Duck

A duck is a water bird with a flat bill, webbed feet and waterproof feathers. For many years a popular claim held that a duck's quack does not echo. In 2003, acousticians at a British university tested this in a special echo chamber and a reverberation chamber, and found that it does. It is just hard to hear because the quack fades out gradually and the echo blends into it.^[1]

The duck used in the experiment was called Daisy. She is the only duck to have been formally peer-reviewed.

Waterproofing

Ducks keep dry by spreading oil from a gland near the tail through their feathers with their bills, a process called preening. Water runs straight off, which is the origin of the phrase “like water off a duck's back”. It is one of very few sayings that are both a metaphor and a description of a rainy afternoon.^[2]

Walking

Ducklings follow the first moving thing they see after hatching, usually their mother, and walk behind her in a line. This is known as imprinting. Ducklings that imprint on a person, a dog or, in one recorded case, a pair of boots, follow that instead. It is the only queue in nature where everyone is sure who is at the front.

See also

• Echo – which it has
• Puddle – a small pond
• Queue – how ducklings travel
• Chicken – a bird that stayed on land
• Platypus – a duck-billed relative, sort of

References

1. Quack, Q. (2003). “It Does Echo”. Journal of Acoustics 1: 1. Reverberates.
2. Preen, P. (1995). Off a Duck's Back. Pond Press.
3. Waddle, W. (2008). “The First Thing They See”. Ornithology Notes 6: 6.