96 Fun Facts About Ducks

How do a duck's feet stay on ice all day without draining its body heat?

Arteries warm the veins: the vessels run side by side in the leg, so blood heading out hands its heat to blood coming back. The feet run cold, but little warmth leaves the body.

What is a common collective noun for a group of ducks, especially when they are on the water?

Ducks on the water are a raft, a paddling or a bunch; on land the same birds become a badling, a brace or a safe.

What makes up most of the food a dabbling duck like the mallard strains from the water?

Grasses and aquatic plants are the staple: the bird takes in a billful and squirts the water out through a comb-like edge along the bill, which traps the food.

Which duck's drake sports a pair of orange 'sail' feathers on its back?

The Mandarin Duck drake's orange 'sails' are enlarged wing feathers that stand upright; birds that escaped from captivity have founded a wild population in Britain.

A long-running myth, tested in a University of Salford sound lab in 2003, claimed a duck's quack never produces what?

An echo does follow a quack: acoustics professor Trevor Cox recorded a duck named Daisy in an echo-free room and a reverberation chamber, and concluded the echo is simply too quiet to notice.

Newly hatched ducklings bond with and follow the first moving thing they see, a rapid kind of learning called what?

Imprinting takes only a few hours after hatching, and the object need not be a duck: in experiments hatchlings have attached themselves to people and even to a box on a model train.

Ducks share the waterfowl family Anatidae with geese and which other long-necked birds?

Swans, geese and ducks make up the family Anatidae; 'duck' is not a scientific group of its own, just the everyday name for the family's smaller, shorter-necked members.

A duck dozing at the exposed end of a row can keep one eye open by resting only what?

Half its brain sleeps while the other half keeps watch through the open eye, which points away from the flock toward approaching danger; ducks in the safer middle do this far less.

Which sea duck's breast down, plucked by the female to line her nest, fills luxury pillows and quilts?

Eiderdown comes from the common eider; the female plucks down from her breast to line the nest, and Icelandic farmers gather it after the ducklings leave.

Which domesticated waterfowl native to the Americas is commonly known in Spanish as the pato criollo?

The Muscovy duck, called pato criollo in Spanish, was bred by Native Americans long before Columbus; barnyard escapees now run wild in Florida's parks and suburbs.

The English word 'duck' comes from an Old English word meaning what?

Diver is the sense of Old English duce, presumed to come from a verb meaning to duck or dive; it pushed out the older bird name ened, a cousin of German Ente.

Which stiff-tailed North American duck's breeding drake has a bright sky-blue bill?

The ruddy duck drake's bill turns bright blue for the breeding season; birds loose in Britain spread into Europe and were culled there to stop them interbreeding with Spain's rare white-headed duck.

What former North American name for the long-tailed duck was dropped in 2000?

Oldsquaw went in 2000 after biologists warned it could cost conservation the help of Native communities; the AOU took up 'long-tailed duck', the name long used in Britain.

What is Donald Duck's rarely used middle name?

Donald's full name is Donald Fauntleroy Duck; the middle name first appeared on his draft notice in the 1942 short Donald Gets Drafted.

Which wartime Donald Duck propaganda short won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film?

Der Fuehrer's Face puts Donald on a Nazi munitions line until he wakes in star-spangled pyjamas, sees it was a nightmare and hugs a model Statue of Liberty; it won the Oscar in 1943.

Who first voiced Donald Duck's barely intelligible quacking in 1934?

Clarence Nash, by one account, won the part with the billy-goat voice he had done since boyhood; he played Donald for more than 50 years and trained Tony Anselmo to follow him.

In which ocean did 28,800 Friendly Floatees bath toys wash overboard in 1992, aiding a study of currents?

The container spilled in the North Pacific in January 1992, en route from Hong Kong to Tacoma; oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer tracked the 28,800 toys as they came ashore.

Jacques de Vaucanson's 18th-century mechanical duck amazed Paris by appearing to do what?

Digest its food: the automaton swallowed grain and seemed to excrete it, but a magician who examined it in 1844 found the droppings were pre-loaded pellets of dyed breadcrumb.

Which Sesame Street Muppet serenades his bath toy with 'Rubber Duckie'?

Ernie sings 'Rubber Duckie' in the bath on Sesame Street; released as a single in 1970, Jim Henson's performance became a surprise pop hit, reaching number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Wood duck ducklings leave their tree-cavity nest the day after hatching by jumping from as high as what?

50 ft is no obstacle: the day-old ducklings climb to the nest hole with sharp claws, jump and land unhurt, while their mother calls from below without helping.

In Korea, pairs of carved wooden ducks are traditionally given as gifts at what kind of occasion?

