Have you ever seen a pink animal? It’s not something you see every day! When I was visiting tide pools in California, I found a tiny animal that looked like a pink shaggy dog or maybe even an alien. It was actually a sea slug! But today, we’re going to talk about a more famous pink animal: the flamingo. Let’s find out why flamingos are pink!
Birds come in all sorts of colors, but pink is pretty rare. So, why are flamingos pink? To understand this, let’s think about why things have different colors. Many things around us have colors because they contain tiny substances called pigments. For example, leaves are green because they have a green pigment called chlorophyll. Animals like black cats and black dogs have a pigment called melanin that makes their fur black.
You might think flamingos are born pink because they have a pink pigment in their feathers. But that’s not the case! Baby flamingos are actually gray or white. Even adult flamingos can look white or gray when they grow new feathers. So, how do they become pink?
The answer lies in what flamingos eat. In the wild, flamingos eat lots of algae and tiny shrimp. Both of these foods contain a special orangish-pink pigment. When flamingos eat these foods, the pigment makes their feathers turn pink. It’s like the saying, “You are what you eat!”
When flamingos are kept in zoos, they are often fed special pellets. But these pellets don’t have the same pigments as the algae and shrimp in the wild. So, flamingos in zoos can lose their pink color and turn white. To keep them pink, zookeepers feed them foods that have the same pigments as their wild diet.
Flamingos aren’t the only animals that get their color from their food. Some birds, like cardinals, get their red color from the seeds and berries they eat. Even humans can change color a little bit! If babies eat too many orange-colored foods like carrots and sweet potatoes, their skin can turn a bit orangish. But don’t worry, it’s not harmful!
So, while most animals are born with their colors, flamingos get their pink color from what they eat. Isn’t that fascinating? There are so many mysteries in the world, and it’s always fun to learn more. Keep asking questions and stay curious!
Colorful Diet Experiment: At home, try a fun experiment with food coloring to see how colors can change. Use white flowers like carnations or daisies. Place them in cups of water mixed with different food coloring. Observe over a few days how the flowers change color as they “drink” the colored water. Discuss with your family how this is similar to how flamingos get their pink color from their food.
Food and Color Matching Game: Create a matching game using pictures of animals and their food. For example, match a flamingo with shrimp, a cardinal with berries, and a human with carrots. Discuss how each animal’s color can be influenced by their diet. You can draw these pictures or print them from the internet. This activity will help you understand the connection between diet and color in nature.
Observation Walk: Take a walk in your neighborhood or a local park and observe the colors of different animals and plants. Bring a notebook to jot down your observations. Try to guess why certain animals or plants are the colors they are. Are there any animals that might get their color from their food, like the flamingo? Share your findings with your class or family.
**Sanitized Transcript:**
(phone ringing) – Hi, it’s Doug. It’s not every day you see an animal that’s pink. Recently, when I was visiting the tide pools in California, I spotted this tiny little animal. Up close, it looks like a pink shaggy dog or maybe an alien. Turns out, it’s a type of sea slug that lives along the Pacific coast. Someone named Yoxagani has a question about a slightly more famous pink animal though. Let’s give Yoxagani a call now. (phone ringing) – Hi, Doug. – Hi, Yoxagani. – I have a question for you. Why are flamingos pink? – That’s a great question. Birds come in so many different colors, but it’s not every day you see a bird that’s pink. Why are flamingos pink? I find it’s always interesting to find out why something is the color it is. We’ve explored other color questions before for lots of different things. Like, why is the sky blue? Why is Mars red? Why are pumpkins orange? And if you’ve seen those episodes, then you know that there are sometimes different reasons why things can be the color they are. But, in general, a lot of things around us are the color they are because, on a microscopic level, when we look at them close up under a microscope, we find out that they contain tiny amounts of substances made of that color. We call these color substances pigments. Maybe you’ve heard that term before? Leaves are a great example of this. When microscopes were first invented, we were able to find out that the reason leaves are green is because they’re filled with these tiny microscopic blobs of a green substance, a green pigment called chlorophyll. And it’s a similar reason why most animals have the colors they have, like this black cat and this black Labrador retriever. When scientists look at their fur under a microscope, they find it contains a black-colored pigment called melanin. This black-colored pigment in their fur is just something these animals were born with. Their whole lives, these animals’ bodies naturally make melanin and store it in their fur, which is why they’re colored black.
So, you might expect then that the reason flamingos are pink is because their bodies naturally make some kind of pink-colored substance, some kind of pink pigment. Based on why other animals have the colors they have, that would make sense. But have a look at this baby flamingo; it’s cute. But notice, it’s not pink. And check out even these adult flamingos. Wait, why are they kind of white? Are these some rare, white kind of flamingo? They’re not. In fact, all flamingos look kind of light gray or white each time they molt, or grow new feathers, to start to replace their old feathers. The new feathers always grow in grayish white. What’s going on here? Why is it that in so many photos and videos you see, even in flamingos you might’ve seen yourself, like at the zoo, they look pink? Do flamingos somehow change color? What do you think? Now would be a good time to pause the video and discuss.
Okay, you ready? Well, our mystery can be solved by noticing something zookeepers would have noticed when they first started keeping flamingos in zoos. You see, they had to decide what to feed the flamingos. With other water birds, zookeepers knew it always worked to feed them specially made pellets, kind of like bird chow, and flamingos seemed to do okay on that too. But this isn’t what flamingos eat in the wild. And zookeepers soon discovered that flamingos fed these pellets, well, once they started growing new feathers, their feathers came in white and stayed white, as in they lost most of their pink color. And there didn’t seem to be any hope of them getting it back, until someone had the idea, “Wait, could it be there’s something that wild flamingos are eating which isn’t in these pellets we’re feeding the flamingos at the zoo?” There was only one way to find out. And that was to observe flamingos in the wild and find out exactly what they’re eating, then feed the same wild food to the white flamingos at the zoo and see what happens.
It turns out flamingos in the wild eat lots of algae, which are small plant-like organisms that float in the water, as well as tiny shrimp. Both the algae and the shrimp that wild flamingos eat contain a kind of orangish-pink colored pigment. You can actually see this color really easily in the shrimp. The pink color in the algae that flamingos eat isn’t always easy to see. But there are some types of algae that are much more obviously pink, like the algae that lives in this lake in Australia, known around the world as Australia’s Pink Lake. Or if you ever fly in and out of San Francisco, California, you can notice this algae growing in some of the ponds along the edge of San Francisco Bay. Sure enough, by feeding things like algae and shrimp to flamingos in the zoo, they get their pink color back and they keep it.
So, in a funny way, flamingos are like a real-life example of the expression, “You are what you eat.” They get their pink color from the pink pigments in the foods that they eat. It might seem really unusual, but flamingos aren’t even the only animals that get their color from the foods that they eat. That sea slug I showed you earlier? It’s pink because of what it eats. And it’s not just with the color pink either. Some birds, like Cardinals, get their red color from pigments in seeds and berries that they eat. But maybe weirdest of all, it turns out that even human beings can change color, depending on the food that we eat. It’s been discovered that when parents accidentally feed their babies too much baby food containing orange-colored fruits and vegetables, things like carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes, a baby’s skin can start to take on an orangish color, especially their noses. This tends to be more noticeable in babies that have otherwise pale skin. If this happens, at first it can make any parent feel worried, “Is my baby okay?” But doctors don’t consider it a major health problem. They just suggest that the parent maybe not feed the baby quite so many carrots and sweet potatoes all at once.
So, in summary, while most animals are born with the colors they have, flamingos get their famously pink color from the food that they eat. That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Yoxagani, for asking it. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious and see you next week.
