Science Alert: Ducks can talk!

In a shocking development, researchers have rediscovered that some ducks can learn to mimic human language. Ripper, a hand raised Australian musk duck, was recorded repeating the phrase “you bloody fool” as the animal swam around at Australia’s Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Researcher Carel ten Cate, a professor of animal behavior at Leiden University in the Netherlands, called the finding of duck speak “extra remarkable.” The recording was made many years ago, sadly Ripper died of old age long ago, but somehow the observation was never published and forgotten. The original 35 second recording is on Soundcloud. Ripper really does say you bloody fool a lot in 35 seconds. 

Researchers are working to see what range of speech these ducks can engage in. They are working on phrases like “you're an idiot,” “I have cooked vegetables in my shoe” and “that yellow snow tastes funny” to test how far this phenomenon goes. 

OK, just kidding, researchers are not using those phrases. I just made 'em up. But they are good phrases.


Australian musk duck - the skin pouch under 
the bill helps the duck articulate human voice sounds




And that's your dose of cutting edge science for the day.

By Germaine, the science guy and not a bloody fool

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