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The Glorious Flamingo · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
0:16
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know. Another animal addition, which everybody loves those,
0:21
Speaker 1: and so do I. I would love to see a
0:24
Speaker 1: master list of all the animals that we've covered. Sure,
0:28
Speaker 1: it's probably longer than I think, twice as long maybe,
0:33
Speaker 1: But these are about mingoes. I'm super excited because, uh hey,
0:36
Speaker 1: I mean, who wasn't sort of fascinated by flamingos there
0:41
Speaker 1: attention getters with their funny one legged stance in their
0:43
Speaker 1: pink But when we finally went down to the Caribbean
0:48
Speaker 1: for the first time this year, to the Bahamas, they
0:52
Speaker 1: had some mingoes on their property and they would do
0:56
Speaker 1: a you know, you could walk by them and just
0:58
Speaker 1: say hi and stuff like that, and then in the
1:01
Speaker 1: morning they would do a little flamingo parade where they
1:04
Speaker 1: would walk them around the property like people would you
1:08
Speaker 1: and are you could follow along, which of course we did. Uh,
1:11
Speaker 1: And that just got my brain thinking, you know, uh,
1:14
Speaker 1: Ruby has had a painting. We got a ten dollar painting,
1:19
Speaker 1: like a real painting that someone did with their hands
1:21
Speaker 1: for ten bucks. That's quite a deal of a tight
1:25
Speaker 1: grouping of flamingos kind of from the neck up. That's
1:29
Speaker 1: been in her room her whole life almost, and I
1:32
Speaker 1: was just like, I gotta learn about these things. That's
1:35
Speaker 1: a great composition, the group of flamingos from the neck up.
1:38
Speaker 1: I've seen it before, not necessarily your painting, but I've
1:41
Speaker 1: seen that that composition before, and it is it's a trope.
1:44
Speaker 1: It's great. It's good because it could be like trees
1:48
Speaker 1: or sea grass, like any Spindley grouping of things. Um so,
1:52
Speaker 1: so this is a painting of sea grass? Well you
1:56
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Tall ready Spindley Okay, um so
2:00
Speaker 1: this is a lot like the Possum episode for me,
2:02
Speaker 1: and that like I generally knew some stuff, but I
2:05
Speaker 1: learned a bunch of new cool stuff and now I'm
2:07
Speaker 1: a big flamingo fan. Yeah. Same. So you said something
2:11
Speaker 1: about them parading around. Apparently, so was there a human
2:14
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, this way, everybody, the parades going this way,
2:17
Speaker 1: and the Flamingos would kind of follow. Yeah, they had
2:20
Speaker 1: like an electric cattle pride, right. Apparently Flamingoes respond to
2:24
Speaker 1: that really well. No, they had humans that were just
2:27
Speaker 1: sort of walking along and sort of it seemed like
2:29
Speaker 1: a just a very gentle, wavy, corralling type of gesture. Right.
2:33
Speaker 1: So there's a video artist and Israeli video artist whom
2:37
Speaker 1: went to a zoo in Germany. Um, and she came
2:42
Speaker 1: up with a video five minute video called sixty nine bows.
2:47
Speaker 1: I think sixty seven bows. Get your head out of
2:50
Speaker 1: the gutter, sixty seven pounds, all right, um, And it
2:56
Speaker 1: was the flamingos responding to a hand gesture or she did,
3:00
Speaker 1: and all of all the flamingos would bow at once
3:03
Speaker 1: but really it's like they're ducking. And then the artist inserted, um,
3:07
Speaker 1: I think, very earnestly, but in retrospect also really hilariously
3:11
Speaker 1: a gunshot sound, and then the flamingos would duck every
3:14
Speaker 1: time the gunshot sound went off. It's that was a
3:17
Speaker 1: little weird. I didn't expect that. Um. This is, by
3:20
Speaker 1: the way, a video artist named Nira or Nero pereg
3:26
Speaker 1: give credit where credits due, But that's all the same thing,
3:28
Speaker 1: and it was it was interesting to see them move
3:31
Speaker 1: in unison and I watched a lot of flamingo videos.
3:33
Speaker 1: It's very fascinating the way they move about the earth.
3:36
Speaker 1: For sure, they do have a certain odd gangly grace
3:40
Speaker 1: to them, don't they. Yeah. So, um, flamingos actually are
3:44
Speaker 1: different from just about every other birds. Apparently their order
3:48
Speaker 1: um Phoenicia terra forms. Um, thank you, I have an
3:55
Speaker 1: extra letter in there. No, I didn't phansiyop terra forms,
4:00
Speaker 1: So what's should I quibble? No? I mean I don't
4:07
Speaker 1: have an eye after the sea. I just have phenice terraforms.
4:13
Speaker 1: My brain literally was like, nope, we're doing it. I
4:16
Speaker 1: don't care what you see. Um, we're doing We're adding
4:19
Speaker 1: the extra so pheniceop terra forms. Stupid brain. Your sounds better.
4:26
Speaker 1: If that makes you feel better. It does make me
4:28
Speaker 1: feel a little better. But that's that's the order that
4:30
Speaker 1: flamingos um belong to. And there's only five species, as
4:33
Speaker 1: we'll see. But um, they are just the like, it's
4:38
Speaker 1: just flamingos that belong to the order, and they diverge
4:41
Speaker 1: from other um birds a really long time ago. But
4:45
Speaker 1: you know, geneticists and biologists love to to taxonomize things,
4:49
Speaker 1: so they've tried to figure out the closest living relative
4:52
Speaker 1: to the flamingo and what we did for a very
4:55
Speaker 1: long time was like, oh, that animal looks like that animal,
4:57
Speaker 1: they must be very closely related. And as genetics of
5:00
Speaker 1: kind of come of age. Starting around two thousand was
5:03
Speaker 1: I think a really big turning point with the Human
5:05
Speaker 1: Genome project um that we found that genetically speaking, that's
5:09
Speaker 1: a terrible way to classify things, and the flamingos are
5:12
Speaker 1: a good example of that. Yeah, it's kind of lazy,
5:15
Speaker 1: it is. It's also like a it's old timey and dumb,
5:19
Speaker 1: yeah sentence, you know what I mean. It is like, oh,
5:21
Speaker 1: they look like storks, so let's just put them in
5:24
Speaker 1: that group. And that's what they did for a while,
5:26
Speaker 1: storks and herons, and then uh no, maybe they're more
5:29
Speaker 1: like geese and swans and ducks. But that wasn't right.
5:31
Speaker 1: And finally in the it took a while, I mean,
5:33
Speaker 1: the early adds in two thousand one is when they
5:35
Speaker 1: finally said, you know, genetically speaking, their closest to something
5:39
Speaker 1: called is that a GREEB. I'm gonna go with GREEB
5:43
Speaker 1: g r e B s and they are sort of duckish.
5:47
Speaker 1: Olivia helped us out. She said duck like I would
5:49
Speaker 1: agree with that. Uh, and what What it did though,
5:53
Speaker 1: was it kind of brought up what we're talking about. Apparently.
5:55
Speaker 1: I don't think it was like a firestorm, but I
5:57
Speaker 1: think it was a case where they said, hey, like,
6:00
Speaker 1: we should do this better. And this is a prime example.
