The Glorious Flamingo

But these are about mingoes. I'm super excited because, uh hey, I mean, who wasn't sort of fascinated by flamingos there attention getters with their funny one legged stance in their pink But when we finally went down to the Caribbean for the first time this year, to the Bahamas, they had some mingoes on their property and they would do a you know, you could walk by them and just say hi and stuff like that, and then in the morning they would do a little flamingo parade where they

would walk them around the property like people would you and are you could follow along, which of course we did. Uh, And that just got my brain thinking, you know, uh, Ruby has had a painting. We got a ten dollar painting, like a real painting that someone did with their hands for ten bucks. That's quite a deal of a tight grouping of flamingos kind of from the neck up. That's been in her room her whole life almost, and I

was just like, I gotta learn about these things. That's a great composition, the group of flamingos from the neck up. I've seen it before, not necessarily your painting, but I've seen that that composition before, and it is it's a trope. It's great. It's good because it could be like trees or sea grass, like any Spindley grouping of things. Um so, so this is a painting of sea grass? Well you

know what I mean? Tall ready Spindley Okay, um so this is a lot like the Possum episode for me, and that like I generally knew some stuff, but I learned a bunch of new cool stuff and now I'm a big flamingo fan. Yeah. Same. So you said something about them parading around. Apparently, so was there a human saying like, hey, this way, everybody, the parades going this way, and the Flamingos would kind of follow. Yeah, they had like an electric cattle pride, right. Apparently Flamingoes respond to

that really well. No, they had humans that were just sort of walking along and sort of it seemed like a just a very gentle, wavy, corralling type of gesture. Right. So there's a video artist and Israeli video artist whom went to a zoo in Germany. Um, and she came up with a video five minute video called sixty nine bows.

I think sixty seven bows. Get your head out of the gutter, sixty seven pounds, all right, um, And it was the flamingos responding to a hand gesture or she did, and all of all the flamingos would bow at once but really it's like they're ducking. And then the artist inserted, um, I think, very earnestly, but in retrospect also really hilariously a gunshot sound, and then the flamingos would duck every time the gunshot sound went off. It's that was a

little weird. I didn't expect that. Um. This is, by the way, a video artist named Nira or Nero pereg give credit where credits due, But that's all the same thing, and it was it was interesting to see them move in unison and I watched a lot of flamingo videos. It's very fascinating the way they move about the earth. For sure, they do have a certain odd gangly grace to them, don't they. Yeah. So, um, flamingos actually are different from just about every other birds. Apparently their order

um Phoenicia terra forms. Um, thank you, I have an extra letter in there. No, I didn't phansiyop terra forms, So what's should I quibble? No? I mean I don't have an eye after the sea. I just have phenice terraforms. My brain literally was like, nope, we're doing it. I don't care what you see. Um, we're doing We're adding the extra so pheniceop terra forms. Stupid brain. Your sounds better. If that makes you feel better. It does make me feel a little better. But that's that's the order that

flamingos um belong to. And there's only five species, as we'll see. But um, they are just the like, it's just flamingos that belong to the order, and they diverge from other um birds a really long time ago. But you know, geneticists and biologists love to to taxonomize things, so they've tried to figure out the closest living relative to the flamingo and what we did for a very long time was like, oh, that animal looks like that animal, they must be very closely related. And as genetics of

kind of come of age. Starting around two thousand was I think a really big turning point with the Human Genome project um that we found that genetically speaking, that's a terrible way to classify things, and the flamingos are a good example of that. Yeah, it's kind of lazy, it is. It's also like a it's old timey and dumb, yeah sentence, you know what I mean. It is like, oh, they look like storks, so let's just put them in

that group. And that's what they did for a while, storks and herons, and then uh no, maybe they're more like geese and swans and ducks. But that wasn't right. And finally in the it took a while, I mean, the early adds in two thousand one is when they finally said, you know, genetically speaking, their closest to something called is that a GREEB. I'm gonna go with GREEB g r e B s and they are sort of duckish. Olivia helped us out. She said duck like I would

agree with that. Uh, and what What it did though, was it kind of brought up what we're talking about. Apparently. I don't think it was like a firestorm, but I think it was a case where they said, hey, like, we should do this better. And this is a prime example. And the old school taxonomists hung their head in shame and kind of slunk off and retired and died at

various times. So the word flamingo bears a striking resemblance to a Spanish word flamenco, which you can't say that word without putting without snapping one finger at about your stomach and one above your head. I can, at least I know it's really the thing to do. And that that word flamenco um has uh. It means actually the bird, the flamingo. It also refers to that dance style and style of music flamenco. And it also refers to a person from Flanders, which is part of Belgium, right, So

