Will shrimp turn my hair pink? (flamingos question)

[uglybeech]

If it hadn’t been cecil that said it, i’d never have believed the shrimp/pink flamingo connection. Because I learned in biology that bird’s feathers were much like hair or fur and even colored with the same pigment - melanin (I think). IIRC, melanin creates different colors in feathers by being arranged in such a way that it refracts light like a prism, giving the appearance of - say red or yellow - when light is bounced off of it.

(Experimentation on my own parrot bears that out. If you look at one of her bright green feathers by lighting it from behind so that the light shines through it (rather than being reflected off it) you find that the feather is “really” brown. Like my hair.)

So somehow in flamingos (and I guess canaries) a pigment other than melanin can get into the feather and change it’s color. Which finally leads me to my question - will this work with my own hair? If I eat the same shrimp can I turn my hair pink? Will too many carrots turn my hair orange? Is that how we get redheads?

[bibliophage]

A link to the column is appreciated. Are flamingos pink because they eat shrimps? Too many carrots will turn your skin orange anyway. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_275a.html

I’ve never heard of hair turning orange from carotene. In another thread, Colibri said

Flamingos’ metabolisms are set up to sequester the carotenoids in their feathers. Many animals consume lots of carotenoids without displaying them externally. For example, some kinds of penguins eat lots of krill (basically shrimp) but they sure don’t turn pink.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1325076#post1325076

Is that how we get redheads?

Nope. They have red hair because they have red melanin instead of–or in addition to–brown melanin. The genetic difference between the two forms of melanin is slight.

[Katelyn]

I have no clue about the shimp= pink hair thing, but I do know for a fact that eating too many carrots can lead to an orange-ing of the hands. It happened to a good friend of mine as a child. He ate one of those 1/2 lb bags and got really sick. A while later his palms and parts of his fingers turned orange.

[Colibri]

Pigments in bird feathers are generally either melanins (which mostly produce browns and blacks) and caroteniods (which produce yellow/orange/red). Blues are mostly produced structurally and not by pigments, that is they result from optical effects at the surface of the feather (see Cecil’s column Are Blue Jays not really blue?). Green is usually produced by the combination of a yellow pigment plus a blue structural color. The Turacos, an African family, are unusual in having several unique pigments, including ones for red and green.

Note that the foods that the flamingos eat - small shrimp and blue-green “algae” (cyanobacteria) - are not themselves pink. They merely contain carotenoids that the flamingo converts to a pigment called canthaxanthin, which is then deposited in the feathers.

As for how we get redheads, biblophage has it right - in humans the color is produced by a melanin, not a by a carotenoid. In order to get pink hair by eating shrimp, you would have to have some metabolic mechanism to convert a carotenoid to a pink form, and then deposit it in the hair - which humans don’t have.

SD Staff George
Straight Dope Curator of Birds

[JillGat]

Thank you for providing the link to the Blue Jay column, Dr. George. (btw, how do scarlet macaws stay so red?)

[Edited by JillGat on 06-22-2001 at 11:29 PM]

[Colibri]

*Originally posted by JillGat *
**(btw, how do scarlet macaws stay so red?)
**

Gosh, I dunno, Jill, how do they stay so red?

(Cripes, you’re never going to let me live that down, are you? Even after I sent you all those poison frogs.)

[JillGat]

I shouldn’t have said anything. The molas and poison frogs are gorgeous.

[SBCheek]

Yes.

[Colibri]

*Originally posted by JillGat *
I shouldn’t have said anything.

Now, Jill, you’re perfectly entitled to gloat, having beaten me at my own game. (And there should have been a after my post).

To elaborate, Jill challenged my speculation that the red color in macaws is due to carotenoids. In fact, macaws apparently do have a unique non-carotenoid pigment called psittacin not found in other birds.

Originally sent to me by Jill:

**In parrot type birds orange, red, and yellow are probably not caused by carotenoids. George Smith has posited a new class of chemical compounds. He has named these substances psittacins. In parrot types, color is not clearly a function of the diet. Ramon Noegel states that birds raised in captivity do show a greater extent of red and orange color. His believes that this increased degree of color is related to a diet rich in carotenoids. It must be noted that an improperly fed scarlet macaw or chattering lory, or any other scarlet parrot, might be near death from malnutrition, but still have fire engine red plumage. http://www.petcraft.com/docs/avgen.html

In parrotlike birds the name psittacin is used to cover all colours from yellow to red since these pigments most probably cannot be influenced by the food given to the animals (as real carotenoids can). http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/clivehesford/naming01.html

A final example is the head colour. The head feathers of each species contain melanin plus yellow and red psittacin. It is merely the mixture of these pigments that varies from species to species resulting in a different head colour. http://home.worldonline.be/~vdadirk/engmenu/feather.htm

Many parrots as well as, or instead of, producing yellow psittacin also produce red and/or orange pigmentation. (These oranges may be due to a mixture of red and yellow pigments rather than a discrete orange pigment.) Where a mutant colour gene brings about a dilution or reduction of yellow psittacin, as for example in the Parblues, there tends to be an accompanying dilution of red or orange pigmentation where this is present. For this reason we assume there is a close relationship between these bright yellow/orange/red pigments which we refer to collectively as psittacins. A relationship similar to that we assume between eumelanins and phaeomlanins. Are we to believe that all these pigments are related and that melanin not only produces the sombre blacks, browns, and ochre yellows; but also the brilliant reds, oranges, and pure yellow? http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/clivehesford/halfside.html

**

First bet I ever paid off in poison frogs. (I hope the last, too.)

[triolamj]

I remember reading a case study published in a popular magazine years and years ago, where the wife brought her husband in because his skin was slowly turning redder and redder. His overall health was good with no blood pressure problems or overexposure to sun. The clue came when the doctor investigated the man’s diet. The patient was consuming large amounts of tomato juice with meals and between meals. Somehow the pigments of the tomatoes were building up in his skin. The effect appeared to be all over his body and not just his face or hands.

[picunurse]

I visited Hilo, Hawaii’s botanical gardens a few years ago, whehe I saw some white flamingos. I asked about them and was told they ate a sort of (for want of a better term) “Flamingo Chow” It didn’t have the shrimp they need to be pink.
They aren’t there anymore. Could the diet have caused their exit?