6:04
Speaker 1: And the old school taxonomists hung their head in shame
6:07
Speaker 1: and kind of slunk off and retired and died at
6:10
Speaker 1: various times. So the word flamingo bears a striking resemblance
6:14
Speaker 1: to a Spanish word flamenco, which you can't say that
6:18
Speaker 1: word without putting without snapping one finger at about your
6:21
Speaker 1: stomach and one above your head. I can, at least
6:25
Speaker 1: I know it's really the thing to do. And that
6:27
Speaker 1: that word flamenco um has uh. It means actually the bird,
6:31
Speaker 1: the flamingo. It also refers to that dance style and
6:35
Speaker 1: style of music flamenco. And it also refers to a
6:39
Speaker 1: person from Flanders, which is part of Belgium, right, So
6:43
Speaker 1: a Flemish person would be called a flamenco in Spanish. Yeah,
6:47
Speaker 1: and and I'm not sure why those are connected and
6:51
Speaker 1: used in the same word, but they are all right, Well,
6:54
Speaker 1: that is weird. Uh, we are gonna guess talk about
6:57
Speaker 1: the different kinds. The species you said five, is there
7:02
Speaker 1: not a six? There's okay, So I'm siding with the
7:05
Speaker 1: ones who say one a subspecies of another. Okay, all right,
7:10
Speaker 1: you've already put yourself in a particular flamingo camp. I see.
7:14
Speaker 1: I I have as a matter of fact, and I'm
7:15
Speaker 1: going to stay there until genetics proves me wrong. All right,
7:19
Speaker 1: Well we'll start with the greater flamingo. This is the
7:22
Speaker 1: big fella. Um. They can be five feet tall. They
7:26
Speaker 1: can weigh up like close to nine pounds, which doesn't
7:29
Speaker 1: sound like a lot. But if you look at a flamingo,
7:31
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um money leg and there's not
7:34
Speaker 1: a lot of body. There a lot of negative space
7:36
Speaker 1: they don't take up. Yeah, exactly. Uh. These are pretty
7:42
Speaker 1: pale when it comes to their pink pinkness. And we
7:46
Speaker 1: should talk and I guess through this, we'll talk about
7:48
Speaker 1: their distribution because it may surprise you. Um. I kind
7:51
Speaker 1: of thought it was just like, yeah, they're in the
7:52
Speaker 1: Caribbean and Florida and that's it. That's not true at all. Um.
7:55
Speaker 1: These are in Africa, Southern Europe, and Asia, as in
8:00
Speaker 1: South Asia and Western Asia, and they like one of
8:04
Speaker 1: the cool things about flamingos is they sometimes will live
8:08
Speaker 1: where no other animals can or will live, and that
8:12
Speaker 1: is really saline or alkaline lakes and mud flats in
8:15
Speaker 1: places like that. Yeah, in that sense, they fill in
8:18
Speaker 1: a specific ecological niche that there's really not many other
8:22
Speaker 1: animals that that do. And that's just the first interesting, weird,
8:26
Speaker 1: unusual fact about flamingos. Right, just get ready, Yeah, I
8:31
Speaker 1: had no idea. So they eat like stuff in like
8:33
Speaker 1: the saltiest, briniest parts of Earth. That's where they that's
8:36
Speaker 1: where they like to be. So the Caribbean flamingo, which
8:41
Speaker 1: we know of as the American flamingo um, is considered
8:46
Speaker 1: by some, including myself, a subspecies of the greater flamingo,
8:50
Speaker 1: which would make their just five species of flamingo technically, right.
8:54
Speaker 1: And these are the ones that I saw. Uh, they
8:57
Speaker 1: are smaller, they are super super pink, very brightly colored. Um.
9:03
Speaker 1: These are the same, very same flamingos, the ones that
9:06
Speaker 1: I saw that actor Lea Schreiber played with the week before.
9:11
Speaker 1: Oh did he really? Man? You know how when you
9:13
Speaker 1: get in a in a car to go to the
9:15
Speaker 1: place wherever you're going, they liked always like to talk
9:18
Speaker 1: about stuff like that, and this car driver was like,
9:21
Speaker 1: you know, I can't do the accent, but he said
9:24
Speaker 1: that Ray Donovan was here last week and oh, it's
9:27
Speaker 1: like lovely of Schreiber, and Emily of course looked it
9:30
Speaker 1: up and he um, if you want to see like
9:33
Speaker 1: forty pictures of Lee Schreiber's family doing things in the Bahamas, Uh,
9:39
Speaker 1: you can do that online because that's must be what
9:41
Speaker 1: it's like to be a real celebrity. I couldn't imagine.
9:44
Speaker 1: It was this picture after picture flamingos and here he
9:48
Speaker 1: is at the water slide and it's like, did they
9:49
Speaker 1: just follow him around with the camera? And I guess
9:51
Speaker 1: the answers yes. I UM. I started to watch Ray
9:54
Speaker 1: Donovan Wants on a Flight um, because I've heard nothing
9:58
Speaker 1: but good things about it. But must have come in
10:00
Speaker 1: on like season five or something like that, because you
10:02
Speaker 1: know on Delta they have like Rando episodes. It's so weird. Yeah,
10:07
Speaker 1: it's so strange. So I and when I came in,
10:09
Speaker 1: it was like the the either I think the season
10:12
Speaker 1: premiere of some late season and like he's clearly having
10:18
Speaker 1: some sort of mental breakdown because he's having a crisis
10:21
Speaker 1: of conscience, conscience from killing people. And I was like,
10:25
Speaker 1: oh this again the killer had the killer can't just
10:28
Speaker 1: take killing any longer. I'm like, I'm not done on this.
10:30
Speaker 1: I'm done. Yeah. I enjoyed we and we both love
10:33
Speaker 1: that show, Emily and I for uh, probably the first
10:37
Speaker 1: three or four seasons, and then it was one of
10:38
Speaker 1: those that was like you should have known when to stop,
10:41
Speaker 1: and then we kind of just quit watching. Yeah, I
10:43
Speaker 1: mean that happens a lot, it does in America. That
10:47
Speaker 1: was the good thing about our show. We we knew, well,
10:49
Speaker 1: actually Science Channel knew that. It's a while we were ahead.
10:53
Speaker 1: You know what about the Chilean Flamingo. What's up with
10:57
Speaker 1: that fella? These guys are particularly string an, unusual and
11:00
Speaker 1: fascinating because they like to live in the cold. Um
11:04
Speaker 1: they can handle cold weather at least um they live
11:07
Speaker 1: in Chili in a lot of South America. In fact,
11:10
Speaker 1: I don't know why Chile got the um the naming rights,
11:13
Speaker 1: but they typically have pink bands on their gray legs,
11:16
Speaker 1: which are something that kind of sets them off from
11:19
Speaker 1: the other ones. And there, I guess the third in
11:21
Speaker 1: line as far as size goes, there smaller than Caribbean
11:26
Speaker 1: flamingos bigger than the lesser flamingo though, which is another right. Yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: it's such a sad name to call something the lesser flamingo. Uh.
11:37
Speaker 1: They are the smallest. They're about three to three to
11:39
Speaker 1: five pounds ish. And they are also in Africa on
11:43
Speaker 1: the eastern uh and southern uh well, I say coasts,
11:47
Speaker 1: but they can go inland as well if they've got
11:48
Speaker 1: some good, good alkaline lakes going on, but also in
11:53
Speaker 1: places like Yemen. Yeah, you'll find flamingos and yemen in Pakistan,
11:56
Speaker 1: in India. These have the dark bills and the really
12:00
Speaker 1: really red eyes that are just beautiful to look at.
