Nature is chocked full of big and small surprises awaiting our curious inquiry

Flamingos generating underwater vortices to eat

Excerpt: "If you’ve ever really looked at how flamingos eat, you know how captivatingly peculiar it is. They bob their inverted heads in the water and do a kind of waddle cha-cha as they inch their way across shallow water, filter-feeding small crustaceans, insects, microscopic algae and other tiny aquatic morsels.

Victor Ortega-Jiménez, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers being fascinated by this behavior the first time he saw it in 2019, during a trip with his wife and child to the Atlanta zoo. Ever since, he has been wondering what, exactly, was going on beneath the surface.

“The birds looked beautiful, but the big question for me was, ‘What’s happening with the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in flamingos’ filter feeding?’” he said.