What color are flamingo chicks when they first hatch, before their diet changes their feather color?

Nature

What compound in a flamingo's diet is chiefly responsible for turning its feathers pink over time?

Flamingos are born gray or white. Their pink color comes from carotenoid pigments in their diet of algae and crustaceans over months.

Nature

Roughly what proportion of its body weight does a blackpoll warbler burn as fuel during its nonstop transatlantic migration flight?

Blackpoll warblers fly nonstop for 86 hours across the Atlantic Ocean, burning half their body weight in fuel.

Nature

What term do ecologists use for the risk Arctic goose chicks face when hatching no longer lines up with the brief peak in tundra plant nutrition?

Some Arctic geese time their arrival so precisely that chicks hatch exactly when plants peak nutritionally—delays of days mean starvation.

Nature

Bubble-net feeding in humpback whales is a cooperative behaviour. What role do the whales that remain BELOW the fish school typically perform?

Humpback whales create 'bubble nets' by swimming in circles below fish schools, then breach through the center to feast on thousands at once.

Nature

Unlike air-breathing divers, how do deep-sea squid and fish near the Dumbo octopus's habitat withstand crushing water pressure?

Dumbo octopuses live deeper than Mount Everest is tall, yet squid and fish in the same zone survive crushing pressures using only seawater.

Nature

Which marine mammals have been observed in studies to respond selectively when they hear their own signature whistle played back to them?

Dolphins name each other with unique whistles and answer when called by their individual 'name' across miles of open ocean.