{"id":27612,"date":"2025-05-12T19:33:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T19:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27612"},"modified":"2025-05-12T20:27:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T20:27:58","slug":"videos-flamingos-make-vortexes-with-their-beaks-to-suck-up-prey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27612","title":{"rendered":"Videos: Flamingos Make Vortexes With Their Beaks to Suck Up Prey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three cooperative birds and a model bird head helped scientists figure out what flamingos are actually doing when they stick their heads upside down underwater.<\/p>\n

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\u201cJust as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices,\u201d Victor Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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If you\u2019ve ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels.<\/p>\n

Victor Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers being fascinated by this behavior the first time he saw it in 2019, during a trip with his wife and child to the Atlanta zoo. Ever since, he has been wondering what, exactly, was going on beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe birds looked beautiful, but the big question for me was, \u2018What\u2019s happening with the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in flamingos\u2019 filter feeding?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Back home, he was surprised to find no explanation in the scientific literature \u2014 so he decided to produce one himself. Several years of meticulous research later, he and his colleagues arrived at a surprising discovery, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Flamingos, they found, are active predators that harness the physics of how water flows<\/a> to sweep up prey and funnel it directly into their mouths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,\u201d Dr. Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez said. \u201cJust as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The flamingos involved in the study were very cooperative, but the scientists learned even more by producing a model beak to study how they stir up the water.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Three cooperative birds and a model bird head helped scientists figure out what flamingos are actually doing when they stick their heads upside down underwater.\u201cJust as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices,\u201d Victor Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said.If you\u2019ve ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels.Victor Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers being fascinated by this behavior the first time he saw it in 2019, during a trip with his wife and child to the Atlanta zoo. Ever since, he has been wondering what, exactly, was going on beneath the surface.\u201cThe birds looked beautiful, but the big question for me was, \u2018What\u2019s happening with the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in flamingos\u2019 filter feeding?\u2019\u201d he said.Back home, he was surprised to find no explanation in the scientific literature \u2014 so he decided to produce one himself. Several years of meticulous research later, he and his colleagues arrived at a surprising discovery, described Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Flamingos, they found, are active predators that harness the physics of how water flows to sweep up prey and funnel it directly into their mouths.\u201cWe are challenging the idea that flamingos are just passive filter feeders,\u201d Dr. Ortega-Jim\u00e9nez said. \u201cJust as spiders produce webs, flamingos produce vortices.\u201dThe flamingos involved in the study were very cooperative, but the scientists learned even more by producing a model beak to study how they stir up the water.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27614,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27612"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27617,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27612\/revisions\/27617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}