You Have Absolutely No Idea How Metal A Flamingo Is

When I was a kid, you couldn’t go online without seeing jokes about how tough Chuck Norris was. Think: “the flu gets a Chuck Norris shot every year”, “Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo’s in hiding,” etc.

But maybe those memes should have been made about flamingos instead.

I recently learned (to my surprise) that the pretty pink creatures are so hardcore, they’re sometimes considered the “extremophile” of the bird world.

HuffPost UK spoke to Dr Paul Rose – author of The Behavioural Biology of Zoo Animals and member of the IUCN Flamingo Specialist Group – about the unbelievably metal birds.

These are organisms “evolved to live in very harsh conditions whereby the environment is unsuitable for multiple other life forms,” Dr Rose, who is based in the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter, told us.

Examples include bacteria which live in extremely alkaline or acidic conditions or some species of midges, which can live through drought, freezing temperatures, and even the vacuum of space.

“Although often linked to microorganisms that can live, for example, around sulphurous undersea vents, there are elements of ‘extremophile’ adaptations in vertebrate animals,” the lecturer added.

What isn’t? To start with, Dr Rose said, “flamingos can wade around in water that is so alkaline it will strip skin and flesh from human limbs (Lake Natron can reach pH 12, for example), and they can drink water that runs from underground volcanic springs and is over 60°C”.

For reference, oven cleaners and caustic soda solutions have a pH of about 11-14.

Then, there’s their diet to consider. Flamingos “can also consume cyanobacteria (‘blue green algae’) that is toxic to many other species,” Dr Rose said.

Direct consumption of this bacteria has been known to kill people.

Flamingos “have thick scales on their legs to protect their skin and they can preen the soda crystals from their feathers to ensure plumage integrity,” Dr Rose told us.

They also have a gland which helps remove salt from water they drink. The expert continued: “The specialised filter feeding apparatus in a flamingo’s bill (the same as how baleen whales have baleen plates for filtering) enables the birds to collect their food particles and eject out the high saline, high pH water.”

There are some significant advantages to living where nobody else can, too.

“Given the specialised niche they have evolved to live in, they have to be adapted to extreme environmental conditions,” said Dr Rose. “And they reap the benefits from this because they do not have to share resources with species that are not extreme-adapted.”

One last thing! When I asked Dr Rose which of flamingos’ qualities he found most remarkable, he replied: “I find their longevity fascinating. The oldest recorded wild bird was 52 upon recovery.

“And the oldest bird managed in a zoo [was in] his 83rd year. This longevity has evolved to enable them to breed viably, as they have a long generation time.”

I don’t think eating toxins, swimming in oven cleaner, and preening away corrosive crystals from your feathers is usually considered good longevity advice.

But these are not ordinary beings. These are flamingos – and biology, I presume, does what they tell it to.