what they eat:
how they eat it
catching the food:
digestive system:
- Blue-green and red algae, diatoms, larval and adult forms of small insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and small fishes make up the main diet of flamingos.
- A flamingo's pink or reddish feather, leg, and facial coloration comes from a diet high in alpha and beta carotenoid pigments, including canthaxanthin. The richest sources of carotenoids are found in the algae and various insects that make up the staples of a flamingo's diet.
- The shape of a flamingo's filtering bill determines its diet. A flamingo will either have a shallow or deep-keeled bill.
how they eat it
catching the food:
- Standing in shallow water, flamingos lower their necks and tilt their heads slightly upside-down, allowing their bills to hang upside-down facing backward in the water
- Flamingos sweep their heads from side to side close to the surface of the water to collect their food
- A flamingo filters its food out of the water and mud with a spiny tongue that aids in sucking food-filled water past the lamellae inside the curved bill. The fringed lamellae filter out food, and the water is passed back out of the bill.
- Standing in water, flamingos may stamp their webbed feet to stir up food from the bottom.
digestive system:
- Their specialized beaks separate mud and silt and the lamellae (miniature ridges inside the bills of water-feeding birds or "teeth") in the lower bill together with the large rough-surfaced tongue assist with the filtering of food