Weddings are the occasion: the carved pair stands for peace, fidelity and plentiful offspring, because the real birds were believed to stay with one mate for life.

In Chuck Jones's Duck Amuck, the unseen animator tormenting Daffy turns out to be which character?

Bugs Bunny is at the drawing board when the camera pulls back, grinning 'Ain't I a stinker?'; Jones later flipped the joke in Rabbit Rampage, where Bugs is the victim and Elmer Fudd holds the pencil.

The Long Island duck descends from white birds imported in the 1870s from which country?

China sent the white Pekin ducks that reached America in 1873; farms on Long Island went on to raise so many of their descendants that the island's name stuck to the bird.

For caneton à la rouennaise, how is the roast duck's carcass treated?

Squeezed in a press, the carcass gives up the blood and juices that make the sauce; Paris's Tour d'Argent hands each diner a card with the duck's serial number.

The Aylesbury duck, a classic English table breed, is named after the county town of which county?

Buckinghamshire's county town gave the white Aylesbury duck its name; the trade faded after hardier, cheaper Pekin ducks arrived in the 1870s and breeders switched or cross-bred.

Bianyifang, the Beijing roast-duck house that traces its history to 1416, began under which Chinese dynasty?

Ming is the dynasty: roast duck was a speciality of Nanjing, the first Ming capital, and is said to have come north when the Yongle Emperor moved his court to Beijing.

Which future US Secretary of State was served Peking duck on his secret 1971 China visit?

Henry Kissinger, then Nixon's national security adviser, was served Peking duck by Zhou Enlai after a morning of stalled talks in July 1971; the secret trip cleared the way for Nixon's own visit in 1972.

Nintendo's 1984 game Duck Hunt was played with which light-gun accessory?

The NES Zapper fires nothing: pulling the trigger blacks out the screen for a frame, then a sensor in the barrel looks for a white flash where the duck was, which is why it fails on flat screens.

Millions of NES owners got Duck Hunt on a bundled cartridge it shared with which other game?

Super Mario Bros. shared the cartridge packed in with the NES Action Set, which helped Duck Hunt pass 28 million copies; the game began as a 1976 Nintendo light-gun toy.

What is the drab, female-like summer plumage that male northern ducks moult into called?

Eclipse plumage comes with the summer moult, when many ducks drop their flight feathers at once and cannot fly, so they retreat to sheltered, food-rich water until new ones grow.

Which ducks, heavier than dabblers, must run across the water to take off?

Diving ducks such as scaup and canvasback are heavier-bodied with legs set far back, so they patter along the surface to take off; the extra weight helps them submerge.

In the 1995 film Babe, Ferdinand the duck tries to stay off the dinner table by doing which animal's job?

The rooster's job is his plan: Ferdinand crows every dawn so the farm will think him useful, and panics when the Hoggetts buy an alarm clock, roping Babe into a raid to get rid of it.

The Latin species name of the wood duck, Aix sponsa, translates to what?

Bride is the meaning of sponsa, the name Linnaeus gave in 1758; hunting and lost nest trees had the species in serious decline by 1900, until protection and nest boxes brought it back.

Which Northumbrian saint, a hermit on the Farne Islands, gives the sea ducks nesting there their local nickname?

St Cuthbert lived as a hermit on the Farnes, and Northumbrians still call the birds Cuddy's ducks; the tales of him protecting them appear only some 500 years after his death.

Howard the Duck first appeared in 1973 in which publisher's comics?

Marvel introduced Howard as a walk-on in a Man-Thing horror story by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik; he outgrew the swamp monster and had his own series by 1976.

Which Memphis radio DJ topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976 with the novelty hit 'Disco Duck'?

Rick Dees had a number one that his own station would not let him play; when he mentioned the song on air he was fired, and a rival Memphis station hired him.

The water-resistant, cloth-backed 'duck tape' of the Second World War was developed to seal what?

Ammunition boxes got the tape after factory worker Vesta Stoudt, who had two sons in uniform, wrote to President Roosevelt in 1943 proposing a cloth tape that soldiers could tear open in a hurry.

The German traveller Engelbert Kaempfer described the mandarin duck in his 1727 history of which country?

Kaempfer, a German physician who lived in Japan from 1690 to 1692, described the mandarin duck in his History of Japan (1727), saying its colours seemed unbelievable until seen alive.

While pintail hens quack, what sound does the northern pintail drake make?

The northern pintail drake gives a soft, flute-like whistle while the hen quacks; slim and long-necked, the species up-ends in the shallows to pull most of its food from the mud below.

Penguin-upright Indian Runner ducks were first bred on the islands of which country?

