Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vola bam here. When you're on the
Speaker 1: dating scene, conventional wisdom tells us it's a good idea
Speaker 1: to maintain your appearance. Flamingos seem to know this too,
Speaker 1: and thus spend a lot of times smearing their necks
Speaker 1: with a secretion expressed by a gland on their rear ends.
Speaker 1: This secretion is part of why flamingos are usually a striking,
Speaker 1: fiery pink in color. But flamingos wouldn't have that color
Speaker 1: if they ate different foods. Here's how it works. Many
Speaker 1: types of plants and algae produce compounds called carotenoids, which
Speaker 1: are the reddish pigments that give plants like carrots and
Speaker 1: pumpkins their warm hues, Although they also do occur in
Speaker 1: green plants like grass hidden away inside other intracellular structures.
Speaker 1: Carotenoids are popular evolutionary feature in the plant kingdom because
Speaker 1: they help plants absorb light, which ant's need for photosynthesis
Speaker 1: of water and light into energy, and carotenoids also help
Speaker 1: protect from the harmful effects of sunlight. Among a few
Speaker 1: other functions. Further up the food chain, Carotenoids also give
Speaker 1: color to animals like shrimp, lobsters, and salmon. Flamingos dine
Speaker 1: primarily on brine trimp, which in turn feed on algae
Speaker 1: rich in carotenoids. As a result of flamingo babies, which
Speaker 1: are gray or white at birth, eventually eat enough brine
Speaker 1: trimp to turn their feathers pink within the first couple
Speaker 1: of years of their lives. Their diets color their feathers
Speaker 1: from the inside out, but that's not all. A research
Speaker 1: focused on flamingos in southern France that was published in
Speaker 1: September one in the journal Ecology and Evolution found that
Speaker 1: these birds also sneer their neck feathers with secretions that
Speaker 1: are rich in carotenoids that come out of the europygial
Speaker 1: gland on their rump. The europageal gland, also known as
Speaker 1: the pream gland or oil gland, is found in most birds,
Speaker 1: and its oil is distributed through the plumage by means
Speaker 1: of preening. Flamingos preen with the especially carotene rich oil
Speaker 1: that they produce to help prevent their beautiful pink plumage
Speaker 1: from bleaching out in the sun, especially during breeding. Season,
Speaker 1: which is basically met galas season for flamingos. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit like applying rouge. The researchers discovered a correlation
Speaker 1: between carotenoid concentrations on the inside and outside of flamingo feathers,
Speaker 1: as well as the pinkness of an individual's feathers and
Speaker 1: the concentration of pigments in their europygial secretions. When birds
Speaker 1: stood out in the sun all day, their color faded,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't the case for birds kept out of
Speaker 1: the sun. In order for the sun bathing birds to
Speaker 1: maintain breeding season worthy color, they had to constantly apply
Speaker 1: this europygial makeup, which only makes it more appropriate that
Speaker 1: a group of flamingos are often called a flamboyance. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Flamingo Rumps produced rouge
Speaker 1: to print pink plumage on how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Jesselyn Shields. Brainstuffs production of by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com and it's
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts
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