Rare Pitch-Black Flamingo Caught on Camera on the Island of Cyprus

The odd-looking black bird was simply walking around with its pink siblings, looking for something to eat

  Flamingos are usually pink or orange-red

Earlier this month, a rare pitch-black flamingo was caught on camera on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea, and the footage showing the bird walking around with its pink siblings is now making the rounds. 

The video in question, available below, is said to be only the second ever-documented evidence of a black flamingo. Thus, such a rare bird was merely once spotted before, in 2014, in Israel.

In fact, some say that the pitch-black flamingo filmed in Cyprus this past April 8 might be the same bird as the one that was filmed in Israel last year. This would make the feathered creature the world's only black flamingo.

“To find a flamingo of this kind is something very, very, very rare,” explained Pantelis Charilaou, head of the environmental department of the British Sovereign Bases territory where the bird was spotted, as cited by Ocean Press.

Despite its body color, the black flamingo didn't appear to have any trouble interacting with its peers, and the other birds didn't look like they were feeling uncomfortable in its presence of anything of the sorts.

Still, wildlife researchers suspect that, being different, the bird probably has trouble finding mates. This is because flamingos are known to have a preference for perfectly pink sweethearts.

A possible explanation for the color of this bird's plumage

This is yet to be confirmed, but experts believe that this rare bird filmed in Cyprus is black because of a genetic disorder causing its body to produce too much of a pigment dubbed melanin.

Mind you, we humans also have this pigment, which is responsible for the color of our skin, hair and eyes. As shown by investigations carried out over the years, dark-skinned people have more melanin in their skin than light-skinned folks do.

Hence, specialists suspect that the pitch-black flamingo spotted in Cyprus also owes its fairly bizarre body color to the fact that its body is producing a tad too much melanin than it should.

In case anyone was wondering, it's not melanin that makes regular flamingos pink. Instead, the color of these bird's plumage is due to the fact that the algae included in their diet contain a great deal of an orange-red pigment.