on the evolutionary aspects of these behaviors. Unlike other filter feeders such as whales, flamingos exhibit a more active approach to feeding by combining multiple behaviors to manipulate their aquatic environment effectively.

Notable Quote:

"[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 10:50] 'But there is no other mechanism like flamingos because they are inside of the water.'"

Bio-Inspired Applications: Filtering Microplastics

One of the most exciting discussions centers on the potential applications of flamingo-inspired filtration systems. Victor Ortega Jimenez suggests that the efficiency with which flamingos extract microscopic particles from water could inform the design of advanced bio-inspired filters to remove microplastics from our oceans.

Notable Quotes:

"[Victor Ortega Jimenez, 12:06] 'Because we know that flamingos can extract particles the size of a cell. So we can think in that possibility to make a bio-inspired engineering filter system based on flamingos that can extract effectively those microplastics.'"

"[Regina Barber, 12:28] 'The filter system that, like, flamingos use every day to, like, eat could help humans develop filters that like, could clean our ocean.'"

Conclusion

The episode wraps up by emphasizing the significance of basic scientific research and how observing and understanding nature's intricacies can lead to innovative solutions for human challenges. Regina Barber and Emily Kwong thank their guest and highlight the collaborative efforts behind the production of the episode.

Notable Quote:

"[Emily Kwong, 12:58] 'The power of basic research or the power of flamingos? Really?'"

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This episode of Short Wave masterfully intertwines biology and physics to shed light on the sophisticated feeding strategies of flamingos, showcasing the profound insights that can emerge from interdisciplinary research.

Transcript

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[Emily Kwong]

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers. Emily Kwong here with my co host and our resident physicist, Regina Barber. Hey, Gina.

[Regina Barber]

Hey, Emily. I have a really important physics question for you. Okay.

[Emily Kwong]

What? Okay.

[Regina Barber]

Do you like flamingos?

[Emily Kwong]

I love all birds, but flamingos are among the weirdest and the coolest, I think. So what does that have to do with physics?

[Regina Barber]

I'm gonna show you a video of one feeding now. Okay, go ahead and pull it up.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, this is cute. Okay, so, yes, we have this. The classic pink leggy flamingo. But he's eating by dipping his head in the water.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. He's got this curved beak at the end of his long neck and this large tongue.

[Emily Kwong]

And I guess I didn't know they did this. He's stomping his fe in the water too. Like pep, pep, pep, pep, pep.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, yeah. And you'll notice his head is like upside down. Like his eyes are going in first into the water.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah.

[Regina Barber]

And this pretty unusual feeding behavior, like, caught the eye of Victor Ortega Jimenez. And he studies biomechanics.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, so he studies how living things move.

[Regina Barber]

Yes, correct. So back in 2019, during a trip to the Atlanta Zoo, Victor saw the flamingos feeding, like opening and closing their beats, like really, really, really quickly. And this is called chattering. And in the animal kingdom, this is like really bizarre. Like, animals don't really do all this. So as a scientist, Victor was like, why?

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Like, how the mystery of these magnificent birds, what are they doing inside of the fluid? And because I'm a biologist, the interesting part of knowing what is the interaction between the animal with the environment, in this case, the fluid to me was very attractive.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay, this is a fluid dynamic story, isn't it? That's the physics part.

[Regina Barber]

Yes. And this question of, like, what's happening to the water with all this flamingo movement started years of research. It involved watching live flamingos, 3D, printing flamingo beaks and feet.

[Emily Kwong]

Nice.

[Regina Barber]

And em. Victor and his team just recently published all their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And what they found surprised them. So much of this feeding behavior, the stomping, the beak chattering, the upside down head sometimes, like skimming the water and sometimes dipping in and out, it was all all in pursuit of one thing.

[Emily Kwong]

What's that?

[Regina Barber]

Water vortexes.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, like whirlpools.

[Regina Barber]

Basically like they're swirling the water to hunt.

[Emily Kwong]

Flamingos are predators.

[Regina Barber]

Yes. It blew my mind too. They're making water tornadoes to get shrimp and other food into their beak.

[Emily Kwong]

That's cool.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

We observed that they were producing some tornado like vortices and we know tornadoes can be destructive, but they are very effective to lift particles from the ground or from the bottom of, in this case, of sediments.

[Emily Kwong]

Today on the show Nature's Water Benders.