12:04
Speaker 1: And I believe this is the most abundant flamingo species, right, Yeah,
12:08
Speaker 1: there's like they'll gather in packs of like millions, one
12:11
Speaker 1: and a half two million, or at the very least
12:14
Speaker 1: that's how many of there are total. But they do,
12:16
Speaker 1: they do gather in huge flox as we'll see, Yeah,
12:19
Speaker 1: into the millions. That wasn't a hyperbole, by the way,
12:23
Speaker 1: chuck Um, Flamingos in Yemen is an excellent album title,
12:27
Speaker 1: oh man, not kidding. I mean talk about the album
12:30
Speaker 1: art too. It would be wonderful. Yeah, that could see like, uh,
12:35
Speaker 1: I don't know who would do that, Franz Ferdinand or
12:37
Speaker 1: somebody Franz Ferdinand or um what was our What did
12:41
Speaker 1: Ian Bowers say our brit pop band was something Star?
12:46
Speaker 1: I don't remember. That would be a great something Star
12:49
Speaker 1: album Flamingos and yam and we're claiming that for our
12:52
Speaker 1: band that we create after we retire. Okay, I just saw,
12:57
Speaker 1: by the way, Franz Ferdinand is opening for the Pixies
12:59
Speaker 1: on their leg which goes to Atlanta sweet when uh
13:04
Speaker 1: in June. That's pretty cool, man. Yeah, I used to
13:08
Speaker 1: love those guys. I've been on a huge Pixies kick
13:10
Speaker 1: right now, um, which I had been way off the
13:13
Speaker 1: Pixies for a while, Like, man, am I ever going
13:15
Speaker 1: to like the pixie First new music? I haven't heard
13:18
Speaker 1: any of the new stuff. I've just been. I just
13:20
Speaker 1: got off of their old stuff and then I got
13:22
Speaker 1: back into um Trump Lamont, which I mean it's just
13:27
Speaker 1: so good from start to finish. So yeah, I love
13:30
Speaker 1: the Pixies again everybody. And I don't really like Ray Donovan.
13:34
Speaker 1: So there's the two things you need to know about
13:36
Speaker 1: me from this episode. They're new when that came out
13:39
Speaker 1: late last year. Is Okay, it sounds like a Pixies record,
13:43
Speaker 1: but it's just it's not as weird. Oh yeah, it's
13:47
Speaker 1: kind of polished. I don't know. It just sounds like, hey,
13:50
Speaker 1: we're gonna make a Pixies record, so let's do that.
13:53
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, I think the new
13:54
Speaker 1: bass player is doing a great job. But do Miss
13:57
Speaker 1: Kim deal? So I mean, yeah, you gotta respect that though.
13:59
Speaker 1: The not just like we're going to cash in on
14:01
Speaker 1: the you know, three five albums that everybody's crazy about
14:05
Speaker 1: from the eighties and early nineties and just tour on that,
14:09
Speaker 1: although that's mostly what they played, thank goodness. So let's
14:12
Speaker 1: let's um, let's talk about I think the coolest Flamingo,
14:15
Speaker 1: or at least the most interesting of the flamingos. Obviously,
14:18
Speaker 1: the Caribbean Flamingos, the Money Flamingo far and away the best,
14:21
Speaker 1: just because it's so pink and pretty and perfect size
14:23
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But the Andean Flamingo, for my money,
14:27
Speaker 1: is the most interesting of all. Yeah, they're very rare,
14:31
Speaker 1: and it's just h I had no idea that they
14:34
Speaker 1: could live high up in the Andes Mountains like that. Um.
14:38
Speaker 1: I was just blown away by that because I thought
14:40
Speaker 1: they were really exclusively um, you know, like I said,
14:43
Speaker 1: sort of coastal birds. But um, there aren't a lot
14:46
Speaker 1: of about eighty thousand of them. And you will be
14:50
Speaker 1: very saddened to know that those lithium batteries that we
14:53
Speaker 1: all love because they last so long, lithium mining in
14:57
Speaker 1: climate change are driving them away and destroying them. Batteries
15:00
Speaker 1: kill flamingos, that's right. So yeah, there's about eighty thousand
15:04
Speaker 1: of them alive, and they are I think under threatened status,
15:09
Speaker 1: which is one step down from endangered and very much
15:12
Speaker 1: threatening to move into endangered. So I don't know the
15:16
Speaker 1: andian is vulnerable vulnerable Okay, so that's which is one
15:21
Speaker 1: step down. Okay, I got you, Thanks, no problem. And
15:25
Speaker 1: then James's flamingo is the one that you don't consider
15:30
Speaker 1: like a full fledged flamingo. No, No, that's its own.
15:32
Speaker 1: That's a species. That's the Caribbean flamingo that I consider
15:35
Speaker 1: a subspecies of the greater flamingo. All right, James's flamingo
15:41
Speaker 1: is um. They thought it was actually extinct um in
15:44
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, I believe. But then in the fifties.
15:48
Speaker 1: It's a whole Cela Camp comeback story because they discovered
15:52
Speaker 1: that there actually were James's flamingos that were mixed in
15:56
Speaker 1: with Chilean and Andy and flamingos in South America. Um,
16:01
Speaker 1: and not mixed in like they were interbreeding like the
16:03
Speaker 1: these huge flocks like we'll get across. The flocks of
16:06
Speaker 1: flamingos in the wild are so enormous and so populous
16:10
Speaker 1: it's crazy. But um, these flocks will there are these
16:14
Speaker 1: different species will kind of flock together, but they keep
16:17
Speaker 1: their distance from one another. And that's where they rediscovered
16:20
Speaker 1: the James flamingo that wasn't extinct after all. Yeah, named
16:24
Speaker 1: after the British naturalists who studied them, Harry Berkeley James,
16:30
Speaker 1: and I guess he just felt good enough about his
16:31
Speaker 1: work where he said, I'm gonna name you after me. Now,
16:34
Speaker 1: let's go have some mead, right, all right, I think
16:38
Speaker 1: we should take a break and have some mead and
16:41
Speaker 1: we'll talk about their pinkness right after this stuff. You
16:54
Speaker 1: should know, all right, we're back. One of the things
17:09
Speaker 1: I did know about flamingos, but only in a rudimentary way,
17:12
Speaker 1: was that they're pink because of what they eat. I
17:14
Speaker 1: did not know this at all. Really. I think that's
17:17
Speaker 1: a kind of a common like basic flamingo fact, which
17:20
Speaker 1: is why are they pink? Because this stuff they eat?
17:22
Speaker 1: Otherwise they oh no, not another one, not another seraph.
17:31
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that, you moron. Well, then could you do
17:35
Speaker 1: us the uh, the honors please and explain this? No, no,
17:39
Speaker 1: you go ahead, you're explaining it fine. I was just teasing. Well,
17:42
Speaker 1: it's because what they eat is rich in beta carotene,
17:45
Speaker 1: and what they largely eat is algae um. They stick
17:50
Speaker 1: their face down. If you see flamingos walking around in um,
17:54
Speaker 1: I guess like ankle too, whatever their knees would be
17:57
Speaker 1: knee deep water, you'll see them stick their face down
18:01
Speaker 1: there a lot and rummage around, and sometimes they'll just
18:04
Speaker 1: leave it down there, like fully dunked. And what they're
18:06
Speaker 1: doing is they're eating their filter feeders like a baleen whale,
18:10
Speaker 1: and they're just moving muddy water around and letting water
18:13
Speaker 1: swish around in their mouth, and they have these little
18:16
Speaker 1: uh what is it like a little filter yeah, described
18:20
Speaker 1: as like a comb like filter along. They're lower bill okay, no,
18:27
Speaker 1: their upper bill, yes, because they're upside down, so their
18:31
Speaker 1: upper bill is now their lower bill when they're feeding,
18:33
Speaker 1: and that's where the filter is, right, so they're they're
18:35
Speaker 1: kind of like that oil pulling. You know, some people
18:38
Speaker 1: swish essential oil in their mouth to like fight cavities
18:41
Speaker 1: or whatever. I didn't know that that's essentially what they're doing.
