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They’re so steady that you can balance a dead one on a single leg. Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters Young-Hui Chang can remember exactly when he realized how flamingos balance so effortlessly on one leg. He and a fellow biologist Lena Ting suspected that the pink birds might have features on their legs that help lock their joints in place. But when they started dissecting one, they couldn’t find anything. With the bird lying flat on their table, they tried moving its legs this way and that. Nothing. And then Ting said: Why don’t you try and pick it up by the leg? Chang grabbed the bird by its shin and held it upright—and the leg snapped into place, becoming rigid and unyielding. The flamingo looked almost like it was sleeping—one leg extended, the other bent, and the head tucked back into its feathers. And Chang probably looked like a fever-dream version of Mary Poppi
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