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Posted by jnrosenthal on 00:22:01 07/11/07
The recent excitement concerning the visiting greater flamingo, and wonderful images posted here, brought to mind this organization's namesake's famous portrait of a flamingo in "Birds of America".(I've included a link to an image from last year's National Gallery show, which also contains a thumbnail biography of Audubon-- which is well worth reading-the moral of which may well be that in America everyone gets to reinvent himself .) copy and paste: http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa71.htm
Audubon's flamingo appears on the cover of Jay Gould's 1985 collection of essays--"The Flamingo's Smile".The lead essay of the same name contains an interesting discussion of flamingo morphology.Flamingos are adapted to live in shallow hypersaline lakes..Two aspects of their morphology and adaptation stand out--1. unique among birds, flamingos are filter feeders-their "bills are lined with numerous, complex rows of horny lamellae-filters that work like the whalebone plates of giant baleen whales."These filters separate prey in the range of one inch or so--small mollusks, crustacea and insect larvae.Flamingos shake their heads back and forth to force water through the filters or use their large fleshy tongues that act as a pump to fill the large bill cavity with water and force the water through the filters. Denticles on the tongue scrape the collected food off the filters. 2. They feed with their heads upside down-thus the upper jaw when feeding rests below the lower, and according to Darwin's theory of adaptation to immediate environments, their bills should be adapted in both form and function to this role reversal.Indeed, as Gould observes, the upper bill has evolved a size and shape consistent with its role in an upside down feeding position, but not until 1957 did a study conclusively show that, unlike most other birds and mammals, the flamingo has developed a ball and socket joint that permits movement of both jaws. Nevertheless , as naturalists predicted,the lower jaw remains stationary while feeding as the upper jaw drops and raises. Gould's essay has other interesting observations about flamingos and evolution, and my copy is available to anyone without a library card or their own copy.
Go to Cutler Wetlands, and you'll have the chance to see these adaptations at work...
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