True (and salacious) facts about the duck

April 20, 2013 • 12:56 pm

Zefrank 1 has come up with another “true facts” video, this time about the duck.  Warning: since it deals largely with sexual organs and coitus in ducks, you might not want to show this to your kids. But it does make some good points about sexually antagonistic selection, and so constitutes a science lesson rather than pure duck pornography.

28 thoughts on “True (and salacious) facts about the duck”

    1. Great video! They’re very talented performers. And they look so charming and innocent and they sing it so nicely.

      1. By the way, on the topic of gay marriage (OK, I know it’s off topic for this thread, but surely on topic for this website), New Zealand just passed a Marriage Amendment Bill which gives gender equality – it was a Private Member’s Bill (i.e. not party-supported) and a free vote.
        A rather dry right-wing MP, but a libertarian, named Maurice Williamson made a quite funny speech in support. “I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now . . . The sun will still rise tomorrow, your teenage daughter will still argue back with you as if she knows everything, your mortgage will not grow, you will not have skin diseases or rashes or toads in your bed. The world will just carry on.”
        Causing the New York Times to call him “one of New Zealand’s only openly gay MP’s”, which was certainly news to Maurice.

          2. I think it’s been true for many years. Perhaps not humans and ducks, but certainly with chickens and sheep. (Not that I have any first hand experience, of course.)

          3. Ahh yes. From a description of my adopted country: “New Zealand – where men are men and sheep are nervous”. 😉

            But – chickens? I don’t think I want to know.

  2. So I guess now the comments are going to fill up with ID creationists insisting that it’s not sexually antagonistic selection, but an obvious case of design by an intelligent designer who may or may not be Yahweh.

    …And jeez, in this case they might even be onto something.

    1. Yet more proof that Yahweh is some sort of sado-masochistic pervert. What normal person could even imagine that stuff, or would bother to, let alone produce a design that actually sort of works?

  3. I was thinking I would show this to my students. I don’t think I can show this to my students.

    1. What age are your students? And what class? In college, I think you should, if it is relevant to your class. Below college, I’m not so sure. I’m watching it with an 8 yr old (with her mother and her mother’s permission) but she’s particularly precocious and knows about all this stuff anyway.

  4. This is my favorite so far, and I’ve loved the others! This guy is SO funny, and good.

  5. “pure duck pornography”

    A phrase I can honestly say that if anyone ever asked me to put into a serious sentence, I would have said, “Impossible!”

  6. This is great video. The only animal that can outdo the duck is the pig. Male pigs have huge penises and they are coiled. The female is ready for them at a young age. A yearling (or older) boar can service 50 sows in stalls or 35 to 40 pasturing females. The coiled penis is something to see. You can easily see it on the web. The male pig never have get their penis each year. They keep it ready, like most human males, so we humans are more like pigs.

  7. “…constitutes a science lesson rather than pure duck pornography.”

    That’s exactly what I tell people when they catch me watching regular porn!

  8. Why would people want to pretend to children that sex never happens? Better that they see it in the world of nature & come to some comprehension of it than through ‘Adult content’ on the web.

    1. I was taken to a sex education class by my father when I was 8-10, and when I got home the first thing I did was explain where babies come from to my mum. It didn’t occur to me that, of course, she knew all about this stuff.

  9. “But it does make some good points about sexually antagonistic selection…”

    Okay, if coiled penises and oppositely coiled vaginas are the result of an evolutionary arms race how do females get their eggs fertilised? They must “want” male attention at least some of the time, otherwise they don’t pass on their genes.

    1. This is precisely the point. The arms race is between males who want to fertilize (forcibly) every female they can, and the females, who want to choose only the “best” male to fertilize them.

      The flexibility of both the male and female components, means it is still possible to achieve fertilization — either because the male is sufficient capable of forcing his way all the way in, or because the female, choosing the male, does what she can to make it easier.

  10. I have a pro forma complaint about “the duck”. There are around 150 species of ducks, all quite different from each other. It’s like calling humans “the primate”.

    1. I thought the beginning of the video did a pretty good job of explaining that ducks were a very diverse group.

      Just be glad they didn’t feature Cairina moschata, the world’s most horrifying duck. Thanks to global warming they are spreading over much of the southern US.

      1. My DUCK POEM, which appears to have elicited nary a response, features the profusion of our endearing mallards that will follow you into the supermarket and hang-out by the produce section! Or aroud the coffee shops, begging for crumbs!

  11. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”

    Kidding aside, I’m with David Duncan wondering a bit more about how this works. Does the female have ways to shut down the defense if she consents to the mating? Are there muscles that straighten the vagina out and close off all the dead ends at her will?

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