How a flamingo balances on one leg
Some of the built-in tricks for extreme bird balancers work without muscle effort
By
Susan Milius
7:59pm, May 23, 2017
A question flamingo researchers get asked all the time — why the birds stand on one leg — may need rethinking. The bigger puzzle may be why flamingos bother standing on two.
Balance aids built into the birds’ basic anatomy allow for a one-legged stance that demands little muscular effort, tests find. This stance is so exquisitely stable that a bird sways less to keep itself upright when it appears to be dozing than when it’s alert with eyes open, two Atlanta neuromechanists report May 24 in Biology Letters.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-flamingo-balances-one-leg?mode=topic&context=76
