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Flamingo uses prosthetic leg to ‘get around’

Zookeepers in Brazil have outfitted a pink flamingo with an artificial leg. CBSN's Jeff Glor has the veterinary breakthrough.

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A one-legged bird usually has little chance of survival, so a zoo in Brazil decided to help out in an effort to beat the odds. As a result, a Chilean flamingo is now using a specially-made prosthetic leg to help him get around.

About a month ago, zookeepers in Sorocaba, Brazil, found the flamingo with a fractured leg. This week, they performed surgery and the bird is now strutting around with a new seven-inch carbon limb.

“To prevent an infection from setting in and spreading to the rest of his body, which would have killed him, we decided to amputate the leg and give him the prosthesis,” Andre Costa, who performed the surgery on the bird, told The Huffington Post.

According to the zookeepers, this may be the first time a flamingo has ever used a prosthetic leg to walk.

The veterinarians at the zoo said they are struggling to pinpoint how the flamingo injured its leg. Working theories include: it being attacked by a pelican that shares the same enclosure, or he may have been attacked by a crane.

Regardless, the flamingo must now be reintroduced to its cohort. That’s where the second challenge comes in to play: zookeepers are worried that the other 28 flamingos will see the prosthetic leg as a physical threat and end up attacking the bird.

Despite these uncertainties,it appears as though the bird is adjusting nicely to its new limb. He’s even doing the classic one-legged standing pose that flamingos are famous for.