It takes several years for a young phoenicopterus roseus’ feathers to evolve into the handsome salmon-pink hue that we associate with them. Before their feathers turn vivid shades of color, flamingos are, well, gray.
Yes, flamingos start out gray. It’s their diet of algae and invertebrates that gives flamingos their color. So as young birds age, they take on their color.
Recently, I’ve noticed a similar thing happening with homo sapiens. Young individuals of this group are identified by healthy, supple skin in varying shades of tan or brown or pink or golden hues, all attractive in their own right. Lovely creatures.
Yet as they age, some of these beings take on unnatural characteristics. Subtle at first, bluish or reddish tints become more pronounced over time. Given the right circumstances, these colors can grow shockingly vivid.
So, like flamingos, as young humans age, they can gradually take on these colors. Startling, really, to see the pronounced blue or red hues predominate.
Gradually, like flamingos, they form their own social groups, each with its own novel identity, bonds formed stronger over time. The Bluish group on this side, the Reddish group on that side.
Such a group, in flamingo parlance, is known as a “stand,” or a “regiment,”— military words.
Interestingly, if a flamingo’s diet is changed, with a lessening of the pink-inducing dietary influences, its color will moderate and return to its natural grayish-white color.
During times of particularly disagreeable political turmoil, there is yet hope that artificially-generated human Blue and Red colors may also fade, tones reverting closer to their God-given hues. And with that, our own group-identified “stands,” and “regiments” may yet become less than permanent, militarized fixtures.
Like the flamingos, achieving that will likely also require a change in our own diet.