a Flemish person would be called a flamenco in Spanish. Yeah, and and I'm not sure why those are connected and used in the same word, but they are all right, Well, that is weird. Uh, we are gonna guess talk about the different kinds. The species you said five, is there not a six? There's okay, So I'm siding with the ones who say one a subspecies of another. Okay, all right, you've already put yourself in a particular flamingo camp. I see. I I have as a matter of fact, and I'm

going to stay there until genetics proves me wrong. All right, Well we'll start with the greater flamingo. This is the big fella. Um. They can be five feet tall. They can weigh up like close to nine pounds, which doesn't sound like a lot. But if you look at a flamingo, there's a lot of um money leg and there's not a lot of body. There a lot of negative space they don't take up. Yeah, exactly. Uh. These are pretty

pale when it comes to their pink pinkness. And we should talk and I guess through this, we'll talk about their distribution because it may surprise you. Um. I kind of thought it was just like, yeah, they're in the

Caribbean and Florida and that's it. That's not true at all. Um. These are in Africa, Southern Europe, and Asia, as in South Asia and Western Asia, and they like one of the cool things about flamingos is they sometimes will live where no other animals can or will live, and that is really saline or alkaline lakes and mud flats in places like that. Yeah, in that sense, they fill in a specific ecological niche that there's really not many other

animals that that do. And that's just the first interesting, weird, unusual fact about flamingos. Right, just get ready, Yeah, I had no idea. So they eat like stuff in like the saltiest, briniest parts of Earth. That's where they that's where they like to be. So the Caribbean flamingo, which we know of as the American flamingo um, is considered by some, including myself, a subspecies of the greater flamingo, which would make their just five species of flamingo technically, right.

And these are the ones that I saw. Uh, they are smaller, they are super super pink, very brightly colored. Um. These are the same, very same flamingos, the ones that I saw that actor Lea Schreiber played with the week before.

Oh did he really? Man? You know how when you get in a in a car to go to the place wherever you're going, they liked always like to talk about stuff like that, and this car driver was like, you know, I can't do the accent, but he said that Ray Donovan was here last week and oh, it's like lovely of Schreiber, and Emily of course looked it up and he um, if you want to see like forty pictures of Lee Schreiber's family doing things in the Bahamas, Uh,

you can do that online because that's must be what it's like to be a real celebrity. I couldn't imagine. It was this picture after picture flamingos and here he is at the water slide and it's like, did they just follow him around with the camera? And I guess the answers yes. I UM. I started to watch Ray Donovan Wants on a Flight um, because I've heard nothing but good things about it. But must have come in on like season five or something like that, because you

know on Delta they have like Rando episodes. It's so weird. Yeah, it's so strange. So I and when I came in, it was like the the either I think the season premiere of some late season and like he's clearly having some sort of mental breakdown because he's having a crisis of conscience, conscience from killing people. And I was like, oh this again the killer had the killer can't just take killing any longer. I'm like, I'm not done on this.

I'm done. Yeah. I enjoyed we and we both love that show, Emily and I for uh, probably the first three or four seasons, and then it was one of those that was like you should have known when to stop, and then we kind of just quit watching. Yeah, I mean that happens a lot, it does in America. That was the good thing about our show. We we knew, well, actually Science Channel knew that. It's a while we were ahead. You know what about the Chilean Flamingo. What's up with

that fella? These guys are particularly string an, unusual and fascinating because they like to live in the cold. Um they can handle cold weather at least um they live in Chili in a lot of South America. In fact, I don't know why Chile got the um the naming rights, but they typically have pink bands on their gray legs, which are something that kind of sets them off from the other ones. And there, I guess the third in line as far as size goes, there smaller than Caribbean

flamingos bigger than the lesser flamingo though, which is another right. Yeah, it's such a sad name to call something the lesser flamingo. Uh. They are the smallest. They're about three to three to five pounds ish. And they are also in Africa on the eastern uh and southern uh well, I say coasts, but they can go inland as well if they've got some good, good alkaline lakes going on, but also in places like Yemen. Yeah, you'll find flamingos and yemen in Pakistan,

in India. These have the dark bills and the really really red eyes that are just beautiful to look at. And I believe this is the most abundant flamingo species, right, Yeah, there's like they'll gather in packs of like millions, one and a half two million, or at the very least that's how many of there are total. But they do, they do gather in huge flox as we'll see, Yeah, into the millions. That wasn't a hyperbole, by the way, chuck Um, Flamingos in Yemen is an excellent album title,

