They are apparently very peaceful. But flamenco create water tornadoes. They use their legs, heads and peaks to create a storm of tornadoes or vortices in the water. Thus they can concentrate and engulf their prey.
Studies of Chilean flamenco were done in the Nashville Zoo. And 3D printed models of their legs and peaks were analyzed in the form of L. Thus the researchers documented how these birds obtain their food.
Aquatic vortices
«Flemish are actually predators. They actively look for animals that move in the water. And the problem they face is how to concentrate, gather them and feed them, ”Víctor Ortega Jiménez explained in a statement. He is an attached professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, specialized in biomechanics. «Think of spiders, who weave cobwebs to catch insects. Flamencos use vortices to catch animals, such as artemias ».
The findings were published this week in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It turns out that flamenco uses their palm and flexible legs to remove the sediment from the bottom. Then they drive it in spirals that then extract to the surface moving their heads up as if they were small tornadoes. Meanwhile, bird heads remain mouth inside the aquatic vortex. Their angular picos Castañetean to create smaller vortices that direct the sediment and food to their mouths, where they are extracted by filtration.
The flamenco peak has the peculiarity of being flattened at its front end. So when the bird's head is face down in the water, the flat part is parallel to the bottom. This allows you to use another technique called Skimming. This implies using its long S -shaped neck to boost the head forward while quickly flashing with the beak. In this way it creates vortices in the form of a sheet that catch their prey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cgcf8th5NK
Active predator
Flamencos create water tornadoes and this denies their previous reputation. It was thought that it was a passive animal that feeds by filtration. "It seems that they only filter passive particles, but no, they actually capture moving animals," they say.
The principles he discovered could be used to design better systems to concentrate and absorb tiny particles. For example, microplastics, water; best self -mitble filters; or robots that, like flamenco, can walk and run in the mud.
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