“The Australian musk duck demonstrates an unexpected and impressive ability for vocal learning,” the study said. The report also details how Ripper mimicked the sound of a door opening and closing.
There are many species of ducks and geese that are bred in captivity, and there have been no reports showing an ability to mimic human sounds, the author of the study, Carel ten Cate, told CNN on Tuesday.
“It’s very exceptional to come across a species that apparently has the ability to mimic those sounds,” he said.
Singing birds, parrots and hummingbirds are known to exhibit this vocal learning ability, but this is the first fully documented case of musk ducks exhibiting vocal learning, said Ten Cate, a researcher and professor of animal behavior at the l Leiden Institute of Biology, Leiden University. , Netherlands.
“It’s not exactly a human voice, but a very similar voice,” he said. “It mimics pretty well.”
Some species are better imitators than musk ducks, but there are many songbirds and parrots that copy worse, added ten Cate.
Ripper was raised by hand Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, near Canberra, Australia, where the recordings were made in 1987 by retired ornithologist Peter J. Fullagar, who was previously part of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial ecosystem division of the ecosystem. Research Organization.
While some observations of musk ducks that mimicked human sounds were documented in Australian bird journals, they never reached the scientific community studying vocal learning, Cate explained.
The recordings were made during the exhibitions to attract a companion who combines sounds and physical movements such as splashes in the water.
On the recordings, Ripper appeared to mimic the sound of a door a few feet from the sink where he was kept for a few weeks after he was born, as well as what sounds like, “You blood of blood.”
The last word can be “stupid” or “eat,” said Cate ten.
“To put it another way, it’s in the viewer’s ear,” he said, explaining that it was probably a phrase Ripper heard repeatedly from his concierge.
In a separate recording made in 2000, a second male duck from Tidbinbilla appears to mimic a black Pacific duck.
According to the study, muscat ducks live in two separate areas of western and south-eastern Australia. These birds are rarely bred in captivity due to the fact that mature males are prone to attack other waterfowl.
The study also details two other cases of captive musk ducks that mimic sounds in their environment, but birds were not recorded and therefore observations were not independently confirmed.
Wild musk ducks are unlikely to mimic human sounds, Cate said.
“If you only recorded these animals in the field, you wouldn’t realize that they were really vocal learners and that they imitated each other, it’s just when they are raised in these special conditions,” he said.
The study was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.