Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.
Source: āAll flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planetās most extreme wetlands, like caustic āsoda lakesā, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.ā
They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.
Source: āMore than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzaniaās Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).ā
They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.
Source: āThey can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.ā
The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.
Source: āThe birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.
āYouāll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,ā Dr. Arengo said. āAnd as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.āā
The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.
It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.
Source: āThe lakeās landscape is surreal and deadlyāand made even more bizarre by the fact that itās the place where nearly 75 percent of the worldās lesser flamingos are born.ā
Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.
Source: āFlamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red ā without them, flamingos would be white.ā
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