18:44
Speaker 1: They use their tongues to kind of switch the water
18:46
Speaker 1: back and forth and then spit it out and get
18:48
Speaker 1: some more water. And apparently they can do this like
18:50
Speaker 1: four times in a second. They're that fast to just
18:53
Speaker 1: gather really really small stuff. But the stuff that they're
18:57
Speaker 1: eating is so full of beta carotene um carotenoids actually
19:01
Speaker 1: that the flamingos um livers break the break them down
19:05
Speaker 1: into a pigment. Which is a fun word to say,
19:08
Speaker 1: and I'm about to say it. You ready can't as anthon?
19:13
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's way better than I what's I love it?
19:16
Speaker 1: It's one of my new favorite words. C A N
19:18
Speaker 1: t h A x A n t h I N
19:21
Speaker 1: can't as anthon? Yeah, good job. So it ends up
19:25
Speaker 1: in their feathers, in their skin, which turns them pink.
19:28
Speaker 1: And this is why Chuck, I think that lesser and
19:31
Speaker 1: Caribbean or Caribbean is a subspecies of Greater. Sorry, because
19:35
Speaker 1: the big distinction, I mean, yes, the Greater is a
19:38
Speaker 1: little bigger, not ridiculously bigger, but a big distinction is
19:42
Speaker 1: their coloring. And I think that it's because the Caribbean
19:46
Speaker 1: has more carotenoid rich diet than the Greater, and that
19:50
Speaker 1: they're really genetically essentially the same species, they just have
19:54
Speaker 1: different diets available to them. I think you're probably right, um.
19:59
Speaker 1: And you know, because they like to put flamingos in
20:02
Speaker 1: places like zoos for a long time, you're like, hey,
20:05
Speaker 1: you feed these things red peppers and carrots and orange things,
20:10
Speaker 1: and they turn and they keep that color. So we're
20:13
Speaker 1: just going to feed them that and which is terrible
20:16
Speaker 1: and a very lazy kind of point of view. Um,
20:19
Speaker 1: But I think you know, now zoos are mostly on board.
20:21
Speaker 1: I think with I was saying, okay, maybe we should
20:24
Speaker 1: just feed them what they like to eat. That also
20:26
Speaker 1: keeps them pink. And also you can turn orange everybody
20:30
Speaker 1: knows for meeting like too many carrots or mangoes or
20:32
Speaker 1: something like that, sweet potatoes. Um. And that's a condition
20:38
Speaker 1: is called kademia, which will turn up in our Lives
20:41
Speaker 1: show eventually. Oh, that's right, look for it. That's a
20:47
Speaker 1: nice little tease. Watch for it this fall on stuff
20:50
Speaker 1: you should know. Speaking of to her, we should just
20:54
Speaker 1: go ahead and mention, um, because people are kind of asking.
20:56
Speaker 1: We are doing these first three shows in real time
20:59
Speaker 1: this week, that will be by the time it comes
21:00
Speaker 1: out in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. But we are
21:04
Speaker 1: aiming to do six more shows in tiny little groups
21:08
Speaker 1: of three, hopefully in the in the late spring, in
21:12
Speaker 1: the early fall. And um, we haven't nailed the cities down,
21:16
Speaker 1: but you know that's that's what we're trying to do.
21:19
Speaker 1: Not nine shows this year. You really put all those
21:22
Speaker 1: questions to rest. Well, I mean, should we mention some
21:25
Speaker 1: of those cities? I don't want people to be disappointed?
21:29
Speaker 1: Yeah kind of No, I mean they're going to be
21:31
Speaker 1: disappointed eventually. White might as well just disappoint them now
21:34
Speaker 1: so they can be disappointed all year. Well, I think
21:36
Speaker 1: we're gonna finally hit in Nashville. Yeah, I think we're
21:40
Speaker 1: gonna do Orlando again and finish up in Atlanta again,
21:43
Speaker 1: our hometown shows. It's right, what about in between? Uh? Well,
21:48
Speaker 1: we're um, out of the four I think we're gonna
21:50
Speaker 1: pick three from probably Boston, New York, d C in Chicago,
21:55
Speaker 1: all cities that are great for stuff you should know,
21:59
Speaker 1: rich with suff you should know listeners. Yeah, and if
22:01
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this, like, you know, maybe nine shows
22:04
Speaker 1: a year, we're gonna have to mix it up because
22:06
Speaker 1: it's so easy to just go to like the same
22:08
Speaker 1: banger cities every time. But we've been to so many
22:12
Speaker 1: cities that turned out to be banger. Like surprisingly, Kansas
22:15
Speaker 1: City was a great show. Uh. St. Louis was a
22:18
Speaker 1: great show. Cleveland was a great show. Kansas. Yeah, Austin's
22:23
Speaker 1: always the jam. I mean, we've been to a bunch
22:26
Speaker 1: of places that were like this is this is actually
22:28
Speaker 1: really great time we want to come back. It's just, um,
22:31
Speaker 1: you know, if we're doing nine shows this year, we
22:33
Speaker 1: we guys, we just started out with our our usual
22:36
Speaker 1: how about that. Yeah, we're dipping our toe back in
22:38
Speaker 1: the live show pun but we we also like to
22:40
Speaker 1: add a brand new state. And that's why we're going
22:43
Speaker 1: to Nashville this year. So, uh, take Heed, take Heed,
22:50
Speaker 1: take heed. Boise. Yeah, that's good of Boise. We go
22:55
Speaker 1: see our old friend Dave Ruce, that's his stomping ground.
22:59
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, I think you can't tell is incredibly
23:03
Speaker 1: chipper and positive personality. That's true, very poisyan. And by
23:08
Speaker 1: the way, Chuck Um, we should give a shout out
23:10
Speaker 1: to Dave's podcast, A Bible Time Machine, Right, Yeah. Dave
23:15
Speaker 1: is a bit of a biblical scholar and takes a
23:17
Speaker 1: very sort of analytical view of the Bible in this podcast.
23:22
Speaker 1: It's not like a preachy thing, right right. So if
23:24
Speaker 1: you want to get to know Dave, Ru's one of
23:27
Speaker 1: our great writers that works for stuff you should know.
23:30
Speaker 1: You can get to know him a lot more wherever
23:32
Speaker 1: you get podcasts Bible Time Machine. Yeah, dare I say
23:36
Speaker 1: a sort of stuff you should know, like approach to
23:39
Speaker 1: biblical matters. I mean, how could it not be, you know? Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: I know. Can we go back to flamingos for goodness sakes,
23:48
Speaker 1: because this is where it gets really interesting to me.
23:51
Speaker 1: Is a lot of this stuff in the next five minutes,
23:56
Speaker 1: namely namely their age. Did you know that lived this old? No, dude,
24:01
Speaker 1: twenty to sixty years and the oldest flamingo on record
24:05
Speaker 1: was eighty three years old. Yeah, his name was Greater.
24:08
Speaker 1: He was a greater flamingo and they named him Greater
24:11
Speaker 1: at the Adelaide Zoo. He showed up at the zoo
24:13
Speaker 1: in the thirties and he died in two thousand fourteen.
24:17
Speaker 1: And he was just this amazing resident. And apparently the
24:19
Speaker 1: Adelaide Zoo had like a flamingo encounter where their flamingos
24:23
Speaker 1: were able to mix with humans, and that turned out
24:27
Speaker 1: very badly. Four Greater in two thousand and eight because
24:30
Speaker 1: four scumbag teenagers beat him almost to death for no
24:34
Speaker 1: reason other than he was there. He was an animal.
