The Evolution of Flamingos

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Flamingos have called this planet home for millions of years. Their history on earth dates back so far that there are some questions still surrounding flamingo evolution. Educated guesses have been made and some gaps are filled, but until we have time machines, there is a possibility that we will never truly know the exact flamingo origin story to its finest detail.

There are some things that we do know, though, which can provide some insight into how the evolution of flamingos unfolded many, many years ago.

The Evolution of Flamingos

Grebes

In 2001, twin studies out of Penn State and the University of Wisconsin determined that the closest living relative of the fabulous fowl is the squat grebe. This was a bit of a shock discovery - flamingos and squat grebes don’t look much alike. But the DNA doesn’t lie.

“We know people might have a hard time accepting these results, so we decided to publish our two studies together in the same paper, because the weight of the combined evidence is quite strong,” Penn State evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges told Science Daily in 2001. “We never imagined the flamingo and the grebe would turn out to be closest relatives, and were so surprised by this outcome that we did additional examinations using different sources of flamingo and grebe genetic material and obtained the same results. A lot of people may have trouble believing the results from these genetic studies for a while, but they carry a lot of weight because we have so much data from two different techniques, and it all paints the same picture of the evolutionary history of aquatic birds."

This gives us a starting point, or at least a point of reference, for flamingo evolution. At some point, flamingos likely deviated enough from grebes to become their own thing. 

A 2016 joint report between the University of Texas and the University of Groningen titled “The Evolution of Flamingos” agreed.

“Juncitarsus, the ancestor of Mirnandornithes (flamingos and grebes), was likely a generalist feeder, wading along the banks of freshwater lakes during the early-middle Eocene of Europe and North America,” the report said. “Flamingos probably diverged from grebes sometime in the late Eocene of Europe, followed quickly by Palaelodidae from Phoenicopteridae in the latest Eocene.”

The Eocene spanned for 22.1 million years back between 56 and 33.9 million years ago. That would mean that flamingos broke off from grebes roughly 35 million years ago, give or take a few million.

Palaelodidae

This extinct family of birds is an old flamingo relative that shared much greater physical resemblance to modern flamingos than grebes. They used to be all over the world at one point - their fossils have been found on every continent but Antarctica. But the birds disappeared from earth somewhere during the Pliocene epoch or early Pleistocene epoch, which eyeballs their extinction to between 5.33 million and 2.4 million years ago.

Palaelodidae had long, gangly necks, like flamingos. Their legs were long, too, and on the whole, their size matched up. But some of the finer details are off. For example, fossil evidence indicates that Palaelodidae had lobed toes. This suggests they were diving and swimming birds. That aligns the extinct birds more closely with grebes than flamingos, which have webbed feet.

Shorebirds

In a wider scope, flamingos appear to have some from a line of shorebirds.

It’s possible that flamingos have a distant relation to herons and ibises - the proteins found in flamingo eggs are very similar to those in heron eggs. Through DNA testing, we know that flamingos share some of their genetic makeup with ducks and geese. Parts of the modern flamingo structure, like the pelvic and ribs bones, are comparable to that of storks.

This all further complicates our understanding of the precise flamingo lineage. But it does illustrate some level of connection between flamingos and other shorebird species to the point that we can surmise that somewhere along the line, they share ancestry. Unfortunately, until we get that time machine or unearth a treasure trove of flamingo fossils, that’s about the best we can guess.