Do flamingos get their red feathers from eating? Actually, humans can too!

I heard that many animals can eat themselves to change color, and the colored ones are what we are familiar with. Is there such a thing?

It turns out that changes in pigment cells in organisms, or changes in the combination of certain chemicals, can cause animals to change color! This operation sounds sophisticated, but it is actually not difficult, it mainly depends on "eating"!

Look at the changes in the graph

How can the color of living things change? What has changed?

Pigments can change the color of many organisms. The more common pigments in the biological world include chlorophyll and carotenoids. Among them, the carotenoids that have the greatest impact on animals are more than 1,000 known in the world, including carotene, astaxanthin, canthaxanthin, β-cryptoxanthin, etc. Due to differences in molecular structure, they present different colors from yellow to red.

How do they appear in animals?

Astaxanthin in algae, bacteria and phytoplankton is absorbed and accumulated by crustaceans, and then accumulated in fish and birds through the food chain.

Astaxanthin is the end point of carotenoid synthesis. After entering the animal body, it can be directly stored in the tissues without modification or biochemical transformation. It has a strong pigmentation ability, which is why flamingos, salmon, cooked shrimps and some other animals are red.

but……

Faded Flamingo

Black and white flamingo

This simple appearance is almost unrecognizable!

That’s right, beauty comes from food. Flamingos will fade away if they leave small fish and shrimps rich in astaxanthin and other red carotenoids.

When it is "malnourished" and lacks astaxanthin, it can also convert a certain amount of red carotenoids in the body, and use the remaining adonisin, canthaxanthin, and fenneflavonoids... to keep itself bright and avoid becoming the least attractive gray bird in the mating market.

The young birds have no color because they haven't learned to hunt for food yet! Adult flamingos have a thin sieve-like filter plate in their beaks called pectinate plates, which can filter food such as spirulina from muddy water. So in the first one or two years before the young flamingos grow this filter plate, they are all gray.

Someone may ask, the milk they drink is red!

The "milk" that the bird drinks is red, not blood. The red color is because it contains a lot of canthaxanthin. However, the pigment will not appear directly, but will be stored in the liver of the chicks, and will be transferred to the feathers when they grow up.

"Ghost" feeding method

The dad regurgitates the milky nutrients in his crop and places his mouth against the mom's head. The juice is transported through the mom's head to her mouth and flows all the way into the chick's mouth.

The power of pigments is strong. If you don’t believe it, try eating enough orange carrots, you will be stained and suffer from orange disease!

Oranges, loquats, mangoes, carrots, pumpkins, okra...

It is rich in carotene, which is the source of vitamin A. However, it needs to be broken down by the liver in the body before it can be absorbed and utilized by the body. When carotene cannot be broken down in time and exceeds the body's needs, it will accumulate in the body and cause citrus disease, which will not only cause yellowing of the skin, but also affect liver function in severe cases. However, as long as the intake is reduced, the yellow color will slowly fade away in 2-3 weeks.

Smart humans have long made use of these pigments, or colorants.

Look at the things you thought were natural; in fact, they are the result of humans using astaxanthin to do some "tricks".

Astaxanthin Masterpiece↓

It turns out that so many organisms need carotenoids. However, different organisms store carotenoids in different forms, and their appearances are also different. Flamingos display most of their pigments on their skin and feathers, salmon store most of their pigments in their muscles, and humans break down carotenoids without producing color until they exceed the body's needs, which turns the skin yellow.

So in the final analysis, organisms can really change their color as they eat!