flamingo.

Flamingo at the Columbus Zoo. OZinOH, Flickr The Columbus Zoo is messing with their flamingos' heads, but it's for the birds' own good. Really. Here's what's going on: The zoo found that when their flamingos lay eggs, the best way to get the eggs to successfully hatch was to take them away from their mothers and incubate them in an artificial incubator. The problem with that strategy is that if her egg is taken from a female flamingo, she'll lay another one. And if that one is taken away, she'll lay another one, and so on in perpetuity. But all that egg laying isn't supposed to happen, and it extremely taxing and unhealthy for the animal. Here's where the zoo gets all tricky on their ...

Helena Sung Bright pink flamingos are the first things you see upon entering the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, Calif. Dozens of the leggy birds are wading in a lagoon ringed by tall, leafy trees. Some are being trailed by their young offspring, who are small and gray. "Those are baby flamingos," explains Christina Simmons, the Zoo's Public Relations Director. "Their feathers haven't changed color yet." One of the most progressive zoos in the country, the San Diego Zoo shows its animals living in "bioclimactic environments." "Before, zoos grouped animals taxonomically, meaning, for example, that all cats were shown together in one part of the zoo," says Simmons. "We took a new approach of ...