24:37
Speaker 1: And I looked so hard to find out what happened
24:39
Speaker 1: to those teenagers, and all I could find was that
24:41
Speaker 1: they were charged no follow up whatsoever, which really makes
24:45
Speaker 1: me think that they were released to their parents custody
24:48
Speaker 1: and they've probably been torturing animals ever since. Yeah, this
24:52
Speaker 1: this one was really tough to read about. I don't
24:56
Speaker 1: need to say anything else about it. And it's disgusting. Yeah,
24:58
Speaker 1: it is disgusting. And know that Australians are like the
25:02
Speaker 1: opposite of that as people. I know, it's really surprising.
25:05
Speaker 1: Hopefully they got hit in the butt with a giant
25:08
Speaker 1: boot like on the Simpsons, or maybe they gave the
25:13
Speaker 1: old outback treatment. You know what I mean, A dingo
25:17
Speaker 1: ate my scumbag. See if you can find your my
25:20
Speaker 1: own boys. Uh, that's not of course I don't. I'm
25:24
Speaker 1: not supporting, like you know, killing teenagers in retribution. But
25:30
Speaker 1: also we're not supporting teenagers beating up animals and getting
25:34
Speaker 1: away with especially an elderly animal too. It wasn't even
25:37
Speaker 1: like a young animal. It was three well let's see,
25:40
Speaker 1: so he was in his seventies, mid se flamingo that
25:45
Speaker 1: they beat up. I didn't mean to spend this much
25:48
Speaker 1: time on it, but I am a little worked up
25:49
Speaker 1: about us. Still, no, no, no, I'm with you, man,
25:51
Speaker 1: it's it's awful. Um. Flamingos may want to travel occasionally.
25:56
Speaker 1: They're considered non migratory, but they will get out of
26:00
Speaker 1: dodge if they need to. Um, if they you know,
26:03
Speaker 1: if the food isn't good or whatever there, or the
26:05
Speaker 1: waters um too higher, too low, they'll they'll go to
26:09
Speaker 1: greener pastures. And they'll do so with um a plum.
26:13
Speaker 1: Because they can travel. Man. They like to travel at night.
26:16
Speaker 1: They like those red eye flights and they can go
26:19
Speaker 1: like three hundred to four hundred miles a night. Yeah,
26:23
Speaker 1: they traveled between about thirty to forty miles per hour typically,
26:26
Speaker 1: so that's forty six kilo. That's pretty fast. Yeah, especially
26:31
Speaker 1: over ten straight hours, that's pretty impressive. But yeah, they
26:35
Speaker 1: typically like to stay where they are. It's just if
26:37
Speaker 1: the environment changes, they're like, all right, we're out of here,
26:40
Speaker 1: we gotta go find us a new alkaline flat. Yeah.
26:44
Speaker 1: What about the way they stand, because that's what really
26:47
Speaker 1: every time I've seen flamingos, and this is one of
26:48
Speaker 1: the main reasons I dug into this was why in
26:51
Speaker 1: the world did they stand there on one leg? Well,
26:53
Speaker 1: they thought for a long time it was to conserve
26:55
Speaker 1: body heat, which is another It must have come from
26:59
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century taxonomous don't get that that bony little
27:03
Speaker 1: leg and gonna conserve any heat. Um. But I guess
27:05
Speaker 1: they were like, well, there's no feathers or anything on it,
27:07
Speaker 1: so I guess it's a huge thing to lose heat.
27:09
Speaker 1: But there was more investigation that was like, no, actually,
27:14
Speaker 1: they have a really good system for conserving heat in
27:16
Speaker 1: their their bony little legs. Um, So that's not it.
27:19
Speaker 1: And they think probably it's just that it's more stable
27:23
Speaker 1: and possibly more comfortable for them to stand on one
27:27
Speaker 1: leg because they're able to lock the um the tendons
27:31
Speaker 1: and ligaments and muscles and joints and everything in the
27:34
Speaker 1: leg that they're standing on, and it's just like you're
27:37
Speaker 1: not you're not gonna fall over. Um. And then there's
27:39
Speaker 1: one other thing about this, chuck um. They have a knee.
27:43
Speaker 1: It's not what you think. It's not in the middle
27:45
Speaker 1: of their leg. That's not their knee. Their knee, which
27:48
Speaker 1: allows them to move forward and backward is um where
27:51
Speaker 1: they're where our hips are. It's up in their body
27:53
Speaker 1: about where our hips are. That's what their knee where
27:57
Speaker 1: their hips. I don't know. I saw that they have
28:00
Speaker 1: hips though that they do have hips. They're similar to
28:02
Speaker 1: other birds, but I don't know if that was a
28:04
Speaker 1: reference to their actual knee. Interesting. Yeah, you can tell
28:09
Speaker 1: they're locked in like when they're standing there, they're not.
28:12
Speaker 1: They're not swaying around Like put me on one leg
28:14
Speaker 1: for a little while and you're gonna see a little movement. Yeah, yeah,
28:19
Speaker 1: you are. They tell you not to like lock your
28:21
Speaker 1: knees um for very long because you can faint for
28:24
Speaker 1: some reason. We'll have to do a short stuff on
28:25
Speaker 1: that sometime for humans. Yes, well, well you're not flamingo
28:30
Speaker 1: esk in that respect, No, not at all. Uh. You
28:33
Speaker 1: mentioned their communities and this is just amazing. They their
28:37
Speaker 1: their colonies or their flamboyance, which is we did a
28:41
Speaker 1: whole episode on on those names. Um, a flamboyance of flamingoes.
28:45
Speaker 1: I've seen other places say a regiment or a flurry
28:48
Speaker 1: or a stand, but why would you not say a
28:50
Speaker 1: flamboyance of flamingo Don't know, I just just just lock
28:54
Speaker 1: that in like a ligament, that's right. Yeah. So, um,
28:59
Speaker 1: I think there was a study that was done in
29:03
Speaker 1: that kind of uh looked at these groups and started
29:06
Speaker 1: to like actually pay attention to individual members of them,
29:09
Speaker 1: and found that like that, the the the groups have
29:13
Speaker 1: incredibly complex social relationships and interactions, and there's clicks within
29:17
Speaker 1: these larger groups, and um, some members will have enemies
29:22
Speaker 1: and um, this is actually something I liked about flamingos.
29:25
Speaker 1: They tend to be very peaceful. Like it's not one
29:28
Speaker 1: of those things where you like, oh, that beautiful pink
29:29
Speaker 1: bird likes to eat tear the heads off of lizards
29:32
Speaker 1: and beat up one another or something like that. They're
29:34
Speaker 1: actually super peaceful animals. They like to avoid their enemies.
