Question: what exactly interests you about flamigos bums?

Eileen Diskin answered on 13 Nov 2012:

First, I’ll tell you what DOESN’T interest me about their bums – is the smell. They can be very stinky animals (even though they’re pink and are so pretty!).

What DOES interest me is the bacteria that are in there, because these bacteria can tell us how polluted the environment is where the flamingos are living (since what flamingos eat, and then poo, passes through their bums). This can tell us if there are any dangerous bacteria that are in their environment that might cause diseases in humans.

So basically, I’m using the flamingos as ‘indicators’ of how healthy their environment is, so I can make a prediction about the risk to humans. The flamingos are a perfect link between the environmental health (since they’re living there) and human health, since humans use lots of water!

This is REALLY important in developing countries – places like Kenya – where people dont have access to clean drinking water. So its important to be able to predict just how polluted the water might be, and its handy to do this with flamingos (taking the samples doesnt harm them – it takes about 10 seconds, and I release them back into their homes straight afterwards!)

Hope that all makes sense?!