While previous research showed that flamingos formed cliques, the findings of this new study indicate that these friendships are partly decided by individuals' intrinsic traits.
"This study is significant because it shows that, for flamingos specifically, their social lives are complex and the relationships they form within them are clearly important to bird wellbeing and to flock cohesion," Dr Rose told Sky News.
"For captive animals more generally, this study shows that it is important to look more deeply into the social lives of many more species of animal. Not just the commonly studied species such as great apes and monkeys, but all social animals in the zoo.
The study could not say why that was the case, but noted that the Chilean group was a lot smaller than the Caribbean flock, and their breeding period was later in the summer, so these factors could have impacted the structure and behaviour of the group, making it more challenging to directly compare the two flocks.
The researchers recommended the study should be replicated with other groups to see if their findings could apply to flamingos in general, and not just the two flocks studied.
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