29:38
Speaker 1: They don't. They're just kind of like, hey, man, relax,
29:41
Speaker 1: don't do it, you know when you want to get Yeah,
29:44
Speaker 1: they have friends, um, they and they also are serial monogamous,
29:48
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Yeah, they get together, uh for a
29:53
Speaker 1: mating season, and they typically change it up after that
29:56
Speaker 1: mating season and get a new partner, but they stick
29:58
Speaker 1: together through that mating season in and they will um,
30:03
Speaker 1: they will, they will co uh. I guess well, I
30:06
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about their breeding. They breed when
30:09
Speaker 1: they want to breed, which is kind of cool. It's
30:11
Speaker 1: not like a certain time of year or you know,
30:14
Speaker 1: any particular season. It's just got to be like the
30:18
Speaker 1: right spot, the right um circumstance, and then they get
30:22
Speaker 1: it on. And if you want to see some fun stuff,
30:25
Speaker 1: just go on an internet video player and just um
30:30
Speaker 1: check out Flamingo Mating Dance Ritual or something like that,
30:35
Speaker 1: and just watch all the beautiful myriad videos that are
30:39
Speaker 1: online from the BBC and other places of these huge
30:44
Speaker 1: groups of like hundreds and like you said, they can
30:46
Speaker 1: group in the millions. At least there was the hundreds
30:50
Speaker 1: of thousands. But yes, I'm all thought there was a
30:52
Speaker 1: flamingo flock once that hit million and they were like,
30:55
Speaker 1: we did it a flock a flamboyance. I'm sorry, thank
30:58
Speaker 1: you for saving me from I sell uh. And they
31:02
Speaker 1: just you know, they move around and dance and if
31:05
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of um mating rituals include dance
31:08
Speaker 1: in the wild, but it's usually like a male dancing
31:11
Speaker 1: to attract the attention of the female. But in this case,
31:14
Speaker 1: they're both trying to impress one another. And the most
31:18
Speaker 1: um I guess prolific maters are the ones. They're about
31:24
Speaker 1: twenty years old, by the way, which is right in
31:26
Speaker 1: the wheelhouse, but they are the ones that have the
31:29
Speaker 1: most dance moves and the the best ability to switch
31:33
Speaker 1: between those moves. And it's really kind of cute, you know.
31:36
Speaker 1: It's like literally dancing and how impressive is your dance? Right?
31:40
Speaker 1: And it's it's it bears a strong resemblance to how
31:43
Speaker 1: humans mate, where like you're at a club and you're
31:46
Speaker 1: dancing together to see how you connect, and if it's
31:49
Speaker 1: just right, then you go off together and stay together
31:52
Speaker 1: for a year, right, And that's just like flamingos are, right,
31:57
Speaker 1: and back to that when they do finally get together,
32:00
Speaker 1: the both the male and the female UM will help
32:04
Speaker 1: nurture that egg and sit with that egg because it's
32:07
Speaker 1: only one egg. Um, the incubation period is pretty short,
32:10
Speaker 1: it's about a month, and so they they're really both
32:13
Speaker 1: involved in that process, which is kind of cool. Yeah,
32:16
Speaker 1: it's remarkable actually, Um, some of those dance moves to
32:19
Speaker 1: there like stuff you'd expect, you know, like them flapping
32:23
Speaker 1: and bending their heads and sticking their tails up and stuff.
32:26
Speaker 1: But they also do huh, a lot of headwork, that's right, Yeah, yes,
32:32
Speaker 1: so then that's what you would think with a flamingo.
32:34
Speaker 1: But they also have at least one move where they
32:37
Speaker 1: put like a wing point in one direction and the
32:39
Speaker 1: leg points in another, which very much brings to mind
32:43
Speaker 1: John Travolta on the cover Saturday Night Fever. And there's
32:47
Speaker 1: actually a name for that move. It's called the disco finger.
32:50
Speaker 1: So Flamingos do the disco finger. So if a flamboyance
32:54
Speaker 1: of Flamingos doing the disco finger isn't enough to make
32:56
Speaker 1: you love Flamingos, then there's something really wrong with you. Yeah,
33:01
Speaker 1: that's another bumper sticker. We've got batteries killed Flamingos and
33:05
Speaker 1: flamingos with the disco sticker for the exactly. Here's another
33:10
Speaker 1: kind of fun thing when it comes to mating season
33:13
Speaker 1: is the ladies will almost adorned makeup. Um. There is
33:18
Speaker 1: a gland on their tail which produces you know how
33:22
Speaker 1: they have that that that coloration. It produces a really
33:26
Speaker 1: rich version of that carrotinoid oil, and they will they
33:31
Speaker 1: will wipe it on their bills and on their wings
33:34
Speaker 1: as like like pretty in themselves up a little bit.
33:38
Speaker 1: And it gets even better because after they have made
33:41
Speaker 1: it there, after mating season, they stopped doing that. They're
33:45
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not gonna bother anymore. Just like humans, man,
33:49
Speaker 1: Flamingos are a lot and I think it's actually both
33:52
Speaker 1: um sexes that do that that makeup. I don't think
33:55
Speaker 1: it's just females. But yeah, they're they're just like whatever,
33:58
Speaker 1: we we already landed a eat? Was that just flamingo
34:01
Speaker 1: sexist a little bit? But that's okay, you didn't mean.
34:05
Speaker 1: There's also another remarkable thing about flamingos that they're part
34:09
Speaker 1: of just a small handful of birds that produced milk
34:13
Speaker 1: for their young. And you're like, whoa, that would make
34:16
Speaker 1: them mammals? Wrong? There's actually like pigeons, flamingos, and I
34:22
Speaker 1: don't remember the other one. There's maybe one or two
34:25
Speaker 1: more that produced milk and what this is called crop milk,
34:28
Speaker 1: and they produce it through um glands that line all
34:32
Speaker 1: along their digestive tract and it's full of that carotenoid
34:37
Speaker 1: um rich fatty rich um food. There's also a lot
34:41
Speaker 1: of red blood cells, which I suspect probably imparts to
34:44
Speaker 1: their young um like immunity to like disease and stuff
34:48
Speaker 1: like that. And it's like really red um. So people
34:51
Speaker 1: are like, wow, that that flamingo is killing the other
34:53
Speaker 1: flamingo is dripping blood all over it. That's actually it's
34:56
Speaker 1: it's crop milk. And that's pretty cool because as Chuck,
35:01
Speaker 1: both sexes produced the crop milk in both sexes take
35:04
Speaker 1: turns not only caring for the chick but feeding the
35:06
Speaker 1: chick too. And Chuck, by the way, they only lay
35:09
Speaker 1: one egg at a time typically, so a couple, this
35:12
Speaker 1: monogamous couple will both be feeding their one kid milk
35:18
Speaker 1: at the same time. Well not at the same time probably,
35:20
Speaker 1: but you know, in the same rearing. How about that
35:24
Speaker 1: and both letting their appearance go. That's right. It's the
35:27
Speaker 1: same time, not wearing any makeup. They both look very tired. Uh.
35:32
Speaker 1: This Um, the parents care for this little chickie for
35:35
Speaker 1: about a week in the nest and then they kind
35:37
Speaker 1: of go to daycare almost uh. And that they go
35:41
Speaker 1: off with all the other little babies, and they're called
35:43
Speaker 1: crutches and there are a few adults sort of watching
35:46
Speaker 1: out like daycare workers. Uh. And then nine to thirteen
35:50
Speaker 1: weeks later, and we should say they're born um basically
35:53
Speaker 1: sort of kind of grayish white or brownish white. And
35:57
Speaker 1: then once they start, you know, eating all the stuff,
36:00
Speaker 1: then they get that pink hue. But nine to thirteen
36:02
Speaker 1: weeks is when they're gonna kind of, you know, get
36:04
Speaker 1: ready to go and beat full fledged flamingos. They can
36:09
Speaker 1: also perhaps form same sex couples, right like there there
36:14
Speaker 1: was a pair at the Denver Zoo, very very sweet. Uh,
36:19
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass. Uh. Lance was the Chilean flamingo.
