Pink flamingo
Phoenicopterus roseus
Pink flamingo refers to the genus of flamingo birds, the family of flamingos, a flamingo detachment. They have thin and long legs, a flexible neck and bright, beautiful plumage. A distinctive feature - the presence of a curved down beak, which serves as a kind of filter for food that they catch from water or silt. Red or pink color of feathers of flamingos is attached to coloring substances lipochromes in food. Flamingos have only a few natural enemies therefore in the wild they live to the age of 20-30 years, in captivity live more than 30 years.
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Feeding
Food flamingos mainly consists of small crustaceans and also larvae and insects. In addition, they can eat mollusks, worms and algae. Their pink color appears as a result of a huge love for eating small, red crustaceans containing a carotenoid. In the zoo, they are also fed food that also contains the given red pigment (for example, carrots).
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Habitat
The homeland of flamingos is the Americas, Africa and Asia. Fossils show that they used to be distributed in much larger areas, including North America, Europe and Australia. These birds prefer to live next to salty small lakes, in coastal lagoons, on shallows and near to estuaries.
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Interesting fact
The old name of the flamingo is the red wing. Flamingos come from a very ancient kind of birds, and their ancestors, similar to modern species, lived on the planet 30 million years ago. In flamingo families, there is usually one chick. They are born gray and up to 2 years remain so. The male and the female excrete the special glands that feed the chicks in the first months of life. Flamingos are very fond of dressing up for this huge amount of time every day .. They do this with the help of a beak, distributing fat from the gland at the base of the tail to their feathers. In the Australian zoo (Adelaide), the flamingo named Greiter lived up to 83 years.
