Scientists have stumbled across a decades-old recording of an Australian musk duck which was able to reproduce sounds and speech, according to an AFP report. It could imitate the noise of a door slamming and someone muttering the phrase. “You bloody fool”. Searching through archives, biologist Carel ten Cate found an eerie 1987 recording of “Ripper”, a musk duck hand-raised at the
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, near Canberra. “You bloody fool,” the duck says, over and over, dropping the “1”, which is apparently hard for ducks to pronounce. Males of the species emit a musky odour which is what gives them their name.
The recordings had been kept in a sound archive and referenced occasionally until Ten Cate rediscovered them in the course of his research on vocal learning in birds. Ten Cate said Ripper had a bit more in his repertoire – he could also make a noise like the sound of a door closing and its latch clicking.
Some species of animals, and notably birds such as parrots and songbirds, are capable of mimicking human speech. But the phenomenon is rare – if somewhat more common in animals raised by humans. “To find a species quite outside these groups…in a duck, that’s quite extraordinary. So it’s an independent evolutionary occurrence of the ability for vocal learning – that’s very special,” Ten Cate said.
Picture Credit : Google