36:24
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury was an American flamingo and or say was
36:28
Speaker 1: I guess is I think they're still around, but sadly
36:31
Speaker 1: not together. They got together before the pandemic in twin
36:35
Speaker 1: and we're surrogate parents, basically for breeding couples that abandoned
36:39
Speaker 1: their eggs, and then apparently about a year later, after
36:43
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit, they said too much. I've had enough, right,
36:49
Speaker 1: but we'll part close friends. The human lance Bass is
36:53
Speaker 1: surely honored to have had a flamingo named after him
36:56
Speaker 1: that was in the same sex couple with the flamingo
36:59
Speaker 1: named after Freddie Mark Greek. Don't you think sure? He
37:02
Speaker 1: already has a fish named after him, m man, dad,
37:07
Speaker 1: we should take a break, Yeah, we said, all right,
37:09
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Stuff. You should know, all right, Chuck,
37:33
Speaker 1: we're back, and um. People have really enjoyed flamingos for
37:37
Speaker 1: a long time, a lot longer than than even just
37:40
Speaker 1: since we started appreciating flamingos, you and me. Yeah, like
37:44
Speaker 1: a few days ago. Way longer than that, like thousands
37:49
Speaker 1: of years longer than that. As a matter of fact,
37:51
Speaker 1: there's a cave painting from southern Spain that dates from
37:55
Speaker 1: seven thousand years before present that has a flamingo on.
37:59
Speaker 1: It's pretty much unmistakable. Yeah, I'll just look at the
38:03
Speaker 1: cave and they're the answers. They're an Egyptian art there,
38:07
Speaker 1: you know, since there has been kids books. They've been
38:11
Speaker 1: all over kids books because kids obviously are going to
38:14
Speaker 1: be fascinated by flamingoes because they're so striking. That's why
38:18
Speaker 1: there's one hanging on my daughter's wall. Although I don't
38:20
Speaker 1: think we have any flamingo books. Oh, you need to
38:24
Speaker 1: remedy that situation. But if someone hasn't written one about
38:27
Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass and there's an opportunity they're waiting.
38:33
Speaker 1: I have two flamingo dads exactly. Um. But you know,
38:38
Speaker 1: it probably would also not surprise you to learn that
38:40
Speaker 1: not too long ago in the nineteenth century, flamingoes were
38:44
Speaker 1: hunted and killed because the ladies had to have those
38:48
Speaker 1: lovely pink feathers in their hats. Um, they would eat flamingos. Um.
38:53
Speaker 1: It was a you know, if you go back to
38:56
Speaker 1: like ancient Rome, it was a um, a delicacy, and
39:00
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world too. I think, yeah,
39:03
Speaker 1: and that's just so just old timey again kind of
39:07
Speaker 1: dim humans like look at that pretty feather. I'm gonna
39:10
Speaker 1: go kill that thing that has those pretty feathers, and
39:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill them so often that they're gonna just
39:15
Speaker 1: go extinct. So, Chuck, did you know this that they
39:20
Speaker 1: think at least the Caribbean ones probable that all flamingos
39:25
Speaker 1: are I'm just making that up, but at the least
39:28
Speaker 1: the Caribbean um flamingos seemed to hail from Florida. People
39:33
Speaker 1: consider them um native to like maybe the Bahamas or
39:36
Speaker 1: Cuba or somewhere else. Nope, they seem to have originated
39:42
Speaker 1: or be native to South Florida, specifically the Keys. Yeah.
39:47
Speaker 1: And I think that they were so overhunted. It was
39:51
Speaker 1: thought that they, like any flamingos in the twentieth century,
39:55
Speaker 1: were either just travelers who got you know, lost on
39:59
Speaker 1: the way to the Caribbean, or they were escaped captives. Uh.
40:03
Speaker 1: And so they tagged one. I think in the twenty
40:05
Speaker 1: tins there was a flamingo name Conky or Conchi, depending
40:11
Speaker 1: on how you say the word conk, conch. What do
40:14
Speaker 1: you say conky? Okay? I said Conky two. Uh. And
40:18
Speaker 1: they saw this swimmingo. I think they tagged it. It
40:22
Speaker 1: was near an airfield on Boca Chica Key oh Bosa,
40:28
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Oh. And they gave you the old
40:33
Speaker 1: satellite transmitter treatment on the leg. And then I said
40:36
Speaker 1: I'm sure this thing is going to go back to
40:37
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, and they said, no, this thing is actually
40:40
Speaker 1: sticking around and is permanent. So, like, I think that's
40:45
Speaker 1: whether they when they decided, hey, I think these these
40:48
Speaker 1: are not wayward travelers or captives that have escaped. I
40:52
Speaker 1: think they're Florida flamingos. Yeah, And they they said, well,
40:55
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's possible that they are escaped ones
40:58
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of nineteenth century eroad tycoons
41:01
Speaker 1: that built like enormous estates for themselves and imported flamingos
41:05
Speaker 1: for those estates, because the local flamingos are all dead,
41:08
Speaker 1: and uh, scientists have said, like, it doesn't matter. We're
41:11
Speaker 1: just going to say this is the native population rebounding,
41:13
Speaker 1: and let's just call it that and stop asking questions.
41:16
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Now the flamingos are coming back and
41:18
Speaker 1: they're from Florida originally. That's right. And I think which
41:21
Speaker 1: one is actually increasing in population? The Caribbean and I
41:25
Speaker 1: believe the Greater are both increasing in population, if I'm
41:29
Speaker 1: not mistaken. Yeah, I think so. Which is great? Yeah,
41:32
Speaker 1: that is great, it's Greater. Um, they're about twenty thousand.
41:36
Speaker 1: I heard that. By the way, they're about twenty thousand
41:39
Speaker 1: flamingos living in um. I say captivity. It is captivity,
41:44
Speaker 1: but the in in zoos basically, and uh, we have
41:48
Speaker 1: them here in our Atlanta zoo. You can go buy
41:50
Speaker 1: and visit them. I guess that counts. At this place
41:53
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, they're like fifteen or twenty that they
41:55
Speaker 1: had probably wouldn't that many, maybe about a dozen. Um.
42:00
Speaker 1: But they have found that, you know, flamingos like to
42:02
Speaker 1: be in big, large groups when it comes to these
42:05
Speaker 1: mating rituals. They like, they like a lot of um choice,
42:09
Speaker 1: I think in their selective mates. And so they said,
42:13
Speaker 1: these smaller groups, they're not mating like they should. So
42:15
Speaker 1: at least one zoo in England, the well it's spelled Colchester.
42:19
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not pronounced that way. Um, it's probably
42:23
Speaker 1: Colster or something like that. Kolki. Yeah, the Kulki Zoo
42:26
Speaker 1: in England put up big, full length mirrors to trick
42:30
Speaker 1: them into thinking they were bigger groups, right, and it worked.
42:33
Speaker 1: They like to look at themselves too, apparently. Yeah, But
42:35
Speaker 1: I mean it gave them the illusion that there was
42:37
Speaker 1: way more flamingos than they all started to dance and
42:40
Speaker 1: get it on and sex with a mirror. Yeah, and
42:43
Speaker 1: the flamingo population and captivity in England was saved. Uh
42:48
Speaker 1: oh really yeah, I'm just wrapping it up. Okay. They
42:55
Speaker 1: clip their wings generally when they're in zoos because they
42:58
Speaker 1: will fly away of worse. Uh And if they don't
43:01
Speaker 1: get on those wings enough and they they managed to
43:04
Speaker 1: sneak out a little more wings size, then they will
43:08
Speaker 1: fly away and they'll they'll go away and this zoo
43:13
Speaker 1: flamingo will be found many meaning miles away for years
43:17
Speaker 1: and years in a row and become little celebrities. Yeah.
