Talk:Duck

Anecdote: Fuck Intelligence

Perhaps ducks do not have much of a reputation for intelligence, but to add to the growing volume of data showing that many animals possess reasoning ability, there is a fairly recent story of a park ranger who found a mother duck tugging on his pant leg and he followed her to a sewer grating where her ducklings were trapped. As she wanted, the ranger rescued them. Do not find the link to this specific story.Jrm2007 (talk) 06:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Long corkscrew penis and vagina

Material such as the following should be added to the article.

The Argentine Blue-bill duck is notable for possessing, in relation to body length, the longest penis of all vertebrates; the penis, which is coiled up in flaccid state, can reach about the same length as the animal itself when fully erect, but more commonly is about half the bird's length. It is theorized that the remarkable size of the spiny penis with its bristled tip may have evolved in response to competitive pressure in these highly promiscuous birds, removing sperm from previous matings in the manner of a bottle brush.

Although most male birds have no penis[1], ducks have a long corkscrew penis, and the females have a long corkscrew vagina, which spirals in the opposite direction.[2] The males often try to force copulation, but the complex mating geometry allows the females to retain control -- most of the forced copulations do not result in successful fertilisation.[3]

-69.87.204.48 (talk) 14:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Quack

There is a paragraph about the supposed belief that a duck's quack has no echo, and there are some citations for debunking the myth. Why is this included? There is no rational reason to believe such tripe, and there should be no reason to debunk it here; it only gives the stupid belief more traction. This kind of thing does not belong in an encyclopedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 (talk) 15:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

the reason it is included is no doubt to educate the large number of people that do believe it is true, and to prevent people adding the fact if they see no mention of it. Sabine's Sunbird talk 21:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Etymology (German)

An interesting addition to the etymology of the word "duck" is probably the parallel between the English noun "duck" and the German verb "ducken" which means exactly the same as "to duck" (to bend down, to dive...). Cheers, Ben 88.71.248.21 (talk) 06:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

== Addition to Etymology section ==

I'm a German and I think it would be useful to add some information to the Etymology section of this page. There is another popular word in German referring to the root of duck: ducken (to duck, to bend down very low). Maybe this might be a better explanation than tauchen.

Sorry, I didn't scroll down enough to the bottom of this page, so I didn't see that this topic has been mentioned before.

Crazykriz (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I think German "ducken" is likely borrowed from another West Germanic source, which is why Grimm's D->T shift hasn't occurred in this case. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Presence on Most Vandalized Pages

Hello. I help to maintain the 'most vandalized' page and, having looked at the revision log of Duck, believe that it no longer merits inclusion on the page, so will be removing it. Please do not hesitate to re-add it if IP vandalism becomes a problem again. Hadrian89 (talk) 05:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but I have to ask: Why do people vandalize a page about ducks? Doesn't seem like a very controversial or inflammatory topic... Aksel89 (talk) 12:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Simple Edits

I noticed that in the references, someone's cited the MYTHBUSTERS episode where they tested if a duck's quack has an echo. Unfortunately, whoever typed the citation misspelled MYTHbusters as MYbusters. Could someone with the authority to ammend this please do so? Thanks. JourneyV (talk) 06:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)