![]() ![]() ![]() Horses use a similar mechanism that allows them to stay standing with very little effort even when they are asleep.įlamingos are not the only birds to stand on leg. With the other leg tucked up, the bird’s bodyweight pushes down on the joint keeping it in position and allowing the bird to stand upright without toppling over. ![]() The joints do not lock into position but use a sling-like structure to support the body without activating any muscles. They showed that the flamingos have what they called “passively engaged gravitational stay apparatus”, specialised anatomy that helps them stay in a stable position on their stick-thin legs. Even when applying force to the dead bodies, the flamingos barely moved which prompted the scientists to look at the joints in the legs that hold flamingos upright. They monitored a group of Chilean flamingos at Zoo Atlanta, one of the largest breeding flocks in the United States and found that the birds were more stable and swayed less when standing on one leg while asleep.Īnd in what they described as a Eureka moment, they also looked at the bodies of flamingo skeletons and two recently dead flamingos placed in a one-legged stance. Although this may sound counterintuitive the scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University who put the idea forward had evidence to back it up. In 2017, a new theory emerged which said that standing on leg actually requires less effort for a flamingo. As flamingos enter this half-awake sleep it was suggested that a natural reflex caused them to draw up one leg as though they were lowering their body to the ground. They proposed that flamingos enter unihemispheric slow wave sleep, a primitive trait shared with whales, dolphins, and some other species of birds where they shut down half their brain when sleeping. However, a year later, scientists from the University of Auckland disputed this theory when they found during a study of wading birds that greater flamingos were more likely to stand on one leg as the temperature increased. Many flamingos live in very salty or alkaline conditions, and although the skin on a flamingo’s legs is tough to help them withstand the caustic water, alternating between legs may help them avoid overexposure.Ī further study by the same team found that more birds would stand on one leg when it was cooler reinforcing the idea that standing on leg helped them maintain their body temperature. The idea that flamingos who live in tropical climates would need to keep warm might not make sense until you know that a flamingo’s body temperature is considerably hotter than ours running at 41 ☌.īecause a flamingo’s legs are so long, and their webbed feet are so big, submerging both legs into cold water can cause it to lose body heat rapidly, and they need to use up precious energy from the food they eat themselves at the correct temperature for all their body functions to work optimally.įlamingos don’t appear to have a preference for which leg they stand on and spend equal time standing on both the right and left leg. The team concluded that by pulling up one leg close to their body, they were able to conserve heat that would otherwise be lost to the cold water. They found that although flamingos prefer standing on one leg regardless of location, they stand on one leg in water far more often than when they are on dry land. To test their idea, the researchers observed a flock of captive Caribbean flamingos at Philadelphia Zoo, and noted the temperature and weather conditions when the flamingos were at rest. In 2009 a study by a team from Saint Joseph’s University appeared to refute all these claims and concluded that flamingos stand on one leg to regulate their body temperature. But when scientists tested how long it took for flamingos to start moving from both unipedal and bipedal resting positions they found that it took them significantly longer to start running when they had been standing on one leg which ruled that out. The theory said that would mean a flamingo could get moving and escape from a predator more quickly. One of the proposals suggested that standing on one leg helps reduce muscle fatigue, which can cause stiffness in the legs. But for flamingos, standing on one leg appears to be their default position.įor years, scientists have debated why that might be, and numerous theories have been put forward attempting to explain why flamingos spend such long periods of time standing on one leg. Humans don’t find standing on one leg particularly easy and, if we close our eyes, for some, it’s impossible. ![]() If you picture a flock of flamingos, apart from their pinkness, what do you think of? The chances are you’ll imagine most of them standing on one leg. ![]()
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