[Regina Barber]

We get into how flamingos control the water around them with their unique fashionable looks and dances and why all of this adds up to more success in harsher environments.

[Emily Kwong]

You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from N.

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[Emily Kwong]

I understand flamingos, okay? They eat in this really odd way and they're feeding in really salty, muddy waters where there isn't really any fish. Like, what's up with their eating behavior?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, so flamingos roam in these, like huge flocks, around like 70 birds on average, but they can get up to like over 300. And they need lots and lots of food. And they're filter feeders, meaning they eat by filtering water through a mesh in their mouth.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, so they're like whales.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought too. But also, like some ducks and swans do this. And the prey of choice for flamingos are algae, tiny brine shrimp, fly larvae, like other tiny things that, like, fish also eat. So flamingos go to these places that have little or no fish so that there's more food available, like less competition.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, so that's why they flock to these harsher waters.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. Be that salty, muddy waters or really, really hot waters. Here's Victor Ortega Jimenez again.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

And actually, some of the flamingos also can live in springs. The temperatures are at the point of boiling water.

[Regina Barber]

What?

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

And, yeah, so flamingos are just these extreme animals that lives in these environments.

[Emily Kwong]

Flamingos are eating out of the hot tub in nature.

[Regina Barber]

Like, this whole story. Like, I was. I was getting so much new information. But let's go back. Let's go back to that day at the Atlanta Zoo where Victor saw, like, feeding flamingos making tornadoes in the water. Like this prompted him to run home and start looking through scientific papers. And he realized there wasn't a lot out there. Like, there's very little research on flamingos eating behaviors. It was mostly, like, descriptions of what they look like. And the research seemed to be really focused on flamingos tongues. These researchers writing these papers thought that the main driver of getting the food into the beak was the tongue. Like, Like a piston bringing water in and out. But Victor had a hunch that the tongue. Like, it wasn't the whole story. There had to be more. Like, it can't all be the tongue. Like, why are the flamingos dipping their head upside down? Like, feeding upside down, like, in the water?

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah. And, like, why are they stomping their feet?

[Regina Barber]

Right, right. Why do they march? And, like, why do they chatter their beaks and, like, opening and closing it 12 times a second?

[Emily Kwong]

Wow, that's a lot.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, it's very, very fast. And all of these things are all happening at once. And Victor and his team had to break the whole process down. Like, so they looked at four different behaviors individually.

[Emily Kwong]

All right, walk us through. Which behaviors did he focus on?

[Regina Barber]

Okay, so let's first talk about chattering, which in this study is just like, flamingos rapidly opening and closing their beaks. To really drill down on this more, Victor and his team went to the Nashville Zoo to get footage of flamingos eating so that they could bring that footage back to their lab and compare that natural eating footage to experimen. They ran with, like, two sets of beaks, and one set of beaks were 3D printed, and the other set was from deceased flamingos donated after death by the Atlanta Zoo.

[Emily Kwong]

What were they trying to figure out?

[Regina Barber]

They're trying to figure out, like, what is this chattering doing?

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Our question was, what is producing that directional flow? Is the tongue or is just the chattering? And what the surprise is that we observe that directional flow without the tongue.

[Emily Kwong]

So it's not making the water spin?

[Regina Barber]

No, the tongue isn't really making that water spin. It's really the beak itself chattering. And it's also dependent on this, like, unique shape of the beak.

[Emily Kwong]

Oh, yeah. Because I guess flamingo beaks are curved, right?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. More specifically, like, they're asymmetric. They're kind of like L shaped. And like, the top of the beak is flat and it's thinner than the bottom mandible. And Victor says this asymmetry is important.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Because one of the mandibles keeps stationary and the other is moving. So that asymmetry is causing this directional flow. And that's something that flamingos do in comparison with other filter feeders. Like whales.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. So flamingos are different filter feeders than whales. They're doing a lot more.

[Emily Kwong]

Got that. Okay. What other behaviors did they study?

[Regina Barber]

The second behavior that they looked at was the fact that flamingos stick their head, like, straight in and out of the water. It's like dipping. And because of the shape of the beak, this also creates vortexes. To study this part of eating, they trained these Chilean flamingos at the Nashville Zoo to feed in this aquarium tank. And they recorded these little water tornadoes, like, with each dip of their beak. And this helped the food drift up into their beaks.

