Birding Vegas

There are actual flamingos at The Flamingo on the Las Vegas strip and they do what flamingos do, as photographed by Jon. The answer to why flamingos engage in this mysterious behavior was published only last year by researchers at St. Joe's in Philadelphia. Little did they know they could have conducted their study in Vegas.

Zoo Biol. 2010 May-Jun;29(3):365-74.

Why do flamingos stand on one leg?

Anderson MJ, Williams SA.

Source

Department of Psychology, Saint Joseph's University, 5600 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19131, USA. mander06@sju.edu

Abstract

A series of observational studies of captive Caribbean flamingos Phoenicopterus ruber were conducted to determine why flamingos rest on one leg. While frequently asked by the general public, this basic question has remained unanswered by the scientific community. Here we suggest that the latency of flamingos to initiate forward locomotion following resting on one leg is significantly longer than following resting on two, discounting the possibility that unipedal resting reduces muscle fatigue or enhances predatory escape. Additionally, we demonstrate that flamingos do not display lateral preferences at the individual or group levels when resting on one leg, with each bird dividing its resting time across both legs. We show that while flamingos prefer resting on one leg to two regardless of location, the percentage of birds resting on one leg is significantly higher among birds standing in the water than among those on land. Finally, we demonstrate a negative relationship between temperature and the percentage of observed birds resting on one leg, such that resting on one leg decreases as temperature rises. Results strongly suggest that unipedal resting aids flamingos in thermoregulation.