Stuff You Should Know - The Glorious Flamingo

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Flamingos are much more than just pretty pink birds. They are in fact, quite remarkable! Listen and learn…See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships,

gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know,

another animal edition, which everybody loves those. And so do I. I think, I would love to see a master list of all the animals that we've covered. Sure. It's probably longer than I think. Twice as long, maybe. But these are about mingos, I'm super excited,

because A, I mean, who isn't sort of fascinated by flamingos, their attention-getters with their funny one-legged stance and their pink. Right. But when we finally went down to the Caribbean for the first time this year to the Bahamas, they had some mingos on their property, and they would do a, you know, you could walk by them

and just say hi and stuff like that. And then in the morning, they would do a little flamingo parade. Oh, really? Where they would walk them around the property. People would, ooh, nah, or you could follow along, which of course we did. And that just got my brain thinking, you know,

Ruby has had a painting, we got a $10 painting, like a real painting that someone did with their hands for 10 bucks. That's quite a deal. Of a tight grouping of flamingos, kind of from the neck up, that's been in her room her whole life almost, and I was just like, I gotta learn about these things.

That's a great composition, the group of flamingos from the neck up. I've seen it before, not necessarily your painting, but I've seen that composition before, and it is. It's a trope. It's great. No, it's good, cause it could be like trees or sea grass, like any spindly grouping of things.

So this is a painting of sea grass? Well, you know what I mean. Tall, reedy, spindly things. I see, I see, okay. So this is a lot like the Possum episode for me in that like I generally knew some stuff, but I learned a bunch of new cool stuff, and now I'm a big Flamingo fan.

Yeah, same. So you said something about them parading around. Apparently, so was there a human saying like, hey, this way everybody, the parades going this way, and the flamingos would kind of follow? Yeah, they had like a electric cattle prod. Right, right. Apparently flamingos respond to that really well.

No, they had humans that were just sort of walking along and sort of, it seemed like just a very gentle, wavy, corral-ing type of gesture. Right, so there's a video artist, an Israeli video artist who went to a zoo in Germany. So cool. And she came up with a video, five minute video called 69 boughs, I think, 67 boughs.

67, get your head out of the gutter. 67 boughs, all right. And it was the flamingos responding to a hand gesture she did, and all the flamingos would bow at once, but really it's like they're ducking. And then the artist inserted, I think very earnestly, but in retrospect also really hilariously,

a gunshot sound, and then the flamingos would duck every time the gunshot sound went off. It's pretty funny. Yeah, that was a little weird. I didn't expect that. This is, by the way, a video artist named Naira, or Nira Pyreg. Right.

Give credit where credit's due, but us all the same thing. And it was interesting to see them move in unison. I watch a lot of flamingo videos. It's very fascinating the way they move about the earth. For sure. They do have a certain odd gangly grace to them, don't they? Yeah.

So flamingos actually are different from just about every other birds. Apparently, their order, finiciopteraforms. Nice. Thank you. I haven't spelled out. I think you inserted an extra letter in there. No, I didn't.

Finiciopteraforms. So what's... Should I quibble? No. I mean, yeah, sure, go ahead. I don't have an I after the C. I just have finiciopteraforms. My brain literally was like, nope, we're doing it.

I don't care what you see. We're doing, we're adding the extra. So finiciopteraforms. Yeah. Stupid brain. Your sounds better if that makes you feel better. It does make me feel a little better. But that's the order that flamingos belong to.

And there's only five species as we'll see. But they are just the... Like it's just flamingos that belong to the order. And they diverged from other birds a really long time ago. But geneticists and biologists loved to taxonomize things. So they've tried to figure out the closest living relative to the flamingo. And what we did for a very long time was like,

oh, that animal looks like that animal. They must be very closely related. And as genetics have kind of come of age, starting in around 2000 was, I think, a really big turning point with the Human Genome Project. We found that genetically speaking, that's a terrible way to classify things. And the flamingos are a good example of that.

Yeah, it's kind of lazy. It is. It's also, it's old-timey and dumb in a sense. You know what I mean? It is. Like, oh, they look like storks. So let's just put them in that group. And that's what they did for a while, storks and herons.

And then, no, maybe they're more like geese and swans and ducks, but that wasn't right. And finally, it took a while. I mean, the early aughts in 2001 is when they finally said, you know, genetically speaking, they're closest to something called, is that a greeb? I'm gonna go with greeb.

