Report that the duck learned bad things about humans, reproduce the rant 'You are a big idiot' and the sound of the door closing with a bark


by

Ed Dunens

There are some types of animals that make calls that imitate human language, and parrots that speak human language are often talked about. A new case was reported in the academic journal Philosophical Transactions B that a musk duck raised in Australia began to cry after learning from humans the rant that 'you are a big idiot.'

Vocal imitations and production learning by Australian musk ducks (Biziura lobata) | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0243

These Australian Ducks Can Learn to Swear Like People, And Biologists Are Excited
https://www.sciencealert.com/vocal-researchers-have-discovered-that-an-australian-musk-duck-would-swear-while-trying-to-mate

'You bloody fool': Australian talking duck proves birds can imitate speech | Australia news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/07/you-bloody-fool-australian-talking-duck-proves-birds-can-imitate-speech?CMP=gdnaus_yt

Confirmed: A duck named Ripper learned how to say “You bloody fool!” | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/confirmed-a-duck-named-ripper-learned-how-to-say-you-bloody-fool/

Cases of birds imitating human language have been confirmed in parrots, parakeets, gray parrots, etc. In some cases, it was canceled due to the impact.

Gray parrot cursing 'fat fucking bastard' to visitors, discontinued: Asahi Shimbun Digital
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN9Z6JFPN9ZUHBI03C.html

Musk duck is a type of duck that is distributed in southern Australia and Tasmania, and was named because it emits a body odor similar to musk during the breeding season. Ducks are a species far from parrots, parakeets, and myna, which are known to imitate human language, and no cases of ducks speaking human language have been reported so far.

However, there was a record that the musk duck 'Ripper', which was bred in the 1980s in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra, the capital of Australia, spoke human language. It is said that male musk ducks are rarely bred because they are aggressive, but the exception is the ripper that was born in 1983, which was raised by humans after returning from eggs.

Ripper, who had lived away from other musk ducks for a long time, gradually began to imitate 'abuses believed to have been made by the keeper' and 'door closing sounds.' Then, in 1987, Australian researcher Dr. Peter Frager recorded the bark of a mating ripper. The ripper bark recorded by Mr. Flagger can be heard in the embedded movie below.

Talking duck in Australia can say'you bloody fool' after learning to imitate human speech --YouTube


To the cry that sounds like saying 'You bloody fool!' ...



You can hear a squealing sound that looks exactly like the sound of the door closing.



For a long time, Mr. Fruger's record was forgotten, but

Professor Carel Ten Cate, who studies animal behavior at Leiden University in the Netherlands, read a book on bird vocalization and learned about this discovery, and Fruger had already retired. He said he contacted him. Kate said, 'When I first read this description, I thought,'It's a hoax, it's impossible.'' I heard he was convinced.

In 2000, another musk duck, which had been bred in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, recorded a bark that mimics the bark of a completely different kind of bird , the Pacific black duck. In addition, although there are no recordings left, individuals living in the United Kingdom said, 'The sound of a pony living nearby snorting,' 'The voice of' Hello, 'which seems to be the word of a gardener,' and 'The sound of a bird keeper's cough.' It was reported that the musk duck imitated 'the sound of the rotary door squeaking'.

Kate and Fruger conclude that musk ducks have the ability to mimic voice, as they analyzed 1987 and 2000 recordings on ultrasonography and found that they matched well with the imitated sound. .. Regarding the cry that sounds like 'You bloody fool' of the ripper, Mr. Kate says that the part that sounds like 'Fool' is actually 'Food', and the keeper He claims that he may have mimicked what he was jokingly saying 'You bloody food.'


by Ed Dunens

The reason why musk ducks have voice learning ability may be related to the fact that parents give birth to only a few children at a time and spend time with them until they are fully grown. 'Musk ducks raised in isolation, like ripper, probably have a strong attachment to human caretakers,' the research team said.

In addition, since the musk duck is a species that is separated from other birds with speech learning ability in a phylogenetic tree, it is possible that it has evolved its speech learning ability independently of parrots and myna.

in Science,   Creature,   Video, Posted by log1h_ik