Why flamingoes stand on one leg

bbc ^ | 13 August 2009 | Matt Walker

[JoeProBono]

It is one of the simplest, but most enigmatic mysteries of nature: just why do flamingoes like to stand on one leg? The question is asked by zoo visitors and biologists alike, but while numerous theories abound, no-one has yet provided a definitive explanation. Now after conducting an exhaustive study of captive Caribbean flamingoes, two scientists believe they finally have the answer. Flamingoes stand on one leg to regulate their body temperature, they say.

[JoeProBono]

[Batman11]

...and here I always thought that they had lost one shoe.

[ElayneJ]

Interesting. Read later.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I always thought they were afraid of trampling the grass.

[Procyon]

Aren’t they just drying their nails?

[Dacula]

How do you know when a family of pink flamingos moves into your neighborhood?

They put plastic illegal aliens in their front yard

[MSgt Smith]

because if they lifted the other one they would fall down

[DieHard the Hunter]

Budgerigars, Cockatiels and Parrots also stand on one leg. It is a sign of ill health when they do not.

[Yardstick]

I just think they’re showing off.

[right way right]

Because they can?

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Flamingo Scientists

[dfwgator]

Because they can?

[right way right]

Had a neighbor who complained constantly about another neighbors boat that they had to look at (never mind the fact that they bought a house with a driveway view.)Any way the neighbors just bristled back and decorated the whole property line in front of the boat with 10 flamingos.

I laughed my ...ss off.

[Daffynition]

Another little known scientific factoid ...

[Scythian]

More retarded science, a field I’ve lost total respect for ...

[Pessimist]

I coulda told ‘em that for free.

We had parakeets when I was a kid, and at night they’d always stand on one leg and tuck their beak into their back feathers to stay warm.

[Political Junkie Too]

This year's winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in the Detective genre:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI

-PJ

[JoeProBono]

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