G-R-E-B-E-S. And they are sort of duckish. Olivia helped us out. She said duck-like, I would agree with that. And what it did, though, was it kind of brought up what we're talking about. Apparently, I don't think it was like a firestorm, but I think it was a case where they said,

hey, like, we should do this better. And this is a prime example. Right. And the old school taxonomists hung their head in shame and kind of slung off and retired and died at various times. That's right. So the word flamingo bears a striking resemblance to a Spanish word, flamenco,

which you can't say that word without putting, without snapping one finger at about your stomach and one above your head. I can, at least. I know, it's really the thing to do. And that word flamenco has, it means actually the bird, the flamingo. It also refers to that dance style

and style of music, flamenco. And it also refers to a person from Flanders, which is part of Belgium, right? So a Flemish person would be called a flamenco in Spanish. Yeah, and I'm not sure why those are connected and used in the same word, but they are. All right, well, that is weird. We are gonna, I guess, talk about the different kinds,

the species. And five, is there not a sixth? There's, okay, so I'm siding with the ones who say one's a subspecies of another. Oh, okay. All right. You've already put yourself in a particular flamingo camp, I see.

I have, as a matter of fact, and I'm gonna stay there until genetics proves me wrong. All right, well, we'll start with the greater flamingo. This is the big fella. They can be five feet tall. They can weigh up like close to nine pounds, which doesn't sound like a lot, but if you look at a flamingo,

there's a lot of bony leg and there's not a lot of body there. A lot of negative space they don't take up. Yeah, exactly. These are pretty pale when it comes to their pinkness, and we should talk, and I guess through this, we'll talk about their distribution, because it may surprise you. I kind of thought it was just like,

yeah, they're in the Caribbean and Florida, and that's it, but that's not true at all. These are in Africa, Southern Europe, and Asia, as in South Asia and Western Asia, and they like, one of the cool things about flamingos is they sometimes will live where no other animals can or will live, and that is really saline or alkaline lakes and mudflats and places like that.

Yeah, in that sense, they fill in a specific ecological niche that there's really not many other animals that do, and that's just the first interesting, weird, unusual fact about flamingos, right? Just get ready. Yeah, I had no idea. So they eat stuff in the saltiest, briniest parts of Earth. That's where they like to be.

So the Caribbean flamingo, which we know of as the American flamingo, is considered by some, including myself, a subspecies of the greater flamingo, which would make there just five species of flamingo, technically. Right, and these are the ones that I saw. They are smaller, they are super, super pink,

very brightly colored. These are the very same flamingos, the ones that I saw that actor Leah Shriver played with the week before. Oh, did he really, man? You know how when you get in a car to go to the place wherever you're going? They always like to talk about stuff like that,

and this car driver was like, you know, I can't do the accent, but he said that Ray Donovan was here last week. And I went, oh, I was like, I love Leah Shriver. And Emily, of course, looked it up, and he, if you want to see like 40 pictures of Leah Shriver's family doing things in the Bahamas, you can do that online,

because that must be what it's like to be a real celebrity. Right. I couldn't imagine. There was this picture after picture. Flamingos, and here he is at the water slide. And it's like, did they just follow him around with a camera? And I guess the answer is yes.

I started to watch Ray Donovan once on a flight, because I've heard nothing but good things about it. But I must have come in on like season five or something like that, because you know on Delta they have like rando episodes. It's so weird. Yeah, it's so strange. So I, and when I came in, it was like either,

I think the season premiere of some late season, and like he's clearly having some sort of mental breakdown because he's having a crisis of conscience from killing people. And I was like, oh, this again. The killer can't just take killing any longer. I'm like, I'm not doing this. I'm done.

Yeah, I enjoyed, we both love that show, Emily and I for probably the first three or four seasons. And then it was one of those that was like, you should have known when to stop. And then we kind of just quit watching. Yeah. I mean, that happens a lot. It does in America.

That was the good thing about our show. We knew, well, actually science channel knew it's a quite while we were ahead, you know. What about the Chilean flamingo? What's up with that fella? These guys are particularly strange and unusual and fascinating because they like to live in the cold.

They can handle cold weather at least. They live in Chile in a lot of South America. In fact, I don't know why Chile got the naming rights, but they typically have pink bands on their gray legs which are something that kind of sets them off from the other ones. And there I guess the third in line as far as size goes there.

Smaller than Caribbean flamingos, bigger than the lesser flamingo though, which is another species, right? Yeah, such a sad name to call something the lesser flamingo. They are the smallest, they're about three to five pounds-ish. And they are also in Africa on the Eastern and Southern, well, I'll say coast, but they can go inland as well

if they've got some good alkaline lakes going on. But also in places like Yemen, you find flamingos in Yemen, in Pakistan, in India. These have the dark bills and the really, really red eyes that are just beautiful to look at. And I believe this is the most abundant flamingo species, right? Yeah, they'll gather in packs of like millions,

one and a half, two million. Or at the very least, that's how many there are total. But they do gather in huge flocks as we'll see. Yeah, into the millions, that wasn't hyperbole. By the way, Chuck, flamingos in Yemen is an excellent album title. Oh man, you're not kidding. I mean, talk about the album art too, it would be wonderful.