oh man, not kidding. I mean talk about the album art too. It would be wonderful. Yeah, that could see like, uh, I don't know who would do that, Franz Ferdinand or somebody Franz Ferdinand or um what was our What did Ian Bowers say our brit pop band was something Star? I don't remember. That would be a great something Star album Flamingos and yam and we're claiming that for our

band that we create after we retire. Okay, I just saw, by the way, Franz Ferdinand is opening for the Pixies on their leg which goes to Atlanta sweet when uh in June. That's pretty cool, man. Yeah, I used to love those guys. I've been on a huge Pixies kick right now, um, which I had been way off the Pixies for a while, Like, man, am I ever going to like the pixie First new music? I haven't heard

any of the new stuff. I've just been. I just got off of their old stuff and then I got back into um Trump Lamont, which I mean it's just so good from start to finish. So yeah, I love the Pixies again everybody. And I don't really like Ray Donovan. So there's the two things you need to know about me from this episode. They're new when that came out late last year. Is Okay, it sounds like a Pixies record, but it's just it's not as weird. Oh yeah, it's

kind of polished. I don't know. It just sounds like, hey, we're gonna make a Pixies record, so let's do that. And I don't know. I mean, I think the new bass player is doing a great job. But do Miss Kim deal? So I mean, yeah, you gotta respect that though. The not just like we're going to cash in on the you know, three five albums that everybody's crazy about from the eighties and early nineties and just tour on that,

although that's mostly what they played, thank goodness. So let's let's um, let's talk about I think the coolest Flamingo, or at least the most interesting of the flamingos. Obviously, the Caribbean Flamingos, the Money Flamingo far and away the best, just because it's so pink and pretty and perfect size and all that stuff. But the Andean Flamingo, for my money, is the most interesting of all. Yeah, they're very rare, and it's just h I had no idea that they

could live high up in the Andes Mountains like that. Um. I was just blown away by that because I thought they were really exclusively um, you know, like I said, sort of coastal birds. But um, there aren't a lot of about eighty thousand of them. And you will be very saddened to know that those lithium batteries that we all love because they last so long, lithium mining in climate change are driving them away and destroying them. Batteries

kill flamingos, that's right. So yeah, there's about eighty thousand of them alive, and they are I think under threatened status, which is one step down from endangered and very much threatening to move into endangered. So I don't know the andian is vulnerable vulnerable Okay, so that's which is one step down. Okay, I got you, Thanks, no problem. And then James's flamingo is the one that you don't consider like a full fledged flamingo. No, No, that's its own.

That's a species. That's the Caribbean flamingo that I consider a subspecies of the greater flamingo. All right, James's flamingo is um. They thought it was actually extinct um in the nineteen twenties, I believe. But then in the fifties. It's a whole Cela Camp comeback story because they discovered that there actually were James's flamingos that were mixed in with Chilean and Andy and flamingos in South America. Um, and not mixed in like they were interbreeding like the

these huge flocks like we'll get across. The flocks of flamingos in the wild are so enormous and so populous it's crazy. But um, these flocks will there are these different species will kind of flock together, but they keep their distance from one another. And that's where they rediscovered the James flamingo that wasn't extinct after all. Yeah, named after the British naturalists who studied them, Harry Berkeley James, and I guess he just felt good enough about his

work where he said, I'm gonna name you after me. Now, let's go have some mead, right, all right, I think we should take a break and have some mead and we'll talk about their pinkness right after this stuff. You should know, all right, we're back. One of the things I did know about flamingos, but only in a rudimentary way, was that they're pink because of what they eat. I did not know this at all. Really. I think that's a kind of a common like basic flamingo fact, which

is why are they pink? Because this stuff they eat? Otherwise they oh no, not another one, not another seraph. Everybody knows that, you moron. Well, then could you do us the uh, the honors please and explain this? No, no, you go ahead, you're explaining it fine. I was just teasing. Well, it's because what they eat is rich in beta carotene, and what they largely eat is algae um. They stick

their face down. If you see flamingos walking around in um, I guess like ankle too, whatever their knees would be knee deep water, you'll see them stick their face down there a lot and rummage around, and sometimes they'll just

leave it down there, like fully dunked. And what they're doing is they're eating their filter feeders like a baleen whale, and they're just moving muddy water around and letting water swish around in their mouth, and they have these little uh what is it like a little filter yeah, described

as like a comb like filter along. They're lower bill okay, no, their upper bill, yes, because they're upside down, so their upper bill is now their lower bill when they're feeding, and that's where the filter is, right, so they're they're kind of like that oil pulling. You know, some people swish essential oil in their mouth to like fight cavities or whatever. I didn't know that that's essentially what they're doing.