Indian Runners originated in Indonesia, on Lombok, Bali and Java; their pelvic girdle sits nearer the tail than in other breeds, so they run upright rather than waddle, and cannot fly.

The Khaki Campbell duck, bred in Gloucestershire around 1900, became famous as a champion at what?

Laying eggs is its fame: Adele Campbell built the breed on an Indian Runner that was an exceptional layer, and is said to have named the 1901 khaki variety after British army uniforms.

The tiny, noisy Call duck is believed to have originated in which country?

The Call duck is thought to have originated in the Netherlands, where its piercing call was used to lure wild ducks into trap nets; the breed was in Britain by the 1850s.

The black, beetle-green Cayuga duck is named after an indigenous people of which US state?

The Cayuga duck takes its name from the Cayuga people of New York's Finger Lakes; it was America's main meat duck until the 1890s, when the white Pekin won out because dark pinfeathers showed on a plucked bird.

In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which instrument plays the part of the duck?

The oboe is the duck, beside a flute for the bird, a clarinet for the cat and a bassoon for Grandfather; at the very end it can still be heard quacking inside the wolf, which swallowed it alive.

The pink-headed duck, feared extinct since the 1950s, lived mainly in which country's northern wetlands?

India's Gangetic plain held most records of the pink-headed duck; searches have found no proof it survives, but sight reports from remote swamps in Myanmar keep it listed as critically endangered.

Which introduced animal stripped Hawaii's Laysan Island bare, cutting its native duck to twelve birds by 1912?

European rabbits, let loose by the guano mine's manager for a meat-canning scheme, ate the plant cover and left seven adult ducks and five young; once the rabbits were gone in 1923 the ducks recovered to about 500.

Patagonian Tachyeres birds thrash their wings like paddles to swim, earning what name?

Steamer ducks got their name because the thrashing wings and feet recall a paddle steamer; the three flightless species are aggressive enough to kill waterbirds far larger than themselves.

The torrent duck holds territories on fast-flowing rivers in which mountain range?

The torrent duck lives along fast, cold rivers of the Andes from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego, nesting in waterside caves; introduced trout compete for its invertebrate food.

The bufflehead evolved its small size to fit the abandoned nest cavities of which bird?

Northern flicker holes suit the bufflehead because it is small enough to use them unaltered, a ready supply of nest sites that bigger hole-nesting ducks such as goldeneyes cannot squeeze into.

The canvasback's species name valisineria honours which favourite winter food?

Wild celery, Vallisneria americana, gave the canvasback its species name; about half of North America's canvasbacks once wintered on Chesapeake Bay, and as its underwater plants died back the ducks there turned to eating clams.

Which small Eurasian sawbill's drake is said to have a 'panda' or 'cracked ice' look?

The smew drake is white with fine black lines, hence 'cracked ice'; like other sawbills it has a hooked bill with serrated edges, which grip the fish it dives for.

The whio, or blue duck, appears on which country's $10 banknote?

New Zealand put the whio on its $10 note; the name imitates the male's call, and stoats that kill hens on the nest have left the remaining populations with more males than females.

The pink-eared duck follows the rains across the dry interior of which country?

The pink-eared duck is endemic to Australia, roaming inland wetlands after rain; its pink ear spot shows only close up, so the old nickname 'zebra duck' fits its barred flanks better.

South America's black-headed duck never builds a nest, laying in other birds' nests like which famous European bird?

The cuckoo is the famous nest cheat, but the duck is a gentler one: neither the adults nor the ducklings destroy the host's eggs or kill its chicks.

In cricket, what is a dismissal off the very first ball a batter faces called?

A golden duck is out first ball; a plain 'duck' is short for 'duck's egg', the zero on the scorecard, used in 1866 when the Prince of Wales went back on nought.

Balut, a boiled fertilised duck egg eaten straight from the shell, is most famously the street food of which Southeast Asian country?

The Philippines made balut famous: the egg is incubated until the embryo is partly formed, then boiled and eaten whole from the shell. Cambodia and Vietnam have their own versions.

Daffy made his debut in which 1937 Looney Tunes cartoon?

Daffy first appeared in Porky's Duck Hunt (April 1937), directed by Tex Avery, as a screwball duck who bounced away across the lake; Mel Blanc voiced him for 52 years.

Which comics artist created Scrooge McDuck in 1947?

Carl Barks created Scrooge McDuck for the 1947 story Christmas on Bear Mountain, naming him after Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge; Don Rosa later chronicled him in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.

In DuckTales, the nephews move in with Scrooge because Donald leaves to join what?