Yeah, that could see like, I don't know who would do that, Franz Ferdinand or somebody. Franz Ferdinand or what was our, what did Ian Bowers say our Britpop band was? Something Star? Oh, I don't remember. That would be a great Something Star album,

Flamingos in Yemen. We're claiming that for our band that we create after we retire, okay? I just saw, by the way, Franz Ferdinand is opening for the Pixies on their next leg, which goes to Atlanta. Sweet, when? In June.

That's pretty cool, man. I used to love those guys. I've been on a huge Pixies kick right now, which I had been way off the Pixies for a while. Like, man, am I ever gonna like the Pixies again? As far as new music? I haven't heard any of the new stuff. I've just been, I just got off of their old stuff.

And then I got back into Tromplemont, which I mean, it's just so good from start to finish. So yeah, I love the Pixies again, everybody. And I don't really like Ray Donovan. So there's the two things you need to know about me from this episode. Their new one that came out late last year is okay. It sounds like a Pixies record, but it's just,

it's not as weird. Oh, yeah? It's kind of polished. I don't know, it just sounds like, hey, we're gonna make a Pixies record, so let's do that. Okay. And I don't know. I mean, I think the new bass player is doing a great job,

but I do miss Kim Deal. So I mean, yeah, you gotta respect that though. They're not just like, we're gonna cash in on the three, five albums that everybody's crazy about from the 80s and early 90s and just tour on that. You wanna make? Yeah, yeah. Although that's mostly what they play.

Thank goodness. So let's talk about, I think, the coolest Flamingo or at least the most interesting of the Flamingos. Obviously, the Caribbean Flamingo is the money Flamingo, far and away the best, just because it's so pink and pretty and perfect size and all that stuff. But the Andean Flamingo for my money is the most interesting of all.

Yeah, they're very rare. And it's just, I had no idea that they could live high up in the Andes Mountains like that. I was just blown away by that because I thought they were really exclusively, like I said, sort of coastal birds, but there aren't a lot of them, about 80,000 of them. And you will be very saddened to know

that those lithium batteries that we all love, because they last so long, lithium mining and climate change are driving them away and destroying them. Batteries kill Flamingos. That's right. Yeah, there's about 80,000 of them alive. And they are, I think, under threatened status, which is one step down from endangered

and very much threatening to move into endangered. So I don't know. And the Andean is vulnerable. Vulnerable, okay. Which is one step down. Okay, I got you. Thanks. No problem.

And then James's Flamingo is the one that you don't consider like a full-fledged Flamingo. No, no, that's a species. It's the Caribbean Flamingo that I consider a subspecies of the greater Flamingo. Okay, all right. Yeah, James's Flamingo is, they thought it was actually extinct in the 1920s, I believe,

but then in the 50s, it's a whole Celiacanth comeback story because they discovered that there actually were James's Flamingos that were mixed in with Chilean and Andean Flamingos in South America. And not mixed in like they were inner breeding, like these huge flocks, like we'll get across to the flocks of Flamingos

in the wild are so enormous and so populous, it's crazy. But these flocks will, or these different species will kind of flock together, but they keep their distance from one another. And that's where they rediscovered the James's Flamingo that wasn't extinct after all. Yeah, named after the British naturalists who studied them, Harry Berkeley James.

And I guess he'd just felt good enough about his work where he said, I'm gonna name you after me. Yeah, now let's go have some mead. Right. All right, I think we should take a break and have some mead. Sure. And we'll talk about their pinkness right after this.

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One of the things I did know about flamingos, but only in a rudimentary way, was that they're pink because of what they eat. I did not know this at all. Really, I think that's a kind of a common, like, basic flamingo fact, which is, why are they pink? I see.

Because the stuff they eat, otherwise they, oh no. Not another one. Not another serif. Everybody knows that you moron. Well, then could you do us the honors, please? Yes. And explain this? No, no, you go ahead.

You're explaining it fine. I was just teasing. Well, it's because what they eat is rich in beta-carotene. And what they'd largely eat is algae. They stick their face down. And if you see flamingos walking around in, I guess, like ankle to whatever their knees would be, knee-deep water, you'll see them stick their face down there a lot

and rummage around. And sometimes they'll just leave it out there, like, fully dunked. And what they're doing is they're eating their filter feeders, like a baleen whale. And they're just moving muddy water around and letting water swish around in their mouth. And they have these little, what is it,

like a little filter? Yeah, I've seen it described as a comb-like filter along their lower bill. Now, their upper bill, yes, because they're upside down. So their upper bill is now their lower bill when they're feeding. And that's where the filter is, right? So they're kind of like that oil pulling.