They use their tongues to kind of switch the water back and forth and then spit it out and get some more water. And apparently they can do this like four times in a second. They're that fast to just gather really really small stuff. But the stuff that they're eating is so full of beta carotene um carotenoids actually that the flamingos um livers break the break them down into a pigment. Which is a fun word to say, and I'm about to say it. You ready can't as anthon?

Oh wow, that's way better than I what's I love it? It's one of my new favorite words. C A N t h A x A n t h I N can't as anthon? Yeah, good job. So it ends up in their feathers, in their skin, which turns them pink. And this is why Chuck, I think that lesser and Caribbean or Caribbean is a subspecies of Greater. Sorry, because the big distinction, I mean, yes, the Greater is a little bigger, not ridiculously bigger, but a big distinction is

their coloring. And I think that it's because the Caribbean has more carotenoid rich diet than the Greater, and that they're really genetically essentially the same species, they just have different diets available to them. I think you're probably right, um. And you know, because they like to put flamingos in places like zoos for a long time, you're like, hey, you feed these things red peppers and carrots and orange things,

and they turn and they keep that color. So we're just going to feed them that and which is terrible and a very lazy kind of point of view. Um, But I think you know, now zoos are mostly on board. I think with I was saying, okay, maybe we should just feed them what they like to eat. That also keeps them pink. And also you can turn orange everybody knows for meeting like too many carrots or mangoes or

something like that, sweet potatoes. Um. And that's a condition is called kademia, which will turn up in our Lives show eventually. Oh, that's right, look for it. That's a nice little tease. Watch for it this fall on stuff you should know. Speaking of to her, we should just go ahead and mention, um, because people are kind of asking. We are doing these first three shows in real time this week, that will be by the time it comes

out in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. But we are aiming to do six more shows in tiny little groups of three, hopefully in the in the late spring, in the early fall. And um, we haven't nailed the cities down, but you know that's that's what we're trying to do. Not nine shows this year. You really put all those questions to rest. Well, I mean, should we mention some of those cities? I don't want people to be disappointed? Yeah kind of No, I mean they're going to be

disappointed eventually. White might as well just disappoint them now so they can be disappointed all year. Well, I think we're gonna finally hit in Nashville. Yeah, I think we're gonna do Orlando again and finish up in Atlanta again, our hometown shows. It's right, what about in between? Uh? Well, we're um, out of the four I think we're gonna pick three from probably Boston, New York, d C in Chicago, all cities that are great for stuff you should know,

rich with suff you should know listeners. Yeah, and if we're gonna do this, like, you know, maybe nine shows a year, we're gonna have to mix it up because it's so easy to just go to like the same banger cities every time. But we've been to so many cities that turned out to be banger. Like surprisingly, Kansas City was a great show. Uh. St. Louis was a great show. Cleveland was a great show. Kansas. Yeah, Austin's

always the jam. I mean, we've been to a bunch of places that were like this is this is actually really great time we want to come back. It's just, um, you know, if we're doing nine shows this year, we we guys, we just started out with our our usual how about that. Yeah, we're dipping our toe back in the live show pun but we we also like to add a brand new state. And that's why we're going to Nashville this year. So, uh, take Heed, take Heed,

take heed. Boise. Yeah, that's good of Boise. We go see our old friend Dave Ruce, that's his stomping ground. Yeah all right, I think you can't tell is incredibly chipper and positive personality. That's true, very poisyan. And by the way, Chuck Um, we should give a shout out to Dave's podcast, A Bible Time Machine, Right, Yeah. Dave is a bit of a biblical scholar and takes a very sort of analytical view of the Bible in this podcast.

It's not like a preachy thing, right right. So if you want to get to know Dave, Ru's one of our great writers that works for stuff you should know. You can get to know him a lot more wherever you get podcasts Bible Time Machine. Yeah, dare I say a sort of stuff you should know, like approach to biblical matters. I mean, how could it not be, you know? Yeah, I know. Can we go back to flamingos for goodness sakes, because this is where it gets really interesting to me.

Is a lot of this stuff in the next five minutes, namely namely their age. Did you know that lived this old? No, dude, twenty to sixty years and the oldest flamingo on record was eighty three years old. Yeah, his name was Greater. He was a greater flamingo and they named him Greater at the Adelaide Zoo. He showed up at the zoo in the thirties and he died in two thousand fourteen.

And he was just this amazing resident. And apparently the Adelaide Zoo had like a flamingo encounter where their flamingos were able to mix with humans, and that turned out very badly. Four Greater in two thousand and eight because four scumbag teenagers beat him almost to death for no reason other than he was there. He was an animal.

