The Flamingo’s Storm

They may look serene and graceful as they move through shallow lakes, but flamingos are anything but passive when it comes to mealtime.  

Scientists recently found that these pink-legged performers are highly active predators, crafting miniature underwater tornadoes to snare tiny prey – and do so with remarkable precision and flair. 

The new study overturns the long-held notion that flamingos simply strain food from the water like baleen whales do. 

Instead, they choreograph a full-body feeding performance, “chattering” or clapping their beaks rapidly, plunging their heads into the water, and conducting a rhythmic foot dance that stirs up sediment and snacks. 

“They are actually taking animals that are moving,” explained lead author Victor Ortega-Jiménez in a statement. “Think of spiders, which produce webs to trap insects. Flamingos are using vortices to trap animals, like brine shrimp.” 

Working with three flamingos at the Nashville Zoo, Ortega-Jiménez and his team used high-speed cameras, laser visualization, and 3D-printed models of beaks and feet to understand how the creatures engineer their meals.  

They noticed that each upward flick of the head creates vertical whirlpools that lift particles and agile invertebrates off the lakebed. At the same time, the flamingos’ L-shaped beaks chatter at up to 12 times per second, generating eddies that funnel prey straight into their mouths. 

“The chattering actually is increasing seven times the number of brine shrimp passing through the tube,” Ortega-Jiménez noted. “It’s this trick of fluid dynamics.” 

The researchers added that the bird’s webbed feet also play a critical role: They are flexible enough to avoid suction when lifting off mud, but effective in pushing swirling currents forward. These feet act like biological plows, stirring prey into the flamingo’s filter zone. 

The findings not only upend the notion that these flamboyant avians are passive, but could also help scientists in developing new filtration tech for pollutants, such as toxic algae or microplastics. 

The authors are now planning to study what is going on inside the flamingos’ beaks during feeding. 

“What’s at the heart of filter feeding in flamingos?” Ortega-Jiménez wondered in an interview with the New York Times. “We as scientists want to understand both the form and function of these fascinating and mysterious birds as they interact with their fluid environment.”

Correction: In Wednesday’s NEED TO KNOW section, we said in our Burundi piece that the country’s capital is Gitega but incorrectly displayed Bujumbura as the capital on our map. We have corrected the map to reflect Gitega as the capital. We apologize for the error.