Some people swish essential oil in their mouth to fight cavities or whatever. Oh, I didn't know that. That's essentially what they're doing. They use their tongues to kind of switch the water back and forth and then spit it out and get some more water. And apparently they can do this like four times in a second, they're that fast to just gather

really, really small stuff. But the stuff that they're eating is so full of beta-carotene carotenoids, actually, that the flamingos' livers break them down into a pigment, which is a fun word to say, and I'm about to say it. You ready? Mm-hmm. Cantha xanthan.

Oh, wow, that's way better than I would have said. I love it. It's one of my new favorite words. C-A-N-T-H-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N, cantha xanthan. Yeah, good job. So it ends up in their feathers and their skin, which turns them pink. And this is why, Chuck, I think that lesser and Caribbean,

or Caribbean is a subspecies of greater, sorry, because the big distinction, I mean, yes, the greater's a little bigger, not ridiculously bigger, but a big distinction is their coloring. And I think that it's because the Caribbean has more carotenoid-rich diet than the greater, and that they're really genetically, essentially, the same species.

They just have different diets available to them. I think you're probably right. And, you know, because they like to put flamingos in places like zoos for a long time, you're like, hey, you feed these things red peppers and carrots and orange things, and they turn, and they keep that color. So we're just gonna feed them that,

which is terrible, and a very lazy kind of point of view. But, you know, now zoos are mostly on board, I think, with saying, oh, okay, maybe we should just feed them what they like to eat that also keeps them pink. Yeah. And also, you can turn orange, everybody knows from eating like too many carrots or mangoes or something like that.

Sweet potatoes will do it too. Spray on tans. Yeah. And that's a condition that is called carotenemia. Yeah. Which will turn up in our live show eventually. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Look for it. Ooh, that's a nice little tease. Yeah. Watch for it. This fall on Stuff You Should Know. Oh, speaking of tour, we should just go ahead and mention, because people are kind of asking. Yeah.

We are doing these first three shows in real time this week that will be done by the time it comes out in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco. But we are aiming to do six more shows in tiny little groups of three. Mm-hmm. Hopefully in the late spring and early fall. And we haven't nailed the cities down,

but you know, that's what we're trying to do. Nine shows this year. You really put all those questions to rest. Well, should we mention some of those cities? I don't want people to be disappointed. Yeah, I don't know. Because we kind of know. I mean, they're gonna be disappointed eventually.

Might as well just disappoint them now so they can be disappointed all year. Well, I think we're gonna finally hit Nashville. Yeah, that's the plan. I think we're gonna do Orlando again and finish up in Atlanta again, our hometown shows. That's right. What about in between?

Well, we're out of the four. I think we're gonna pick three from probably Boston, New York, DC and Chicago. Yeah. All cities that are great for stuff you should know. Rich with stuff you should know listeners. Yeah, and if we're gonna do this like, maybe nine shows a year, we're gonna have to mix it up.

Because it's so easy to just go to like the same banger cities every time. But we've been to so many cities that turned out to be banger, like surprising. Like Kansas City was a great show. St. Louis was a great show. Cleveland was a great show. Lawrence, Kansas?

Yeah, Austin's always the jam. I mean, we've been to a bunch of places that were like, this is actually a really great time. We wanna come back. It's just, if we're doing nine shows this year, we just started out with our usual, how about that? Yeah, we're dipping our toe back in the live show pond. But we also like to add a brand new state.

And that's why we're going to Nashville this year. So take heed. Take heed? Yeah, take heed, Boise. Yeah, was that good of Boise? Sure. Because of your old friend Dave Ruse. Was he Boise?

That's his stomping ground, yeah. All right. You can't tell by his incredibly chipper and positive personality. That's true, very Boisean. And by the way, Chuck, we should give a shout out to Dave's podcast, a Bible time machine, right?

Yeah. Dave is a bit of a biblical scholar and takes a very sort of analytical view of the Bible in this podcast. It's not like a preachy thing. Right, right. So if you wanna get to know Dave Ruse, one of our great writers that works for stuff you should know,

you can get to know him a lot more wherever you get podcasts. Bible time machine. Yeah, dare I say, sort of stuff you should know, like approach to biblical matters. I mean, how could it not be, you know? Yeah, he's so ingrained. I know. Can we go back to flamingos for goodness sakes?

Yes. Because this is where it gets really interesting to me is a lot of this stuff in the next five minutes. Oh, okay. Namely, their age. Did you know they lived this old? No, dude, 20 to 60 years. And the oldest flamingo on record was 83 years old.

