All Jokes Aside, Scientists Find Talking Duck

All Jokes Aside, Scientists Find Talking Duck
A male musk duck swims in a pond. Pieter De Groot Boersma/via Reuters TV
Reuters
Updated:

AMSTERDAM—A Dutch scientist has uncovered old recordings of a musk duck mimicking the phrase, “You bloody fool!”—learned when it was raised by humans in an Australian bird park.

Leiden University scientist Carel Ten Cate said that what was interesting about the vocal expression of the waterfowl, nicknamed “Ripper,” was not so much the message, but that he could imitate humans at all.