Why Are Flamingos Pink?
Updated: Jun. 04, 2019Hint: It all comes down to diet.
Flamingos are so famous for their colour that they’ve even inspired their own hot pink lawn ornament. So they must be born rosy, right?
Nope. It turns out that flamingos are not naturally pink. The lanky-limbed birds are actually born with light gray feathers. Pink is not in their DNA. Flamingos are just one of the many animals that look nothing like their baby pictures.
So what causes the birds to turn pink? Well, their favourite things to eat in the wild are brine shrimp, larvae, and blue-green algae. All three contain compounds called carotenoids, or yellow, red, or orange pigments. When these foods make their way into a flamingo’s digestive tract, enzymes break the carotenoids down into pink and orange molecules. Those molecules are absorbed by fats in the liver and are eventually deposited into flamingo’s skin, feathers, beak, and legs. Over time on this diet, a flamingo’s feathers will gradually turn from gray to a more vibrant hue.
Of course, flamingo feathers range in colour from white to many different shades of pink to orange and red. The colour a flamingo’s feathers turns depends on where they’re located and what they’re eating. For example, the pink feathers of some flamingos living in zoos started to fade until zookeepers started feeding the birds a synthetic version of the pink dye. Now that you know what gives flamingos their distinctive colour, find out which “facts” about animals you have all wrong.
