Claim:
A video authentically shows a pair of flamingos feeding bright red liquid to a chick.
Rating:
True ( About this rating? )
On Aug. 11, 2024, an X user posted a video purporting to show a pair of adult flamingos feeding a chick. In the video, one of the adult flamingos could be seen touching the top of the other adult flamingo's head with its bill, and bright red liquid could be seen dripping from where the first flamingo's bill made contact with the second flamingo's head.
The post, which was captioned "A flamingo couple feeding its young," had received around 4,100 reposts and 680 comments at the time of this writing. Many of those comments expressed concern that the red liquid in the video was blood resulting from one of the adult flamingos injuring the other with its bill.
"What is this going on? Blood?" one commenter said. Another said, "I was today years old when I discovered that flamingo feedings look like some satanic, sacrificial ritual."
The video, which has circulated for years in numerous posts on Facebook , X , Instagram , Reddit , and other social media sites, was authentic, meaning it was not generated or altered using AI or digital editing software, and it genuinely depicted two adult flamingos feeding a chick. For this reason, we rate this claim as "True."
However, the red liquid seen in the video was not blood from an injury on one of the flamingo's heads.
Instead, as Sara Hallager, the curator of birds at the Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, told Snopes over email, the liquid was crop milk, a nutritious secretion produced by certain birds for the purpose of feeding their young. Hallager explained, "both parents feed the single chick a rich crop milk which is colored red (the milk contains carotenoids, which is what flamingos eat and gives them their pink color)."
Snopes was able to track down the original source of the footage by conducting a reverse image search of a screenshot of a frame of the video using both Google Images and TinEye . From the TinEye results, we learned that the video was available to license through multiple mainstream image and video licensing agencies, including Adobe Stock , Shutterstock , and Getty Images .
All three licensing agencies credited the video to Stock Footage Inc., a Utah-based company that specializes in producing stock footage, but provided little other information about the origin of the video. Snopes reached out to the company to ask if they could share any details about when or where the flamingo footage was filmed, and was directed to John Farr, the director and producer who shot the video.
In an email to Snopes, Farr provided photo evidence confirming he was the person who filmed the footage. Farr also shared a link to a compilation of footage he shot on the same day, which he posted to his personal YouTube page in 2018. The footage of the adult flamingos feeding red crop milk to the chick can be seen starting around the 0:15 timestamp in that video.
Farr told Snopes that he shot the video investigated here at Salt Lake City's Tracy Aviary , which granted him permission to film its animals, including its collection of Chilean flamingos, in exchange for the ability to use the resulting footage for marketing purposes.
Describing the experience of filming the video in question, Farr said:
During the shoot, I witnessed an interesting behavior: after the baby flamingos were released to their parents, I focused on one baby and its parents using a Red 4K camera. One parent began crop-feeding the baby, and shortly after, the other parent placed its beak on the first parent's head, seemingly contributing to the feeding. This gave the impression that the second bird was harming the other, but the staff member confirmed that this wasn't normal behavior for the birds but not too uncommon, though [it was] a bit clumsy because the birds weren't too smart.
Farr added, "No birds were harmed."
Hallager confirmed that, based on their bill color and patterning, the birds appeared to be Chilean flamingos specifically. She also offered an explanation for their behavior:
In this video, while one parent is feeding the chick, its mate wants to help and is so excited to help that he or she is also producing this crop milk and drooling it onto the head of its mate.
According to Hallager, "This phenomenon has been documented in several species of flamingo."
Because Snopes was able to confirm that the video authentically shows two adult flamingos feeding a chick, we rate this claim as "True."
Sources:
Chilean Flamingo - Liberty Park. 15 Nov. 2022, https://tracyaviary.org/liberty-park/birds-nature/chilean-flamingo/ .
Evon, Dan. "Snopes Tips: A Guide To Performing Reverse Image Searches." Snopes, 22 Mar. 2022, https://www.snopes.com//articles/400681/how-to-perform-reverse-image-searches/ .
"Flamingos." Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, https://lazoo.org/explore-your-zoo/our-animals/birds/flamingos/ . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
Magazine, Smithsonian, and Marina Koren. "For Some Species, You Really Are What You Eat." Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/for-some-species-you-really-are-what-you-eat-40747423/ . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
StockFootage.com. "StockFootage.Com." StockFootage.Com, https://stockfootage.com . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
Tracy Aviary - Salt Lake City's Home For Birds & Nature. https://tracyaviary.org/ . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
"Two Adult Flamingos Trying Feed Same Stock Footage Video (100% Royalty-Free) 1017056317." Shutterstock, https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1017056317-two-adult-flamingos-trying-feed-same-chick . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
"Two Adult Flamingos Trying to Feed the Same Chick with Red Crop Milk..." Getty Images, 18 Aug. 2018, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/two-adult-flamingos-trying-to-feed-the-same-chick-with-stock-footage/1021022834 .
"Two Adult Flamingos Trying to Feed the Same Chick with Red Crop Milk as One Regurgitates on the Other Adults Head Pouring down Its Face onto Chick Looking like Blood. Stock Video." Adobe Stock, https://stock.adobe.com/video/two-adult-flamingos-trying-to-feed-the-same-chick-with-red-crop-milk-as-one-regurgitates-on-the-other-adults-head-pouring-down-its-face-onto-chick-looking-like-blood/221922575 . Accessed 14 Aug. 2024.
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