And I looked so hard to find out what happened to those teenagers, and all I could find was that they were charged no follow up whatsoever, which really makes me think that they were released to their parents custody and they've probably been torturing animals ever since. Yeah, this this one was really tough to read about. I don't need to say anything else about it. And it's disgusting. Yeah, it is disgusting. And know that Australians are like the

opposite of that as people. I know, it's really surprising. Hopefully they got hit in the butt with a giant boot like on the Simpsons, or maybe they gave the old outback treatment. You know what I mean, A dingo ate my scumbag. See if you can find your my own boys. Uh, that's not of course I don't. I'm not supporting, like you know, killing teenagers in retribution. But also we're not supporting teenagers beating up animals and getting away with especially an elderly animal too. It wasn't even

like a young animal. It was three well let's see, so he was in his seventies, mid se flamingo that they beat up. I didn't mean to spend this much time on it, but I am a little worked up about us. Still, no, no, no, I'm with you, man, it's it's awful. Um. Flamingos may want to travel occasionally. They're considered non migratory, but they will get out of

dodge if they need to. Um, if they you know, if the food isn't good or whatever there, or the waters um too higher, too low, they'll they'll go to greener pastures. And they'll do so with um a plum. Because they can travel. Man. They like to travel at night. They like those red eye flights and they can go like three hundred to four hundred miles a night. Yeah, they traveled between about thirty to forty miles per hour typically, so that's forty six kilo. That's pretty fast. Yeah, especially

over ten straight hours, that's pretty impressive. But yeah, they typically like to stay where they are. It's just if the environment changes, they're like, all right, we're out of here, we gotta go find us a new alkaline flat. Yeah. What about the way they stand, because that's what really every time I've seen flamingos, and this is one of the main reasons I dug into this was why in

the world did they stand there on one leg? Well, they thought for a long time it was to conserve body heat, which is another It must have come from the nineteenth century taxonomous don't get that that bony little leg and gonna conserve any heat. Um. But I guess they were like, well, there's no feathers or anything on it, so I guess it's a huge thing to lose heat. But there was more investigation that was like, no, actually, they have a really good system for conserving heat in

their their bony little legs. Um, So that's not it. And they think probably it's just that it's more stable and possibly more comfortable for them to stand on one leg because they're able to lock the um the tendons and ligaments and muscles and joints and everything in the leg that they're standing on, and it's just like you're not you're not gonna fall over. Um. And then there's one other thing about this, chuck um. They have a knee. It's not what you think. It's not in the middle

of their leg. That's not their knee. Their knee, which allows them to move forward and backward is um where they're where our hips are. It's up in their body about where our hips are. That's what their knee where their hips. I don't know. I saw that they have hips though that they do have hips. They're similar to other birds, but I don't know if that was a reference to their actual knee. Interesting. Yeah, you can tell they're locked in like when they're standing there, they're not.

They're not swaying around Like put me on one leg for a little while and you're gonna see a little movement. Yeah, yeah, you are. They tell you not to like lock your knees um for very long because you can faint for some reason. We'll have to do a short stuff on that sometime for humans. Yes, well, well you're not flamingo esk in that respect, No, not at all. Uh. You mentioned their communities and this is just amazing. They their their colonies or their flamboyance, which is we did a

whole episode on on those names. Um, a flamboyance of flamingoes. I've seen other places say a regiment or a flurry or a stand, but why would you not say a flamboyance of flamingo Don't know, I just just just lock

that in like a ligament, that's right. Yeah. So, um, I think there was a study that was done in that kind of uh looked at these groups and started to like actually pay attention to individual members of them, and found that like that, the the the groups have incredibly complex social relationships and interactions, and there's clicks within these larger groups, and um, some members will have enemies and um, this is actually something I liked about flamingos.

They tend to be very peaceful. Like it's not one of those things where you like, oh, that beautiful pink bird likes to eat tear the heads off of lizards and beat up one another or something like that. They're actually super peaceful animals. They like to avoid their enemies. They don't. They're just kind of like, hey, man, relax, don't do it, you know when you want to get Yeah, they have friends, um, they and they also are serial monogamous,

as we'll see. Yeah, they get together, uh for a mating season, and they typically change it up after that mating season and get a new partner, but they stick together through that mating season in and they will um, they will, they will co uh. I guess well, I guess we should talk about their breeding. They breed when they want to breed, which is kind of cool. It's not like a certain time of year or you know,

any particular season. It's just got to be like the right spot, the right um circumstance, and then they get it on. And if you want to see some fun stuff, just go on an internet video player and just um check out Flamingo Mating Dance Ritual or something like that, and just watch all the beautiful myriad videos that are online from the BBC and other places of these huge groups of like hundreds and like you said, they can group in the millions. At least there was the hundreds