[Emily Kwong]

That sounds delicious. Okay, so flamingos, quick summary. It's the chattering of the beaks in combination with the shape of the beak.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. Like, it's all of those things working together to, like, co create these vortexes.

[Emily Kwong]

What about the foot stomping?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. So, like, Victor and his team studied that as well. They created this, like, mechanical flamingo foot that was like, flat when you stepped into the water.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

We know that flamingos, when they are stomping, the foot to the sediments is opening.

[Regina Barber]

And then when it came up, it kind of retracted like an umbrella.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

And then when it's getting up, it's collapsing. What they are doing is producing a vortex.

[Regina Barber]

And that's how flamingo feet actually work in the wild. And in the lab, they saw that. Yes, this motion also created vortexes.

[Emily Kwong]

They could stomp for food.

[Regina Barber]

Yep.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Well, they are stomping frequently or marching.

[Emily Kwong]

Like a dancing on all of this. I can kind of see all these elements working together. Now that flamingos aren't just passive eaters. They are guiding this food into their mouth.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. Remember we said that they're predators. Right. And that's the main idea Victor wanted to get across where, you know, they've combined all these different adaptations and behaviors into this, like, feasting, dance, water benders among us. Right. I mean, even that skimming behavior I mentioned earlier that movement helps create vortexes that bring particles of, like, food into their beaks. That way, too.

[Emily Kwong]

Is all of this, this dance unique to flamingos? Are there other birds combining multiple behaviors to create a whole symphony of vortexes?

[Regina Barber]

There is a kind of like sandpiper, like a small shorebird, and they do create vortexes.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

These birds are famous because they swim in circles. They are producing some vortices, they are lifting some of the particles, and they are feeding at the interface.

[Regina Barber]

But Victor says it isn't the same as flamingos.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

But there is no other mechanism like flamingos because they are inside of the water.

[Emily Kwong]

Well, let me ask you this, Gina. If flamingo feeding is so unique among birds, do scientists know anything about how flamingos evolved this way?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I mean, they know a little. They want to know more. Definitely. And how they can find out more is by looking at babies.

[Emily Kwong]

Baby flamingos?

[Regina Barber]

Yes. Baby flamingos, they do not have curved beaks.

[Emily Kwong]

They have straight beaks.

[Regina Barber]

Yes.

[Emily Kwong]

How do they eat?

[Regina Barber]

Well, the parents create this milk and they do feed them. But before the beaks start to curve, the juvenile flamingos do start to feed on their own. So, like, studying how flamingos feed when they transition from straight to curved beaks could tell scientists a lot about, like, the ancestors of flamingos. Also, Victor said that there's like a lot of filter feeder birds, and maybe scientists are missing something. Like, maybe other birds right now are taking advantage of vortexes, but we just haven't looked at it enough.

[Emily Kwong]

Right. Like, maybe it's not unique among flamingos, but we'd have to do more research to, to find out. Well, Gina, how could this work, help people? Not to be all about us, but I am curious.

[Regina Barber]

I mean, I think it's a reasonable question, and that's one I asked Victor, and his answer was, like, really surprising.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Because we know that flamingos can extract particles the size of a cell. So we can think in that possibility to make a bio inspired engineering filter system based on flamingos that can extract effectively those microplastics.

[Regina Barber]

The filter system that, like, flamingos use every day to, like, eat could help humans develop filters that like, could clean our oce.

[Victor Ortega Jimenez]

Oh, we can solve. I mean, flamingos can solve and we can take advantage of that.

[Emily Kwong]

A filter system that takes out microplastics inspired by flamingos. That's very cool. Yeah, yeah.

[Regina Barber]

I mean, the flamingos, like, feed in these muddy waters and, and they, it doesn't really clog their system. So this might be an ideal system to like, really understand and mimic. So yeah. So flamingos can help us make these, like, better, more active biofilters.

[Emily Kwong]

The power of basic research or the power of flamingos? Really?

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Yeah.

[Emily Kwong]

Gina, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting on these birds and how they eat.

[Regina Barber]

My pleasure, Em. This episode was Produced by Burleigh McCoy, edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and fact checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Jimmy Keeley.

[Emily Kwong]

Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior Vice president of Podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong.

[Regina Barber]

And I'm Regina Barber.

[Emily Kwong]

And thank you for listening to Short Wave from npr.

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