Yeah, his name was Greater. He was a Greater flamingo and they named him Greater at the Adelaide Zoo. He showed up at the zoo in the 30s and he died in 2014. And he was just this amazing resident. And apparently the Adelaide Zoo had like a flamingo encounter where their flamingos were able to mix with humans. And that turned out very badly for Greater in 2008

because four scumbag teenagers beat him almost to death for no reason other than he was there and he was an animal. And I looked so hard to find out what happened to those teenagers. And all I could find was that they were charged, no follow-up whatsoever, which really makes me think that they were released to their parents' custody

and they've probably been torturing animals ever since. Yeah, this one was really tough to read about. I don't need to say anything else about it, it's disgusting. Yeah, it is disgusting. And I know that Australians are like the opposite of that as people. I know, it's really surprising. Hopefully they got hit in the butt with a giant boot

like on the Simpsons. Or maybe they gave me old outback treatment, you know what I mean? Yeah. A dingo ate my scumbag teenager. See if you can find your way home, boys. Uh, that's not, of course I'm not supporting like, you know, killing teenagers in retribution.

But also we're not supporting teenagers beating up animals. And getting away with it. Especially an elderly animal too, it wasn't even like a young animal. It was a 83, well let's see, so he was in his 70s, mid-70s Flamingo that they beat up. I didn't mean to spend this much time on it, but I am a little worked up about it still.

No, no, no, I'm with you man, it's awful. Flamingos may want to travel, occasionally they're considered non-migratory, but they will get out of dodge if they need to. If they, you know, if the food isn't good or whatever or the water's too high or too low, they'll go to greener pastures. And they'll do so with a plum

because they can travel, man. They like to travel at night, they like those red-eye flights. And they can go like 300 to 400 miles a night. Yeah, they travel between about 30 to 40 miles per hour typically, so that's 48 to 64 kilometers per hour. That's pretty fast. Yeah, especially over 10 straight hours.

That's pretty impressive. But yeah, they typically like to stay where they are. It's just if the environment changes, they're like, all right, we're out of here, we gotta go find us a new alkaline flat. Yeah, what about the way they stand? Because that's what really, every time I've seen flamingos, and this is one of the main reasons I dug into this,

was why in the world did they stand their own one leg? Well, they thought for a long time it was to conserve body heat, which is another, it must have come from the 19th century taxonomists. Yeah, I don't get that. That bony little leg ain't gonna conserve any heat. Exactly, but I guess they were like,

well, there's no feathers or anything on it, so I guess it's a huge thing to lose heat. But there was more investigation that was like, no, actually they have a really good system for conserving heat in their bony little legs. So that's not it. And they think probably it's just that it's more stable and possibly more comfortable for them to stand on one leg

because they're able to lock the tendons and ligaments and muscles and joints and everything in the leg that they're standing on. And it's just like, you're not gonna fall over. And then there's one other thing about this, Chuck. They have a knee, it's not what you think. It's not in the middle of their leg, that's not their knee. Their knee, which allows them to move forward and backward,

is where our hips are. It's up in their body about where our hips are. That's what their knee. Well, where are their hips? I don't know. I saw that they have hips though, that they do have hips that are similar to other birds, but I don't know if that was a reference

to their actual knee. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, you can tell they're locked in, like when they're standing there, they're not swaying around, like put me on one leg for a little while, and you're gonna see a little movement.

Yeah, yeah, you are. They tell you not to lock your knees for very long because you can faint for some reason. We'll have to do a short stuff on that sometime. Oh, for humans? Yes, we are not flamingo-esque in that respect. No, not at all. You mentioned their communities, and this is just amazing.

They're colonies or they're flamboyants, which is, we did a whole episode on those names. A flamboyance of flamingos, I've seen other places say, a regimen or a flurry or a stand, but why would you not say a flamboyance of flamingos? I don't know. I just don't know.

Just lock that in like a ligament. That's right. Yeah, so I think there was a study that was done in 2020 that kind of looked at these groups and started to like actually pay attention to individual members of them, and found that like that the groups have incredibly complex social relationships

and interactions, and there's clicks within these larger groups, and some members will have enemies, and this was actually something I liked about flamingos. They tend to be very peaceful. Like it's not one of those things where you're like, oh, that beautiful pink bird likes to eat, tear the heads off of lizards

and beat up one another or something like that. They're actually super peaceful animals. They like to avoid their enemies. They're just kind of like, hey man, relax, don't do it, you know? When you want to get to it. They have besties? Yeah, they have friends.