of thousands. But yes, I'm all thought there was a flamingo flock once that hit million and they were like, we did it a flock a flamboyance. I'm sorry, thank you for saving me from I sell uh. And they just you know, they move around and dance and if you know, a lot of um mating rituals include dance in the wild, but it's usually like a male dancing to attract the attention of the female. But in this case, they're both trying to impress one another. And the most

um I guess prolific maters are the ones. They're about twenty years old, by the way, which is right in the wheelhouse, but they are the ones that have the most dance moves and the the best ability to switch between those moves. And it's really kind of cute, you know. It's like literally dancing and how impressive is your dance? Right?

And it's it's it bears a strong resemblance to how humans mate, where like you're at a club and you're dancing together to see how you connect, and if it's just right, then you go off together and stay together for a year, right, And that's just like flamingos are, right, and back to that when they do finally get together, the both the male and the female UM will help nurture that egg and sit with that egg because it's

only one egg. Um, the incubation period is pretty short, it's about a month, and so they they're really both involved in that process, which is kind of cool. Yeah, it's remarkable actually, Um, some of those dance moves to there like stuff you'd expect, you know, like them flapping and bending their heads and sticking their tails up and stuff. But they also do huh, a lot of headwork, that's right, Yeah, yes, so then that's what you would think with a flamingo.

But they also have at least one move where they put like a wing point in one direction and the leg points in another, which very much brings to mind John Travolta on the cover Saturday Night Fever. And there's actually a name for that move. It's called the disco finger. So Flamingos do the disco finger. So if a flamboyance of Flamingos doing the disco finger isn't enough to make you love Flamingos, then there's something really wrong with you. Yeah,

that's another bumper sticker. We've got batteries killed Flamingos and flamingos with the disco sticker for the exactly. Here's another kind of fun thing when it comes to mating season is the ladies will almost adorned makeup. Um. There is a gland on their tail which produces you know how

they have that that that coloration. It produces a really rich version of that carrotinoid oil, and they will they will wipe it on their bills and on their wings as like like pretty in themselves up a little bit. And it gets even better because after they have made it there, after mating season, they stopped doing that. They're just like, I'm not gonna bother anymore. Just like humans, man, Flamingos are a lot and I think it's actually both um sexes that do that that makeup. I don't think

it's just females. But yeah, they're they're just like whatever, we we already landed a eat? Was that just flamingo sexist a little bit? But that's okay, you didn't mean. There's also another remarkable thing about flamingos that they're part of just a small handful of birds that produced milk for their young. And you're like, whoa, that would make them mammals? Wrong? There's actually like pigeons, flamingos, and I

don't remember the other one. There's maybe one or two more that produced milk and what this is called crop milk, and they produce it through um glands that line all along their digestive tract and it's full of that carotenoid um rich fatty rich um food. There's also a lot of red blood cells, which I suspect probably imparts to their young um like immunity to like disease and stuff like that. And it's like really red um. So people are like, wow, that that flamingo is killing the other

flamingo is dripping blood all over it. That's actually it's it's crop milk. And that's pretty cool because as Chuck, both sexes produced the crop milk in both sexes take turns not only caring for the chick but feeding the chick too. And Chuck, by the way, they only lay one egg at a time typically, so a couple, this monogamous couple will both be feeding their one kid milk at the same time. Well not at the same time probably, but you know, in the same rearing. How about that

and both letting their appearance go. That's right. It's the same time, not wearing any makeup. They both look very tired. Uh. This Um, the parents care for this little chickie for about a week in the nest and then they kind of go to daycare almost uh. And that they go off with all the other little babies, and they're called crutches and there are a few adults sort of watching out like daycare workers. Uh. And then nine to thirteen weeks later, and we should say they're born um basically

sort of kind of grayish white or brownish white. And then once they start, you know, eating all the stuff, then they get that pink hue. But nine to thirteen weeks is when they're gonna kind of, you know, get ready to go and beat full fledged flamingos. They can also perhaps form same sex couples, right like there there was a pair at the Denver Zoo, very very sweet. Uh, Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass. Uh. Lance was the Chilean flamingo.

