Flamingos look elegant, but when it's time to eat, they're very stupid.

"All their feeding behaviors are weird," said Steven Whitfield, director of ground and wetland conservation at the Audubon Institute of Nature in New Orleans, Los Angeles.

Skinny birds feed on shrimps and algae in tan and swamps around the world. To take a bite, they put their heads under the water and quickly opened and closed the bills, as if trembling. Then they stomped on their feet, swaying around the mud, swinging up and down as they walked.

It's not obvious yet why the iconic pink bird would take this ridiculous approach to a meal. They are filter feeders, “so they’re kind of like the bird version of oysters,” Whitfield said. They filter water through their L-shaped beaks, capturing shrimp, algae, seeds and other things that find delicious.

But since their heads are almost between their legs, their bills seem to be reversed, facing the wrong way to scalp shrimp and algae.

Saad Bhamla, a biophysicist at Georgia Tech, said: "Flamingos are doing everything wrong, it seems. Bhamla's student Victor Ortega-Jiménez first noticed a strange feeding behavior in a day at the Atlanta Zoo a few years ago. Ortega-Jiménez wanted to find out what was going on.

"All we need is a hook, an observation, this is for the competition," Bahara said.

Of course, Flamingos knows very well what they are doing, and so is Bhamla's team now. Writing in this week's Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe team revealed that the entire flamingo feeding process was actually a hydrodynamic travel victory.

The bird creates vortex in the water almost every step. Take the sway of his head as an example. The shape of its bill creates a tiny tornado when pulled out of the water. The spin stirs the prey and captures it long enough for the bird to hide and scalp. The same goes for people who keep chatting, pulling their food toward their beak.

Then there was the strange stomp of their feet. The study found that the flamingo's toes create a pair of vortexes that push food toward the bill. That's why it makes sense to have the head facing the feet instead of anything in front of it.

"What they are basically doing is using fluid power - using beak, using legs, using head and neck to play," Bahara said.

Ultimately, Flamingos may have more teaching, Bamra said. He worked with chemists who wanted to learn how to filter water through membranes. These membranes often clog debris and are similar in size to flamingos filtering food. Therefore, it seems that some of the vortex-induced techniques of the flamingo can be adjusted to help keep the filter clear.

Now, he said, “we basically use smart flamingos inspired tricks” to come up with solutions.

Whitfield is not affiliated with the work, he said, which shows the greatness of science—there are always mystery waiting to be solved.

"With birds as strange as flamingos, there may be more than average," he added.