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A flamingo's diet helps color its feathers

Flamingo chicks hatch with gray and white downy feathers, looking nothing like the bright pink birds on postcards. Their famous color comes from their diet: carotenoid pigments in the microscopic algae and brine shrimp they eat are broken down by the liver and deposited into new feathers as the birds grow.

2–3 min

Questions you could explore

  • How do dietary pigments become feather color?
  • Why do flamingo chicks look different from adults?

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A flamingo's diet helps color its feathers | Speech Topic | speaking.app