{"id":2645,"date":"2011-03-14T08:30:23","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T13:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifisaturdaynight.com\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2011-03-14T08:30:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T13:30:24","slug":"in-soviet-russia-flamingo-flies-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scifisaturdaynight.com\/?p=2645","title":{"rendered":"In Soviet Russia, Flamingo Flies to You!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What do you think of when you think about flamingos?<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s wet, tropical heat, visions of marshland, shrimp (mmm, shrimp!), or just those awful decorations on people’s lawns.\u00a0 All in all,\u00a0 it’s safe to assume that the very last thing you would think of is…snow?
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\nIt sounds like the beginning of a Michael Crichton book: \u00a0 a couple of boys were ice fishing in Siberia (yes, Siberia<\/em>) during a snow storm when a <\/strong>flamingo fell out of the sky a few feet away from them<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Luckily, the creature was unharmed, just really, really cold.\u00a0 They took him home, warmed him up and fed him fish and buckwheat out of a bucket, then shipped him off to a zoo where he still lives today.<\/p>\n

So, just a freaky, once-in-a-hundred-years event right?\u00a0 Sure, except that it happened AGAIN a year later:\u00a0 another flamingo was found by locals near a Siberian river, still alive but shivering cold!<\/p>\n

What’s going on here?\u00a0 Is it global warming?\u00a0 Is it someone’s pet(s) that keep getting loose?\u00a0 Is there some kind of freaky secret Siberian government funded laboratory where they are creating genetically enhanced super-flamingos?\u00a0 Well, maybe, but there’s a much more plausible solution.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that there are several bird species that migrate during the winter months to a warmer climate.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the mechanism behind migration is not yet well understood. Current thinking<\/a><\/strong> believes that the birds use visual cues and also the magnetism of the earth to guide them to their destinations every year, and some scientists even believe that birds can visibly see<\/a> <\/strong>the magnetic field as they go.<\/p>\n

The system is obviously quite sophisticated, and some say it is so accurate that you can predict to the day<\/strong><\/a> when a flock will return (though you can’t, not really).\u00a0 But sometimes, something goes wrong.\u00a0 Occasionally, the birds will end up in the wrong places, as if they’ve gotten turned around.\u00a0 Basically, when this happens, they fly in the exact (as in 180 degrees) wrong direction from where they want to go, and end up in an even colder climate which inevitably kills off much of a flock.\u00a0 This is called “reverse migration” and has been reported in small birds such as warblers, but not flamingos.\u00a0 However, this particular species<\/strong><\/a> of flamingo is known to nest in Kazakhstan and winter in Iran.\u00a0 The town in Siberia where the first flamingo ended up is, yup, exactly 180 degrees opposite from where it was supposed to be, near the Caspian Sea.\u00a0 And since flamingos are social birds, it’s possible that there was a whole flock up in Siberia that all died off from exposure and the ones that were found were just the lucky survivors.<\/p>\n

Awesome! Makes perfect sense right?<\/p>\n

Well, after a little digging, maybe not. You see, there is a significant dearth of information on the subject of reverse migration, little more than the spartan Wikipedia article<\/strong><\/a> and a handful (if that) of scholarly papers that I can’t even read without a subscription. Because of this, I have to wonder how accepted this theory is by the ornithological community. What if the birds were just blown off course by a big storm? Or even just strong winds up in the stratosphere? There just doesn’t seem like enough evidence to support this complicated hypothesis, which makes me highly suspicious of the claim. Who’s to say these aren’t some pink-o-commie flamingos on their way back to the Motherland with secret plankton intel? All I can say is, if I told you, I’d have to krill you! (I’m here all week folks!)<\/p>\n

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