And they also are serial monogamous, says we'll see. Yeah, they get together for a mating season, and they typically change it up after that mating season and get a new partner, but they stick together through that mating season, and they will co, I guess, well, I guess we should talk about their breeding. They breed when they want to breed,

which is kind of cool. It's not like a certain time of year or any particular season. It's just got to be like the right spot, the right circumstance, and then they get it on. And if you want to see some fun stuff, just go on an internet video player and just check out flamingo mating dance ritual

or something like that, and just watch all the beautiful myriad videos that are online from the BBC and other places of these huge groups of like hundreds. And like you said, they can group in the millions. At least the tens of hundreds of thousands, but yes, I'll bet there was a flamingo flock once that hit million, and they were like, we did it.

A flock? A flamboyance, I'm sorry, thank you for saving me from myself. And they just, you know, they move around and dance, and if, you know, a lot of mating rituals include dance in the wild, but it's usually like a male dancing to attract the attention of the female.

But in this case, they're both trying to impress one another. And the most, I guess, prolific maters are the ones, they're about 20 years old by the way, which is right in the wheelhouse, but they're the ones that have the most dance moves and the best ability to switch between those moves. And it's really kind of cute, you know?

It's like literally dancing and how impressive is your dance? Right, and it bears a strong resemblance to how humans mate, where like you're at a club and you're dancing together to see how you connect, and if it's just right, then you go off together and stay together for a year. Right.

And it's just like flamingos are. Right, and back to that, when they do finally get together, both the male and the female will help nurture that egg and sit with that egg, because it's only one egg. The incubation period is pretty short, it's about a month. And so they're really both involved in that process, which is kind of cool. Yeah, it's remarkable, actually.

Some of those dance moves too, they're like stuff you'd expect, you know, like I'm flapping and bending their heads and sticking their tails up and stuff, but they also do, huh? A lot of head work. That's right, yeah. From what I've seen.

Yes, so then that's what you would think with a flamingo, but they also have at least one move where they put like a wing point in one direction and a leg point in another, which very much brings to mind John Travolta on the cover of Saturday Night Fever. And there's actually a name for that move, it's called the disco finger.

So flamingos do the disco finger. So if a flamboyance of flamingos doing the disco finger isn't enough to make you love flamingos, then there's something really wrong with you. Yeah, that's another bumper sticker. We've got batteries kill flamingos and flamingos with the disco sticker for the disco finger. Yeah, exactly.

Here's another kind of fun thing when it comes to mating season, is the ladies will almost adorn makeup. There is a gland on their tail, which produces, you know, how they have that coloration. It produces a really rich version of that carotenoid oil and they will wipe it on their bills and on their wings as like pretty in themselves up a little bit.

And it gets even better because after they have mated, or after mating season, they stopped doing that. They're just like, I'm not gonna bother anymore. Just like humans, man, flamingos are a lot like humans. And I think it's actually both sexes that do that, that apply makeup. I don't think it's just females, but yeah, they're just like, whatever,

we already landed a mate. Was that just flamingo sexist? A little bit, but that's okay. You didn't mean it. I think I was. There's also another remarkable thing about flamingos is that they're part of just a small handful of birds that produce milk for their young.

And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that would make them mammals wrong. There's actually like pigeons, flamingos, and I don't remember the other one. There's maybe one or two more that produce milk. And what this is called is crop milk. And they produce it through glands that line all along their digestive tract.

And it's full of that carotenoid, rich, fatty, rich food. There's also a lot of red blood cells, which I suspect probably imparts to their young immunity to like disease and stuff like that. And it's like really red. So people are like, wow, that flamingo is killing the other flamingo, it's dripping blood all over it. That's actually, it's crop milk.

And that's pretty cool because Chuck, both sexists produce the crop milk and both sexists take turns not only caring for the chick, but feeding the chick too. And Chuck, by the way, they only lay one egg at a time typically. So a couple, this monogamous couple, will both be feeding their one kid milk at the same time.

Well, not at the same time probably, but in the same rearing. How about that? And both letting their appearance go. That's right, it's the same time. Not wearing any makeup. They both look very tired. The parents care for this little chicky

for about a week in the nest. And then they kind of go to daycare almost and that they go off with all the other little babies. And they're called crutches. And there are a few adults sort of watching out like daycare workers. Right. And then nine to 13 weeks later,

and we should say they're born basically sort of kind of grayish, white, or brownish, white. And then once they start eating all the stuff, then they get that pink hue. But nine to 13 weeks is when they're gonna kind of get ready to go and be full fledged flamingos. Easy peasy. They can also perhaps form same sex couples, right?

Like there was a pair at the Denver Zoo. Very, very sweet, Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass. Lance was a Chilean flamingo. Freddie Mercury was an American flamingo. And RSA was, I guess is, I think they're still around, but sadly not together. They got together before the pandemic in 2019. And were surrogate parents basically

for breeding couples that abandoned their eggs. And then apparently about a year later after the pandemic hit, they said, it's too much, I've had enough. Right. But we'll part close friends. The human Lance Bass is surely honored to have had a flamingo named after him.