Freddie Mercury was an American flamingo and or say was I guess is I think they're still around, but sadly not together. They got together before the pandemic in twin and we're surrogate parents, basically for breeding couples that abandoned their eggs, and then apparently about a year later, after the pandemic hit, they said too much. I've had enough, right,

but we'll part close friends. The human lance Bass is surely honored to have had a flamingo named after him that was in the same sex couple with the flamingo named after Freddie Mark Greek. Don't you think sure? He already has a fish named after him, m man, dad, we should take a break, Yeah, we said, all right, we'll be right back. Stuff. You should know, all right, Chuck, we're back, and um. People have really enjoyed flamingos for a long time, a lot longer than than even just

since we started appreciating flamingos, you and me. Yeah, like a few days ago. Way longer than that, like thousands of years longer than that. As a matter of fact, there's a cave painting from southern Spain that dates from seven thousand years before present that has a flamingo on. It's pretty much unmistakable. Yeah, I'll just look at the cave and they're the answers. They're an Egyptian art there,

you know, since there has been kids books. They've been all over kids books because kids obviously are going to be fascinated by flamingoes because they're so striking. That's why there's one hanging on my daughter's wall. Although I don't think we have any flamingo books. Oh, you need to remedy that situation. But if someone hasn't written one about Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass and there's an opportunity they're waiting.

I have two flamingo dads exactly. Um. But you know, it probably would also not surprise you to learn that not too long ago in the nineteenth century, flamingoes were hunted and killed because the ladies had to have those lovely pink feathers in their hats. Um, they would eat flamingos. Um. It was a you know, if you go back to like ancient Rome, it was a um, a delicacy, and in other parts of the world too. I think, yeah, and that's just so just old timey again kind of

dim humans like look at that pretty feather. I'm gonna go kill that thing that has those pretty feathers, and I'm gonna kill them so often that they're gonna just go extinct. So, Chuck, did you know this that they think at least the Caribbean ones probable that all flamingos are I'm just making that up, but at the least the Caribbean um flamingos seemed to hail from Florida. People consider them um native to like maybe the Bahamas or Cuba or somewhere else. Nope, they seem to have originated

or be native to South Florida, specifically the Keys. Yeah. And I think that they were so overhunted. It was thought that they, like any flamingos in the twentieth century, were either just travelers who got you know, lost on the way to the Caribbean, or they were escaped captives. Uh. And so they tagged one. I think in the twenty tins there was a flamingo name Conky or Conchi, depending on how you say the word conk, conch. What do you say conky? Okay? I said Conky two. Uh. And

they saw this swimmingo. I think they tagged it. It was near an airfield on Boca Chica Key oh Bosa, I'm just kidding. Oh. And they gave you the old satellite transmitter treatment on the leg. And then I said I'm sure this thing is going to go back to the Caribbean, and they said, no, this thing is actually sticking around and is permanent. So, like, I think that's whether they when they decided, hey, I think these these are not wayward travelers or captives that have escaped. I

think they're Florida flamingos. Yeah, And they they said, well, wait a minute, it's possible that they are escaped ones because there are a lot of nineteenth century eroad tycoons that built like enormous estates for themselves and imported flamingos for those estates, because the local flamingos are all dead, and uh, scientists have said, like, it doesn't matter. We're just going to say this is the native population rebounding, and let's just call it that and stop asking questions.

It doesn't matter. Now the flamingos are coming back and they're from Florida originally. That's right. And I think which one is actually increasing in population? The Caribbean and I believe the Greater are both increasing in population, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I think so. Which is great? Yeah, that is great, it's Greater. Um, they're about twenty thousand. I heard that. By the way, they're about twenty thousand

flamingos living in um. I say captivity. It is captivity, but the in in zoos basically, and uh, we have them here in our Atlanta zoo. You can go buy and visit them. I guess that counts. At this place in the Bahamas, they're like fifteen or twenty that they had probably wouldn't that many, maybe about a dozen. Um. But they have found that, you know, flamingos like to be in big, large groups when it comes to these mating rituals. They like, they like a lot of um choice,

I think in their selective mates. And so they said, these smaller groups, they're not mating like they should. So at least one zoo in England, the well it's spelled Colchester. I'm sure it's not pronounced that way. Um, it's probably Colster or something like that. Kolki. Yeah, the Kulki Zoo in England put up big, full length mirrors to trick them into thinking they were bigger groups, right, and it worked.

They like to look at themselves too, apparently. Yeah, But I mean it gave them the illusion that there was way more flamingos than they all started to dance and get it on and sex with a mirror. Yeah, and the flamingo population and captivity in England was saved. Uh oh really yeah, I'm just wrapping it up. Okay. They clip their wings generally when they're in zoos because they

will fly away of worse. Uh And if they don't get on those wings enough and they they managed to sneak out a little more wings size, then they will fly away and they'll they'll go away and this zoo flamingo will be found many meaning miles away for years and years in a row and become little celebrities. Yeah.

