Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa Painting painting

The flamingo has long elegant legs, a long neck and bright colors. The grebe is a squat, duck-like bird. Appearances suggest they're not related, genetics tell a different story.
That's sort of what happened to two independent research teams at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin. Using very different approaches, the two teams studied the genetic nature of a wide range of aquatic birds, and some of the results were downright "astonishing," says evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges of Penn State's Eberly College of Science, leader of one of the teams.For example, the elegant flamingo, with its stork-like legs, long neck and brilliant colors, turns out to have a really strange bedfellow in its family tree. The flamingo's closest relative, according to the researchers, is not another long-legged shore bird. It's a grebe.