And how exactly did Flamingos make it to the Americas?
More than one of the other tourists that Ive met along the way has expressed surprise that there are Flamingos here in South America... It seems that we've all watched far too much television and our "idea" of flamingos is that they are from Africa...
It seems we need to see them in vast flocks wading around in the shallow lakes of Africa along with images of giraffes and zebras.Well, it just aint so.
Flamingos are also here in South America and by quite natural causes it seems.
I believe that they came over to the Americas from Eurasia via the Alaska/Russia land/ice bridge during the most recent ice age.
At that time, as most people know, the ice locked up a great deal of water and the sea level was somewhat lower... and thus there was more land above water reducing the "gap" between the two great land masses and that gap was filled by permanent ice at the time.
However, what is realised, though the consequences of it less so, is that it was an "ice age" and the northern regions were very cold!
And flamingos are not well equipped for "Arctic"living... Primarily due to their very long legs exposing naked skin, as well as their long thin necks (though not naked).
But, the flamingos figured out a way to deal with these problems for "the long walk to the Americas"... They invented "leg warmers".
Yes, Contrary to popular belief, these "fashion garments" were not invented by Jane Fonda for the infamous "Jane Fonda's Workout" video of the early eighties!
No, They were in fact invented by flamingos, for flamingos, in the last ice age... The flamingos also had a slight issue in that they each needed three "leg" warmers (one extra for that long neck!) for the long arctic crossing. But they solved this by coming across in pairs... and they could thus get three sets of leg warmer pairs to use between them... This actually gave them a head start in breeding success over in the Americas because they were already paird up at the start of the journey :))
So, hopefully that clears things up a bit... Jane Fonda merely "rediscovered" the leg-warmers and popularised them as fashion accessories, but that they were originally a natural evolutionary adaptation by the flamingos... I suspect Ms Fonda discovered them on a visit to one of the southern-most patagonian flamingo colonies where the leg warmers were still in seasonal use by the flamingos. But I cant prove this, and the resulting boom in leg-warmer demand of the early eighties resulted in the hunting and sudden extinction of the last native flamingos that used the leg-warmers too.But, there you have it... Nature had the idea first :)