Apparently there was a ranger at the Great Salt Lake who reported a flamingo and was I apparently told or asked if there was an elephant with it, because there's just no flamingos at the at the Great Salt Lake. But this one named Pink Floyd escaped from the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City and was like, holy cow, a huge salt lake. This is exactly where I want to be. But sadly, um, I mean he basically lived

there for the rest of his life, but he was alone. Um. So there was actually a group in Salt Lake City called the Friends of Floyd who wanted to import twenty five more flamingos, and the people running Great Salt Lake, I guess park where like this is a really bad idea. These are not a native species. We should not be importing them in the twenty century. We know better than doing that. Despite how a lone Floyd is. Yeah, good for them. Yeah, and I did mention eating them. They

used to eat them in ancient Rome. Uh. There was a writer for Slate, Molly Olmstead, that was um shocked to find out about the number of Google searches for can you eat a Flamingo a few years ago, And she kind of chalked it up to people not necessarily thinking like, hey, I want to go eat a flamingo, but just reading about them and people thinking, well, they're birds. I'm curious to people eat them. Uh and not a genuine like um effort to eat a flamingo. No, but

they definitely did eat them, apparently. Pliny the Elder wrote that they have the most exquisite flavor and um because they set the tongues specifically too. Oh yeah, I'm sorry, that's right. The flamingo tongues and flamingo meat tongue is actually really good. Man, If you're gonna eat an animal, the tongue is not to be wasted. Typically, I don't like tongue. That's fine. I'm just telling you. If you've never tried it before, okay, and you don't like it,

I don't like the consistency. Wait, hold on, let me do it. You what you don't like tongue? No, I don't think you should like wasted. I'm glad people eat it if they're gonna be eating an animal, but it's not for me. I understand. And yeah, I would never impress that on you. I appreciate that. But the meat of a flamingo probably has a really distinct taste, and that they have, you know, layers of fat because they're a water bird. Water birds have layers of fat like duck.

Duck is delicious obviously in part because of its huge fat content, but then also they eat so much algae that they would have huge levels of Omega three, which could give them a fishy taste. Right, I think that's the deal. Two fishy a ducky fishy taste. Yeah. I don't eat duck either, so I don't know what a duck taste like, Oh, duck's really good too, is it? Yeah? Yeah, there's an eat anything I've spent time with. I understand that's hypocritical for people that out there that are vegan,

So I get it. It's to me the email. Well, the thing is, if you spend enough time with them, they'll let their guard down, and that's when you pounce. There's a Chinese restaurant actually called Pee King Gourmet in Falls Church, Virginia that makes it a whole roast duck and it is one of the best things you'll ever eat in your entire life. Okay, I think it's called Peking Gourmet. It might just be called Peeking Duck one of the two. But it's Rember of the Christmas story.

I guess that's it. I mean we uh, I think we should direct people to our I get Was it a short stuff on the lawn ornaments? Yeah, yeah it was. We did a whole short stuff on pink flamingo lawn ornaments and it's a pretty cool story. So go seek that out, is what I say. Uh, And there really isn't anything else. And since Chuck said go seek that out, of course everybody do. That means it's time for a listener, Mayo. Okay,

I'm gonna call this sort of Laurn mystery solved. You know the story of when I adopted my um my buddy Lauren, who was no longer with this. He had a silver back and that's when Tim Curry referred to him as looking like a baboon. Right, So this is solved by Sarah Patton. I think, uh nice things that Sarah has to say about the show and Tim Curry. And then that's Chuck mentioned that his silver back eventually disappeared and it maybe think it could have been a

fever coat prior to birth. The kitten's coat is very sensitive to heat, but MoMA cat has a fever during pregnancy from an illness or prolonged stress could potentially affect the pigments in her. Kittens spur. So a fever coat is typically great or silver, and then it resolves when it kittens around four months old, although it can take

up to a year. Even though the kittens pigment um didn't fully develop while they were in the womb, there coat is still written in their d n A. There's no negative implications for our the kitten's future overall health just a fun quirk when you're young. Wow, like when you're born with a vestigial tail and it falls off at age two. I guess so so that I think

that solves the mystery. Um. This is from Sarah Patton and Sarah's Greyton knows a lot about cat and cat rescue and is doing a lot of good work in that realm awesome. Thanks a lot, Sarah. That is pretty cool. You put that mystery to rest and we thank you for it. How do you feel good now that it's it's salved I love it. I need to tell Emily about the Fever Coach school. Well, if you want to be like Sarah and put some mystery to rest, we love that kind of stuff. You can do it in

an email. Send it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are were iver you listen to your favorite shows m HM