How do flamingos balance on one foot?

June 5, 2017 6:18 AM

Two biologists in Georgia have discovered that the skeletal structure in a flamingo naturally "snaps" into place when balancing on one leg, making it more energy-efficient for them to balance that way than standing on both feet. Bonus educational nugget: flamingos' knees don't bend backward. Those are their ankles.
posted by Etrigan (19 comments total)

Other birds do this, too! My budgies perch on one foot when they're getting tired.
posted by Delia at 6:28 AM on June 5, 2017

I've seen lots of other shorebirds do this too, tucking their other leg into their feathers as the hop around. Must be common with birds exposed to cold water and winds.

Now I have to resist the urge to wield a seagull like an umbrella.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:36 AM on June 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

“We really wanted to do an experiment where we just walked over and gave them a little prod,” says Chang. “But the zoo wouldn’t let us.”

Ha!
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:45 AM on June 5, 2017 [14 favorites]

Nature is (and continues to be) amazing.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 6:49 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you don't read all the way to the end of this one, you're missing a gem of a factoid.
posted by zebra at 7:07 AM on June 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

The dead flamingo umbrella is a great image.
posted by tavella at 8:12 AM on June 5, 2017

Etrigan: "Bonus educational nugget: flamingos' knees don't bend backward. Those are their ankles."

Illustrated in a potentially confusing way in this article, with an arrow pointing at both the real ankle (foreground) and what one might think of the typical ankle location (background).
posted by chavenet at 8:28 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

On our block, all of the guys call her flamingo....
posted by jonmc at 8:28 AM on June 5, 2017

I am pretty sure that projectile pooping is the only kind of pooping birds do.
posted by Bee'sWing at 8:30 AM on June 5, 2017

Dinosaurs are cool.
posted by Artw at 8:43 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

passive leg-locking mechanism is going to be the next big limb enhancement
posted by numaner at 8:56 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

"... making it more energy-efficient for them to balance that way than standing on both feet."

Rumor has it Boston Robotics is already in re-design.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:10 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

I remember learning about the "stay apparatus" horses have like this that allow them to sleep standing up and my mind was blown. Nature is so cool sometimes. Also sometimes I feel like our big brains and opposable thumbs aren't really all they're cracked up to be, given the sweet features other organisms get...
posted by olinerd at 9:13 AM on June 5, 2017

Illustrated in a potentially confusing way in this article, with an arrow pointing at both the real ankle (foreground) and what one might think of the typical ankle location (background).

Yeah, scientific illustration fail. Here's a helpful illustration comparing flamingo leg anatomy with that of a human.
posted by Kabanos at 9:15 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh hey – Here are the researchers themselves (Ting and Chang) writing about it all in layman's terms. (theconversation.com)

The article includes some more photos of juvenile flamingos, and some video of a bird on a balance plate. Also, if you don't like the idea of a flamingo umbrella, they present another delicious idea:

… We made an unanticipated discovery from a flamingo cadaver. If you hold it up by one leg like a lollipop at just the right angle, it passively adopts a body configuration that looks like a flamingo standing on one leg. When we tilted the body forward and backward by up to 45 degrees, the body configuration was stable, with the knee keeping a right angle.

The accompanying illustration is my favorite thing of the day.
posted by Kabanos at 9:29 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

Oh god I forgot to make the obvious accompanying flamingo tipping joke. Perhaps it was implied by the quote.

This was really fun to read about!
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:21 AM on June 5, 2017

Kabanos: "Here's a helpful illustration comparing flamingo leg anatomy with that of a human."

NSFW! people, NSFW!
posted by chavenet at 1:36 PM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

So they almost do make good croquet mallets!
posted by Cheerwell Maker at 2:10 PM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bodybuilder Kicking A Bunch Of Plastic Flamingos (via mltshp)

It's relevant because flamingos.
posted by Kabanos at 11:13 AM on June 12, 2017