Adult Flamingo Feeding Chick – photograph by DavidNagy/ Shutterstock.com
Unlike many creatures in the animal kingdom, flamingos by and large raise their young as a partnership, in some ways similar to how humans raise their children. That means the male and female parents work together to nurture their young to adulthood. so then, how do flamingo feed their young ?
How Do Flamingos Feed Their Young ?
Flamingo Mother Feeding Her Baby – photograph by WalterWeiss/ Shutterstock.com
strap in, because it ’ s kind of weird.
Reading: How Do Flamingos Feed Their Young?
Flamingos produce something called cultivate milk, which is a collection of protein and fat-rich cells that come from the bird ’ s digestive tract, and use it to keep their youthful full and meet. Adult flamingo will regurgitate the cultivate milk, then slide it down into their offspring ’ mho open beak for them to devour. That ’ s slenderly odd, but nothing extraordinary for life on ground. But it gets weirder .
This crop milk comes out rake red, and it looks precisely like one of the flamingo has been cut receptive and is feeding its blood to its dame. Rest assured, though, that is not what ’ south happening – your eyes do deceive you .
No they are not fighting. This is one of the most amazing thing in nature. parent flamingo produce crop milk in their digestive tracts & regurgitate it to feed young ones. See how together they are doing it. reservoir : skill Channel. pic.twitter.com/GrJr4irGox
— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) February 20, 2020
Why ? Oh God, Why ?
I know I was wondering why flamingo do this seem bloodlust ( though again, it isn ’ metric ton blood ) in their first few months of life, but the function for why flamingo chicks must be fed this way makes smell .
For about the first gear two months of a baby flamingo ’ s life, its beak is not formed adequate to the point where it can eat food on its own. They need their parents to provide and produce that food for them, and it can ’ triiodothyronine be bits of runt or alga or early typical staples of the flamingo diet. It needs to be something they can drink down without a fully-formed beak .
Two Young Flamingos – photograph by MelKowasic/ Shutterstock.com
That ’ s where cultivate milk comes in. It ’ sulfur fully of the nutrients a young flamingo needs to grow up big and firm while besides coming in a form a dame can handle .
Both male and female flamingo produce prolactin, a hormone that makes the production of snip milk potential. That means flamingo parents can take turns feeding their young or work together to give their dame an excellent blood-colored meal ( but again, to be clear, it isn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate blood ) .
Is This similar to What Mammals Do ?
Yes, it is. Prolactin is the like hormone in mammals that allows them to produce the milk they use to feed their young. The main deviation between them, though, is the color. Flamingo crop milk is dyed crimson because of a pigment stored in the bird ’ second liver, a austere contrast from the opaque egg white color of milk from mammals .
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Specifically, my research investigates how the configuration and composition of landscapes influence the movement and population dynamics of forest birds. Both natural and human-derived fragmenting of habitat can influence where birds settle, how they access the resources they need to survive and reproduce, and these factors in turn affect population demographics. Most recently, I have been studying the ability of individuals to move through and utilize forested areas which have been modified through timber harvest as they seek out resources for the breeding and postfledging phases. As well I am working in collaboration with Parks Canada scientists to examine in the influence of high density moose populations on forest bird communities in Gros Morne National Park. Many of my projects are conducted in collaboration or consultation with representatives of industry and government agencies, seeking to improve the management and sustainability of natural resource extraction.