🦜 These Flamingos Have Sweet Dance Moves

🦜Flamingos:
Conflict is universal throughout the animal kingdom, and flamingos, although they are known for their pink colors and ornate courtship dances, are no exception. When the birds feed, they also sometimes fight—and new research shows that flamingos with brighter colors tend to be more aggressive.

The study follows on previous research showing that birds with pinker plumage tend to be healthier, and to have a better chance of successfully attracting a mate.

Lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor), the smallest of the six flamingos, are naturally found in sub-Saharan Africa, often along the shores of alkaline lakes, where they may form huge flocks numbering in the hundreds of thousands to more than a million birds.

With so many companions, it’s perhaps not surprising that lesser flamingo society is “complex,” says Paul Rose, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom. “Color plays an important role” in their social relationships, he says.

For instance, both male and female birds prefer mates that are brightly colored. But only birds that spend most of their time feeding and ingesting the right diet—one containing plenty of carotenoids, pigments that produce reds and oranges— will attain the most attractive hue.

“It’s an honest signal,” says Rose. “That pink color tells other birds that it’s healthy and fit.”

But these animals are also more aggressive, according to a paper published June 8 in the journal Ethology that observed captive flamingos in England. The finding could help researchers better raise the animals in captivity, experts say.

Although conservation organizations do not currently consider lesser flamingos as endangered, the birds’ numbers are declining in the wild; the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers them near threatened. Finding better ways to manage zoo populations will be important should the birds continue to dwindle. (Related: Meet Flamingo Bob, a poster bird for conservation.)

Fighting flamingos
In their native habitats, lesser flamingos filter feed for aquatic organisms—crustaceans, algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria—that contain the carotenoids that enable them to produce their color. In captivity, the birds are fed a special diet of pellets that provide the same pigments.

To examine the relationship between feather color and feeding aggression, Rose and colleagues made 210 one-minute videos of 45 of the birds (24 males and 21 females) in the various feeding situations at the WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre, a wildlife sanctuary in Gloucestershire, England. He ranked the birds on a color scale with one being the palest and four the brightest pink. He then scored their foraging behaviors, taking special note of any aggressive actions. Most aggressive behaviors occurred when the flamingos fed inside in close quarters.

A flamingo might swiftly jab its head at a neighbor without actually making contact, which Rose says serves as a warning. If matters escalate, an aggressive bird might poke or peck violently at a companion, and even grab the other’s feathers with its beak while screeching.

A submissive bird might try to retreat from such a conflict, moving away with its feathers pressed against its body. But the winner often initiates a chase and attempts to grab the fleeing bird by its tail.

“It can be difficult to watch,” Rose says.