That was in the same sex couple with a flamingo named after Freddie Mercury. Don't you think? Sure, he already has a fish named after him. Man, dad. We should take a break. Yeah, we should. All right, we'll be right back.

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But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships.

Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, we're back. And people have really enjoyed flamingos for a long time. A lot longer than even just since we started appreciating flamingos, you and me. Like a few days ago? Yeah.

Way longer than that. Like thousands of years longer than that. As a matter of fact, there's a cave painting from southern Spain that dates from 7,000 years before present that has a flamingo on it. It's pretty much unmistakable. Yeah. Just look at the cave and there are the answers.

They're an Egyptian art. You know, since there has been kids' books, they've been all over kids' books because kids obviously are going to be fascinated by flamingos because they're so striking. Sure. That's why there's one hanging on my daughter's wall. Although I don't think we have any flamingo books.

Oh, you need to remedy that situation. I bet if someone hasn't written one about Freddie Mercury and Lance Bass, and there's an opportunity there waiting. I have two flamingo dads. Exactly. But, you know, it probably would also not surprise you to learn that not too long ago in the 19th century,

flamingos were hunted and killed because the ladies had to have those lovely pink feathers in their hats. They would eat flamingos. It was a, you know, if you go back to like ancient Rome, it was a delicacy, and in other parts of the world, too, I think. Yeah.

And that's just so, just old-timey, again, kind of dim humans, like, look at that pretty feather. I'm going to go kill that thing that has those pretty feathers. And I'm going to kill them so often that they're going to just go extinct. So, Chuck, did you know this, that they think at least the Caribbean ones, it's probable that all flamingos are,

but I'm just making that up. But at the very least, the Caribbean flamingos seem to hail from Florida. People consider them native to, like, maybe the Bahamas or Cuba or somewhere else. Nope, they seem to have originated or be native to South Florida, specifically the Keys. Yeah.

And I think that they were so over-hunted it was thought that they, like any flamingos in the 20th century, were either just travelers who got, you know, lost on the way to the Caribbean or they were escaped captives. Yeah. And so they tagged one. I think in the 2010s, there was a flamingo named Conky

or Conchy, depending on how you say the word conch. Sure. Conch. Yeah. What do you say? Conky. Okay, I say Conky too. And they saw this flamingo.

I think they tagged it. It was near an airfield on Boca Chica Key. Boca Chica Key. Oh, Boca? I'm just kidding. Oh. And they gave it the old satellite transmitter treatment on the leg and then said,

I'm sure this thing's going to go back to the Caribbean. And they said, no, this thing is actually sticking around and is permanent. So like, I think that's when they decided, hey, I think these are not wayward travelers. Right. Or captives that have escaped. I think they're Florida flamingos.

Yeah. And they said, well, wait a minute. It's possible that they are escaped ones because there are a lot of 19th century railroad tycoons that built like enormous estates for themselves and imported flamingos for those estates because the local flamingos were all dead. And scientists have said like, it doesn't matter.

We're just going to say this is the native population that's drowning. And let's just call it that and stop asking questions. It doesn't matter. Now the flamingos are coming back. And they're from Florida originally. That's right. And I think which one is actually increasing in population?

The Caribbean. And I believe the greater are both increasing in population if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. I think so, which is great. Yeah, that is great. It's greater. There are about 20,000.

I heard that by the way. Okay. There are about 20,000 flamingos living in, I say captivity, it is captivity, but in zoos basically. And we have them here in our Atlanta Zoo. You can go by and visit them. I guess that counts at this place in the Bahamas.

They're like 15 or 20 that they had. Or probably wouldn't that many, maybe about a dozen. But they have found that, you know, flamingos like to be in big, large groups when it comes to these mating rituals, they like a lot of choice, I think, in their selective mates. And so they said these smaller groups,

they're not mating like they should. So at least one zoo in England, the, well, it's spelled Colchester. I'm sure it's not pronounced that way. It's probably Colster or something like that. Colky. Yeah, the Colky Zoo in England put up big full-length mirrors

to trick them into thinking they were in bigger groups. Right. And it worked. They like to look at themselves too, apparently. Yeah, but I mean, it gave them the illusion that there was way more flamingos than they all started to dance and get it on. And have sex with a mirror.

