[♪ INTRO]
Wow! Isn't that awesome?
Oh! Hi there!
Squeaks and I were just doing a little birdwatching.
It’s so much fun to try to spot different birds.
Today we saw a cardinal… a goldfinch… and a blue jay!
[Squeaks squeaks]
Good observation, Squeaks!
Squeaks noticed that all of the birds we saw today were different colors.
The cardinal was red, the goldfinch was yellow, and the blue jay was, well, blue!
It’s one of the reasons I think birds are interesting.
They’re so different from one another.
Some, like the ones we saw, are brightly colored, while others are less colorful.
Some birds, like this mother mallard duck and its ducklings,
have feathers that are brownish.
And that’s a good thing!
Their feathers help the birds to blend into their marshy surroundings,
making them harder to see.
This helps them to hide from predators that might want to eat them.
But birds with bright feathers are much easier to spot!
And those bright colors might help birds to recognize one another,
or find a mate to lay eggs with!
[Squeaks squeaks]
Good question!
Squeaks wants to know, what makes some birds so colorful?
The answer is… it depends on the bird!
Sometimes the babies of even colorful birds start out with dull feathers…
and grow into their bright colors as they get older.
And one of my favorite birds, the flamingo,
has a really cool reason for its bright color!
Now when you think of flamingos, you probably think “pink”.
And some flamingos are definitely bright pink!
But others are reddish orange or white, and some are even more than one color!
[Squeaks squeaks]
Yep, it’s true!
A newly-hatched flamingo chick is whitish-grey in color…
and they stay that way until they’re about one year old!
Then something amazing happens.
They start to turn color!
And the secret is in how they eat.
[Squeaks squeaks]
You’re right, Squeaks, it does kind of look like the flamingo is doing a headstand!
Flamingos aren’t showing off when they have
their heads upside-down, though, they’re eating!
It looks a little silly, but flamingos eat by slurping up water in their beaks.
They have a structure in their beak that acts like a strainer,
catching pieces of food for the birds to swallow whole.
You know, like the pasta strainer we have in the kitchen!
They eat just about anything that they can slurp up…
like tiny shrimp and insect larvae.
Some of this flamingo food has what we call pigment in it.
A pigment is a substance that gives things color.
For example, the paint we use to make colorful pictures has different pigments in it.
The pigment in flamingo food is orange-colored.
In fact, it’s the same pigment that gives fall leaves,
pumpkins, and carrots their orange color.
As the flamingo eats, over time the pigment in the food
ends up in a flamingo’s skin and feathers.
And once it gets to the flamingo’s feathers, it usually looks more pink than orange.
And the more pigment that is in the food a flamingo eats,
the brighter in color the flamingos get.
In fact, if a flamingo stops eating food that has a lot of pigment in it,
their feathers will fade back to white!
So the flamingo’s diet definitely causes its color.
[Squeaks squeaks]
Oh. Don’t worry, Squeaks!
Although the same pigment in the flamingo’s diet is in carrots and
some of the foods we eat… we’re not in any real danger of turning orange!
Flamingos eat thousands and thousands of larvae and shrimp every day.
And almost all of the flamingos’ food has pigment in it.
We would need to eat ten carrots every day for a long time to start to turn orange!
People eat lots of different things in their diets… not just one kind of food.
And although carrots are a healthy snack,
we prefer to eat a balanced diet with many different foods.
Say, let’s get a healthy snack… and then do some more birdwatching!
Thanks for joining me here at The Fort!
If you want to keep learning and having fun with Squeaks, Jessi, me,
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and we'll see you next time on SciShow Kids!
[♪ OUTRO]