The Navy takes Donald away at the start, leaving the triplets with Scrooge; the show ran for 100 episodes, and its weekday success led to The Disney Afternoon.

Which DuckTales pilot character became Darkwing Duck's sidekick?

Launchpad McQuack flew for Scrooge before flying for Darkwing; the show grew out of two DuckTales episodes, one where Scrooge himself becomes a purple-caped vigilante, the Masked Mallard.

The Duck Dynasty family's Duck Commander business is based in which state?

Louisiana is home: the Robertsons' business in West Monroe makes the Duck Commander call, and patriarch Phil quit college football, where he started ahead of Terry Bradshaw, for duck season.

Oregon's right to use Donald as mascot came from a handshake between Walt Disney and whom?

Athletic director Leo Harris shook on it with Walt Disney in the 1940s; when Disney's lawyers queried the deal in the 1970s, a photo of the two men in matching Oregon Donald jackets served as proof.

In the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, Groucho becomes president of which fictional nation?

Groucho's Rufus T. Firefly becomes leader of Freedonia and goes to war with neighbouring Sylvania; Duck Soup (1933) was the brothers' last Paramount film and Zeppo's final appearance with them.

What finally shows Andersen's Ugly Duckling what he really is?

His reflection in the water shows he was never a duck: he had swum up to the beautiful birds expecting them to kill him, and they welcomed him as one of their own.

Make Way for Ducklings follows a duck family settling in a public garden in which city?

Mr and Mrs Mallard raise their brood in Boston's Public Garden; Nancy Schon's bronze ducklings stand there, and a copy was given to Moscow in 1991 during the START treaty ceremonies.

Jemima Puddle-Duck, talked into nesting at a gentleman fox's house, was created by whom?

Beatrix Potter set the tale on her own Lake District farm, Hill Top, where the farmer's wife had to put duck eggs under a hen because the ducks were bad sitters; the 1908 book revived interest in white Aylesbury ducks.

Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 by whom?

Gabriel Weinberg launched DuckDuckGo in 2008 and paid for it himself at first, running it from Pennsylvania; the name is a nod to the playground game duck, duck, goose.

Which cartoon character teaches kids to 'duck and cover' in the 1952 civil defense film?

Bert the Turtle ducks into his shell in Duck and Cover (1952), funded by the Federal Civil Defense Administration; the film entered the National Film Registry in 2004.

'Lame duck' first meant a debt-defaulting member of which 1700s institution?

The term began on the London Stock Exchange for a broker who could not pay his debts; Horace Walpole asked a friend in 1761 whether he knew 'what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are'.

Who designed the first Federal Duck Stamp in 1934, at FDR's request?

Jay Norwood 'Ding' Darling, a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist then heading the Bureau of Biological Survey, drew the first Duck Stamp in 1934; hunters must buy one before shooting waterfowl.

In The Mighty Ducks (1992), Emilio Estevez plays a lawyer coaching kids in which city?

Gordon Bombay, a Minneapolis lawyer sentenced to community service after a drunk-driving arrest, coaches the District 5 pee-wee team that becomes the Ducks.

Which team did the Ducks beat in 2007 to become the first California Stanley Cup champion?

Anaheim beat the Ottawa Senators in five games, four years after losing the final to New Jersey as the Mighty Ducks; brothers Scott and Rob Niedermayer won the Cup together.

Whose book Learning from Las Vegas made Long Island's Big Duck famous?

Robert Venturi and his co-authors took the Big Duck, a shop a Long Island duck farmer built in 1931 to sell ducks and eggs, and made 'duck' the architects' word for a building shaped like its purpose.

Bombay duck, a pungent dried delicacy of Anglo-Indian cooking, is actually what?

Bombay duck is a lizardfish, Harpadon nehereus: caught off Mumbai, it was traditionally dried in the sun until pungent, then fried and crumbled over food as a condiment.

Cotton duck, the heavy canvas fabric, takes its name from a word in which language?

Dutch doek, meaning cloth, gave the fabric its name, so cotton duck has nothing to do with the bird; the tightly woven canvas turns up in sneakers, tents and sandbags.

Which dabbling duck sweeps a bill longer than its head from side to side while feeding?

The northern shoveler's spoon-shaped bill is edged with comb-like plates that sieve food from the water; flocks swim along with their bills barely submerged, straining the muddy soup of the shallows.

What is the smallest dabbling duck in North America?

The green-winged teal is North America's smallest dabbling duck, yet it stays farther north in winter than the other teal; its small, fast flocks twist and turn in unison.

At which Memphis hotel do ducks ride the elevator down each morning for a red-carpet march to the fountain?