Yeah, and the flamingo population and captivity in England was saved. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm just wrapping it up. Okay. They clip their wings generally when they're in zoos because they will fly away, of course. And if they don't get on those wings enough

and they manage to sneak out a little more wings size, then they will fly away. And they'll go away. And this zoo flamingo will be found many, many miles away for years and years in a row and become little celebrities. Yeah, apparently there was a ranger at the Great Salt Lake who reported a flamingo

and was apparently told or asked if there was an elephant with it because there's just no flamingos at the Great Salt Lake. But this one named Pink Floyd escaped from the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City and was like, holy cow, a huge salt lake. This is exactly where I want to be. But sadly, I mean, he basically lived there for the rest of his life, but he was alone.

So there was actually a group in Salt Lake City called the Friends of Floyd who wanted to import 25 more flamingos. And the people running Great Salt Lake, I guess, Park, were like, this is a really bad idea. These are not a native species. We should not be importing them. In the 21st century, we know better than doing that

despite how alone Floyd is. Yeah, good for them. And I did mention eating them. They used to eat them in ancient Rome. There was a writer for Slate in Malay Olmsted that was shocked to find out about the number of Google searches for Can You Eat a Flamingo a few years ago. And she kind of chalked it up to people,

not necessarily thinking like, hey, I want to go eat a flamingo, but just reading about them and people thinking, well, they're birds, I'm curious to people eat them. And not a genuine like effort to eat a flamingo. No, but they definitely did eat them. Apparently, Pliny the Elder wrote that they have the most exquisite flavor. And because they eat...

That's the tongue specifically too. Oh yeah, I'm sorry, that's right, the flamingo tongues. And flamingo meat, tongues actually really good, man. If you're going to eat an animal, the tongue is not to be wasted typically. I don't like tongue. That's fine. I'm just telling you, if you've never tried it before,

I believe you're missing it. Okay, and you don't like it. I don't like the consistency, no. Wait, hold on, let me do a U. What, you don't like tongue? No, I don't think you should like waste it. I'm glad people eat it if they're going to be eating an animal, but it's not for me.

I understand. Yeah, I would never impress that on you. I appreciate that. But the meat of a flamingo probably has a really distinct taste because they have layers of fat because they're a water bird. Water birds have layers of fat like duck. Duck is delicious obviously in part because of its huge fat content. But then also they eat so much algae

that they would have huge levels of Omega-3 which could give them a fishy taste, right? I think that's the deal. Two fishy. A ducky fishy taste. Yeah, I don't eat duck either. So I don't know what a duck tastes like. A duck's really good too.

Is it? Yeah. I can't eat anything I spend time with. I understand. And I know that's hypocritical for people out there that are vegan. So I get it. Send me the email. Well, the thing is if you spend enough time with them,

they'll let their guard down and that's when you pounce. There's a Chinese restaurant actually called Peking Gourmet in Falls Church, Virginia. That makes a whole roast duck and it is one of the best things you'll ever eat in your entire life. Okay. I think it's called Peking Gourmet. It might just be called Peking Duck, one of the two.

But it's in Falls Church. He's smiling. Remember the Christmas story? For sure. I guess that's it. I think we should direct people to our, I get, was it a short stuff on the lawn ornaments? Yeah, yeah, it was.

We did a whole short stuff on pink flamingo lawn ornaments and it's a pretty cool story. So go seek that out is what I say. And there really isn't anything else since Chuck said go seek that out. Of course, everybody. That means it's time for a listen or mail. Okay.

I'm going to call this sort of LeRan mystery solved. You know, the story of when I adopted my buddy LeRan, who is no longer with this. He had a silver back and that's when Tim Curry referred to him as looking like a baboon. Right. So this is solved by Sarah Patton, I think.

Nice things that Sarah has to say about the show and Tim Curry and then this. Chuck mentioned that his silver back eventually disappeared and it may be think it could have been a fever coat. Prior to birth, a kitten's coat is very sensitive to heat. If a mom and cat has a fever during pregnancy from an illness or prolonged stress,

it could potentially affect the pigments in her kitten's fur. So a fever coat is typically gray or silver and then it resolves when a kitten's around four months old, although it can take up to a year. Even though the kitten's pigment didn't fully develop while they were in the womb, their coat is still written in their DNA. There's no negative implications

for the kitten's future overall health. Just a fun quirk when you're young. Yeah. Like when you're born with a vestigial tail and it falls off at age two. I guess so. I think that solves the mystery. This is from Sarah Patton and Sarah's great

and knows a lot about cat and cat rescue and is doing a lot of good work in that realm. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Sarah. That is pretty cool. You put that mystery to rest and we thank you for it. How do you feel? Good?

Is it solved? I love it. I need to tell Emily about the fever coat. Yeah, it's cool. Well, if you want to be like Sarah and put some mystery to rest, we love that kind of stuff. You can do it in an email.

Send it to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My Space was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub.

And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of My Space, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of My Space on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you.

Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app,

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