Biodiversity > Meet the OLogist: Felicity Arengo

FELICITY ARENGO: I'm Felicity Arengo, an I'm a conservation biologist. And I study animals in nature in the field. And we look for some of the threats to these animals and try to address those threats to make sure these populations-- or their populations persist.

Right now, I'm working with flamingos in South America. There are three species of flamingo in South America. And we're looking at where they are, where they can be found, what the population sizes are. And we're also trying to find out where individuals go and how they use the different wetlands.

Flamingos don't stay very long in a single wetland. They use several wetlands. They're called itinerant, so they'll be in one wetland at one point in time, and then move around and choose different wetlands. So we're trying to figure out how they use these wetlands and how they're choosing the different habitats.

Well, flamingos are pretty mysterious, actually. And the interesting thing is that they're very charismatic and people are drawn to them, and actually, not that much is known about them. And they're pretty difficult to study. They tend to be in pretty remote places.

And as large groups, they're just-- it's hard to get a handle on what individuals are doing. And a lot of ways that you answer scientific questions is looking at individuals, by marking them. And they're very difficult to catch and to mark and to resight the same individuals over and over.

But they're very interesting. They're very gregarious. So you're usually-- more often than not, you'll find more than one flamingo. You'll find them in big groups. And it's just such a spectacle to see this huge number of pink birds that have a strange shape, they sound funny, and they interact a lot amongst each other. And it's very busy, also. And it can be very noisy.

The habitats they're in, like where I work in the Andes, it's a high-altitude desert. The landscape is spectacular. It's a desert, like I said, with wetlands. And then there-- you have these improbable birds there, because they're these little dainty pink birds in this very inhospitable, rough landscape. So they seem a little bit out of place, and yet they're one of the most-- the best adapted animals to that landscape.

Flamingos in zoos have lived over 50 years. And there has actually been a bird that was caught and tagged as a chick and was found dead 50 years later. So in the wild, they also have very-- they're very long-lived.

FECLICITY ARENGO: What I enjoy most about my work as a scientist, is that I get to be outside. I get to be in nature. And I get to observe how things are and how they work. And I also get to figure out why it is that they're doing that why it is that they are where they are. 

FELICITY ARENGO: My favorite place in the museum is the flamingo painting in the Hall of Birds. And I like it because it really gives you a sense of what it's like to be in a flamingo colony. It's almost life-size. It used to be the backdrop of a diorama or habitat group.

So you really get a sense of how crowded and how busy the flamingo colony is. And it's very extensive. And you get a good sense of what it feels like. It's very lifelike.

The backs of the dioramas are like that. This one's actually flat. It's not curved. But it sucks you in, and it gives you a sense of depth, so it really does give you a sense of being at a colony. It's pretty amazing.

Another place that I like in the museum is the Spectrum of Life in the Hall of Biodiversity. It just shows the immense diversity of life. Even though that's just a tiny fraction, that's just a small sample, you get a really good sense of the diversity of life and how beautiful it is.

Most of the models there are life-size, except for the invertebrates that are blown-up size so you can get a sense of what they are. But it's really artistically put together in terms of the-- how they're-- how the energy flows through it and the colors. It really could be in an art museum as well as a natural history museum.

FELICITY ARENGO: I think I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up just because I like to be outside and in nature, and I liked observing nature a lot. And then when I was in school and took classes in science and math, I realized that that was how I could answer the questions that I had, and that would be good way or a good vehicle through which I could live the life that I wanted to live. 

FELICITY ARENGO: If I weren't a scientist, I think I would be an architect. And actually, some people that I knew earlier in life when I hooked up with them later in life, and I told him I was a biologist, they said I would have thought you would have been architect. Because I could have gone either way maybe. But I like design and I like spaces. And I like figuring out how to use spaces. And I like colors and I like building things. 

FELICITY ARENGO: My advice to kids that are interested in pursuing a career in science would be that it's really fun. And it's really broad and diverse, so you can come at it from a lot of different angles. So if you think you don't like one little part of it, that's OK. There's probably a million other parts that you would like about it.

It's about observing. It's about answering questions. It's about looking for different answers to things and which is the best one that fits.

There are different environments that you can do science in. If you like to be outside, you can be outside, or if you like to do controlled experiments, you can be in a lab. And there's just a lot of different ways that you can do science.

FELICITY ARENGO: My advice to kids that think that science is boring or irrelevant is that, really, science is in every aspect of life. And it's fun. And it's about discovery.

But there's science in cooking. There's science in how a bicycle works. There's science in how a batter is evaluating the pitch from the mound and the physics of the ball and how that's going to be hit. There is science and math in construction. For me, it's a part of life and everything.

FELICITY ARENGO: My favorite kid's books were usually about adventure and mystery. I read Nancy Drew as a kid and then graduated Agatha Christie and all of those. And I also liked the adventure books like "Swiss Family Robinson" and "Robinson Crusoe" where they're shipwrecked on an island and have to figure out how to live. And I also liked folktales. I liked the "Thousand and One Nights." Because science is about observing and discovering and finding answers, and mysteries are just like that-- you're presented with clues, and then you have to pick and choose and put the clues together and make an answer-- so in that way, they're pretty similar. 

FELICITY ARENGO: My favorite flavor of ice cream is mint chip. But the good thing about ice cream is that there's always a next time. So even if you agonize over the flavor that you're going to pick, you don't have to worry that much, because even if you didn't get the best one, there's always going to be a next time that you can get the best one.