The Peabody's ducks began as a prank in the 1930s, when the manager, back from a hunting trip, left live decoys in the lobby fountain; bellman Edward Pembroke, a former circus trainer, taught them to march in 1940.

The WWII amphibious truck nicknamed the 'Duck' had what official GMC designation?

DUKW was just GMC's model code, which the troops read as 'Duck'; over 21,000 were built, and survivors now ferry tourists on 'duck tours' of cities.

Which blockbuster film-maker was executive producer of the notorious 1986 flop Howard the Duck?

George Lucas had wanted to film the comic since American Graffiti; planned as an animated feature, it was shot in live action because a contract demanded one and animation would have taken too long.

Count Duckula became a vegetarian vampire because his ritual used what instead of blood?

Nanny's resurrection ritual used tomato ketchup instead of blood, producing a vegetarian vampire; the Cosgrove Hall show, spun off from Danger Mouse, ran 65 episodes from 1988 with David Jason as the count.

Psyduck, the duck-like Pokemon perpetually stunned by a headache, belongs to which type?

Psyduck is a pure Water-type despite its name; when its headache gets bad enough it unleashes psychic powers, and in the anime Misty's Psyduck kept popping out of its ball uninvited.

Which comedian voiced the duck in Aflac's insurance commercials until he was fired in 2011 over tsunami jokes?

Gilbert Gottfried voiced the Aflac duck from 2000 until March 2011, when tweets joking about the Japanese tsunami got him fired; Daniel McKeague, a TV ad sales manager, won the open audition to replace him.

The name 'rubber duck debugging' comes from an anecdote in which programming book?

The Pragmatic Programmer (1999) by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas tells of a developer who explained his code line by line to a rubber duck; the technique took the duck's name.

In which US state do kids play 'duck, duck, gray duck' instead of 'duck, duck, goose'?

Minnesota kids play 'duck, duck, gray duck'; the picker can tease with 'green duck, purple duck, grape duck' before finally shouting 'gray duck!'

The harlequin duck is named for a colourful character from which theatre tradition?

Harlequin was the motley-clad clown of Italian commedia dell'arte; the species name histrionicus comes from the Latin for actor, and other names include painted duck and totem pole duck.

Foie gras, the French delicacy made from a specially fattened duck or goose, is which part of the bird?

The liver swells to about ten times its usual size under force-feeding, a practice traced back to ancient Egypt; welfare objections have led several countries to ban producing it.

Long-tailed ducks usually feed near the surface but can dive to about what depth?

60 m (200 ft) is reckoned the deepest dive of any duck; long-tailed ducks also stay under longer than their relatives, three or four times as long underwater as on the surface while feeding.

Duck confit, salt-cured and slowly cooked in its own fat, is a specialty of which region?

Gascony's confit began as a way to keep meat: salted, cooked slowly and then sealed under its own fat, the duck would last, and Gascon cooks still send the neck to the soup pot for garbure.

Ripper, an Australian musk duck recorded in 1987, appeared to mimic which human phrase?

Ripper, hand-reared at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra, repeated 'you bloody fool', probably learned from a keeper; the 1987 recordings were published in 2021 as rare evidence of vocal learning in a duck.

In a duck decoy, a pond with tapering net-covered ditches, what did operators use to tempt curious wild ducks up the 'pipes'?

A dog did the luring because ducks are curious about a predator: they keep their distance from a fox but tend to follow it, so decoymen used a fox-like dog that showed itself between the screens.

Which sculptor patented the floating rubber duck in 1949, selling more than 50 million?

Sculptor Peter Ganine patented his toy duck in 1949 and sold more than 50 million; earlier rubber ducks were solid chew toys that could not float, and the duck entered the Toy Hall of Fame in 2013.

North America's migrating ducks are managed along four great north-south corridors known as what?

Flyways grew out of Frederick Lincoln's 1930s banding work, which showed that ducks hold to their ancestral routes; each one now has a council of state and provincial agencies that helps set hunting rules.

The oil a duck spreads over its feathers comes from a gland located where on its body?

The preen gland sits at the base of the tail; its waxy oil keeps feathers supple so their tiny barbules stay interlocked, and that tight weave is what helps the plumage shed water.

Shot pellets of which metal are banned for waterfowl hunting in the US, Canada and EU?

Lead shot was banned for US waterfowl hunting nationwide in 1991 and later in Canada and the EU, because ducks feeding on lake bottoms swallowed spent pellets and died of lead poisoning.

In Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Daffy and Marvin fight on Planet X over what element?

Illudium Phosdex, 'the shaving cream atom', is the prize, but Daffy and Marvin blow Planet X to bits fighting over it; Daffy claims the last small chunk and Porky shrugs, 'Big deal.'