Flamingos are striking not only for their brilliant pink plumes, but for how they often stand on a single slender leg, even when asleep.
Now scientists find that standing on one leg may counter-intuitively require less effort for flamingos than standing on two. It’s a finding that could help lead to more stable legged robots and better prosthetic legs.
One prior explanation for the mystery of why flamingos stand on one leg is that it conserved body heat, as doing so places one less leg in the cool water where they feed. Another possibility that scientists raised over the years was that such a stance reduced muscle fatigue, but until now, researchers had not directly explored how much muscle activity the birds needed to balance on one leg.
Neuromechanist Lena Ting at Emory University and her team previously examined how people standing on one leg kept their balance, which led ...