43:19
Speaker 1: Apparently there was a ranger at the Great Salt Lake
43:23
Speaker 1: who reported a flamingo and was I apparently told or
43:27
Speaker 1: asked if there was an elephant with it, because there's
43:30
Speaker 1: just no flamingos at the at the Great Salt Lake.
43:33
Speaker 1: But this one named Pink Floyd escaped from the Tracy
43:36
Speaker 1: Aviary in Salt Lake City and was like, holy cow,
43:39
Speaker 1: a huge salt lake. This is exactly where I want
43:41
Speaker 1: to be. But sadly, um, I mean he basically lived
43:45
Speaker 1: there for the rest of his life, but he was alone. Um.
43:48
Speaker 1: So there was actually a group in Salt Lake City
43:51
Speaker 1: called the Friends of Floyd who wanted to import twenty
43:54
Speaker 1: five more flamingos, and the people running Great Salt Lake,
43:58
Speaker 1: I guess park where like this is a really bad idea.
44:00
Speaker 1: These are not a native species. We should not be
44:02
Speaker 1: importing them in the twenty century. We know better than
44:05
Speaker 1: doing that. Despite how a lone Floyd is. Yeah, good
44:08
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, and I did mention eating them. They
44:12
Speaker 1: used to eat them in ancient Rome. Uh. There was
44:15
Speaker 1: a writer for Slate, Molly Olmstead, that was um shocked
44:19
Speaker 1: to find out about the number of Google searches for
44:22
Speaker 1: can you eat a Flamingo a few years ago, And
44:26
Speaker 1: she kind of chalked it up to people not necessarily
44:28
Speaker 1: thinking like, hey, I want to go eat a flamingo,
44:30
Speaker 1: but just reading about them and people thinking, well, they're birds.
44:33
Speaker 1: I'm curious to people eat them. Uh and not a
44:36
Speaker 1: genuine like um effort to eat a flamingo. No, but
44:40
Speaker 1: they definitely did eat them, apparently. Pliny the Elder wrote
44:43
Speaker 1: that they have the most exquisite flavor and um because
44:48
Speaker 1: they set the tongues specifically too. Oh yeah, I'm sorry,
44:51
Speaker 1: that's right. The flamingo tongues and flamingo meat tongue is
44:55
Speaker 1: actually really good. Man, If you're gonna eat an animal,
44:57
Speaker 1: the tongue is not to be wasted. Typically, I don't
45:00
Speaker 1: like tongue. That's fine. I'm just telling you. If you've
45:03
Speaker 1: never tried it before, okay, and you don't like it,
45:06
Speaker 1: I don't like the consistency. Wait, hold on, let me
45:08
Speaker 1: do it. You what you don't like tongue? No, I
45:13
Speaker 1: don't think you should like wasted. I'm glad people eat
45:15
Speaker 1: it if they're gonna be eating an animal, but it's
45:18
Speaker 1: not for me. I understand. And yeah, I would never
45:20
Speaker 1: impress that on you. I appreciate that. But the meat
45:25
Speaker 1: of a flamingo probably has a really distinct taste, and
45:28
Speaker 1: that they have, you know, layers of fat because they're
45:30
Speaker 1: a water bird. Water birds have layers of fat like duck.
45:34
Speaker 1: Duck is delicious obviously in part because of its huge
45:37
Speaker 1: fat content, but then also they eat so much algae
45:41
Speaker 1: that they would have huge levels of Omega three, which
45:43
Speaker 1: could give them a fishy taste. Right, I think that's
45:46
Speaker 1: the deal. Two fishy a ducky fishy taste. Yeah. I
45:51
Speaker 1: don't eat duck either, so I don't know what a
45:53
Speaker 1: duck taste like, Oh, duck's really good too, is it? Yeah? Yeah,
45:58
Speaker 1: there's an eat anything I've spent time with. I understand
46:01
Speaker 1: that's hypocritical for people that out there that are vegan,
46:04
Speaker 1: So I get it. It's to me the email. Well,
46:06
Speaker 1: the thing is, if you spend enough time with them,
46:08
Speaker 1: they'll let their guard down, and that's when you pounce.
46:13
Speaker 1: There's a Chinese restaurant actually called Pee King Gourmet in
46:17
Speaker 1: Falls Church, Virginia that makes it a whole roast duck
46:21
Speaker 1: and it is one of the best things you'll ever
46:24
Speaker 1: eat in your entire life. Okay, I think it's called
46:29
Speaker 1: Peking Gourmet. It might just be called Peeking Duck one
46:31
Speaker 1: of the two. But it's Rember of the Christmas story.
46:38
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. I mean we uh, I think
46:40
Speaker 1: we should direct people to our I get Was it
46:43
Speaker 1: a short stuff on the lawn ornaments? Yeah, yeah it was.
46:49
Speaker 1: We did a whole short stuff on pink flamingo lawn
46:52
Speaker 1: ornaments and it's a pretty cool story. So go seek
46:54
Speaker 1: that out, is what I say. Uh, And there really
46:56
Speaker 1: isn't anything else. And since Chuck said go seek that out,
46:59
Speaker 1: of course everybody do. That means it's time for a listener, Mayo. Okay,
47:05
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this sort of Laurn mystery solved. You
47:08
Speaker 1: know the story of when I adopted my um my
47:11
Speaker 1: buddy Lauren, who was no longer with this. He had
47:15
Speaker 1: a silver back and that's when Tim Curry referred to
47:18
Speaker 1: him as looking like a baboon. Right, So this is
47:22
Speaker 1: solved by Sarah Patton. I think, uh nice things that
47:27
Speaker 1: Sarah has to say about the show and Tim Curry.
47:29
Speaker 1: And then that's Chuck mentioned that his silver back eventually
47:33
Speaker 1: disappeared and it maybe think it could have been a
47:35
Speaker 1: fever coat prior to birth. The kitten's coat is very
47:38
Speaker 1: sensitive to heat, but MoMA cat has a fever during
47:41
Speaker 1: pregnancy from an illness or prolonged stress could potentially affect
47:44
Speaker 1: the pigments in her. Kittens spur. So a fever coat
47:47
Speaker 1: is typically great or silver, and then it resolves when
47:50
Speaker 1: it kittens around four months old, although it can take
47:53
Speaker 1: up to a year. Even though the kittens pigment um
47:57
Speaker 1: didn't fully develop while they were in the womb, there
48:00
Speaker 1: coat is still written in their d n A. There's
48:03
Speaker 1: no negative implications for our the kitten's future overall health
48:07
Speaker 1: just a fun quirk when you're young. Wow, like when
48:12
Speaker 1: you're born with a vestigial tail and it falls off
48:15
Speaker 1: at age two. I guess so so that I think
48:17
Speaker 1: that solves the mystery. Um. This is from Sarah Patton
48:21
Speaker 1: and Sarah's Greyton knows a lot about cat and cat
48:24
Speaker 1: rescue and is doing a lot of good work in
48:26
Speaker 1: that realm awesome. Thanks a lot, Sarah. That is pretty cool.
48:30
Speaker 1: You put that mystery to rest and we thank you
48:32
Speaker 1: for it. How do you feel good now that it's
48:35
Speaker 1: it's salved I love it. I need to tell Emily
48:37
Speaker 1: about the Fever Coach school. Well, if you want to
48:41
Speaker 1: be like Sarah and put some mystery to rest, we
48:43
Speaker 1: love that kind of stuff. You can do it in
48:45
Speaker 1: an email. Send it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
48:48
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
48:54
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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Speaker 1: i heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are were iver you
49:00
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows m HM