How flamingos sleep while standing on one leg

After a long day at the zoo, sore feet and stiff legs might make you wonder how flamingos get any shuteye while precariously standing atop a single stiltlike leg. To figure out how they do it, scientists placed juvenile flamingos atop a force platform, essentially a hypersensitive bathroom scale, and studied how the birds’ tiny muscular movements allowed them to maintain balance over their bodies’ subtle sways. While standing and grooming, the sway was large, but it decreased sevenfold while the birds slept on one leg. It appeared that the birds simultaneously exerted less muscle force and held a steadier position while asleep, the researchers report today in