Summary
Why are flamingos pink? Why do they stand on one leg? Do flamingos have teeth? Do flamingos know how to dance? Find out the surprising answers to all these questions and more, hear two weird conservation stories, and learn all about the American flamingo on this episode of Species.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A5aZn6YhKxoQfvSSsHRFpsmBMRKYf0I5gfZxT-88sIo/edit?usp=sharing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today I'm going to tell you two farcical conservation stories. |
| 0:05.2 | One is about an entirely accidental conservation mission that was somehow more successful |
| 0:11.3 | than many intentional efforts that follow an identical pattern on purpose, and the other |
| 0:17.2 | story is about a ludicrous effort to conserve an inanimate animal, |
| 0:23.7 | as a population of dedicated actors did everything they could to fight City Hall and save their bizarre treasure. |
| 0:32.8 | Let's start with the first one. |
| 0:35.0 | The American Flamingo naturally lives in the Caribbean. |
| 0:39.0 | Its islands, its surrounding shores in Central and South America, also somehow the Galapagos Islands. |
| 0:45.4 | But back in the day, they were actually Florida natives too. |
| 0:49.3 | Audubon himself went to Florida in the 1830s just to look at the birds. |
| 0:56.9 | Unfortunately, they were hunted for food, |
| 1:03.4 | skins, and feathers to the point where they were probably completely extinct in Florida by 1900. |
| 1:13.1 | However, some zoos and parks in Florida kept them as a tourist attraction, and these birds who were in captivity often escaped. Specifically, the flamingos at the Hia Lea Park racetrack kept getting out because |
| 1:21.2 | the people there apparently couldn't handle the mild cognitive challenge of stopping a flying |
| 1:26.1 | creature from escaping. |
| 1:35.9 | This apparently happened repeatedly in the 1950s, and now, wild flamingos are part of Florida once more. |
| 1:41.5 | For critically endangered species, this is what a lot of zoos ostensibly want to do. |
| 1:46.4 | They want to take an animal into captivity, fund their conservation program, |
| 1:52.0 | reintroduce the animal, and pray that that animal can reestablish themselves in their former environment. |
| 2:00.5 | Often these efforts are insanely difficult, and oftentimes they fail. This time, it literally succeeded by accident. Now, just in the past year or so, |
| 2:05.4 | people have started challenging this theory of Floridian flamingos, saying that the current |
| 2:11.9 | flamingo population is, in fact, the original native population and that it never fully disappeared, but if the original |
... |
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