Does a duck's quack echo?

Factual Questions
1

Hi dopers,

I have been sent a link to page with “funny facts” by a friend: facts you never knew
He wanted me to comment on these and verify or falsify them.
Some of these seem obvious to me, some not interesting or too stupid to consider, but there is one that baffles me:

I am not sure about the first part, as I have no duck at hand for testing. I am completely sure that the second part is wrong: for every question there is a doper who knows the answer.
So don’t let me down, give me the straight dope!

I nearly forgot: a post that starts a thread should contain a question.
Is it true that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo? What’s the reason?

2

Let me be the first to recommend that you check the archives. Cecil’s comments may be found here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_071.html

3

Now you’ve done it. :eek:

4

You’re new here, aren’t you? :slight_smile:

Let’s just say that this question has come up once or twice before. :wink:

Cecil has discussed the issue (use the search function) as has Snopes (next to Cecil, Snopes is your friend). The answer is, of course, no, a duck’s quack echos just as much as any other sound.

5

Thanks, GaryM!
I admit I should have found that. Somehow I suspected this has been answered before.
So I used the search function, but I had not realized that it only searched the message board, not the archive of Cecil’s columns.

6

But what about a 1920’s Style Duck Echo?

7

I would like to congratulate everyone for actually being polite to the newbie asking this question, this time around. Well done, chaps. :wink:

Welcome, MartinL.

8

I read Cecils reply and wondered why HE didn’t just get one of those duck lures that hunters use instead of having his team cavorting about waving live ducks around and frightening the students (and the duck)

Just wondered is all

9

But that would only prove that a hunter’s duck lure echoes, which wasn’t the question, now was it?

10

You may not have reset the date box to “any date” when searching. Even on the message boards, the duck quack question has come up nemerous times:
Does a ducks quack really not echo? If so why?
Is it true that when ducks quack, there is no echo?
Does a duck’s quack echo?
Duck Quacks and Echoes
Duck quacks don’t echo? and other “facts”
A duck’s quack does not echo

So this question kinda has been done to death. Not your fualt, but there you have it. In any case, welcome aboard, MartinL, we’re glad to have you. Just don’t ask the -gry question.

11

If a duck parks on a driveway, it might get run over. Such a duck would not quack at all. :wink:

Oh, and welcome, MartinL.

12

If a duck quack in the forest and there is nobody there, does it echo?

13

Three friends who have been raising ducks on their farm decide to sell them to a customer who wants to buy thirty of them. Each of the three guys raises his own ducks, so they each give him ten of their ducks. Later, the customer changes his mind and decides that he only wants twenty-five ducks instead. The customer asks an assistant of his to return five of the ducks to the three farmers. The assistant decides to keep two of the ducks for himself, as he reasons that returning five ducks to three farmers would be difficult to divide evenly. So when he goes back to return the extra ducks, he tells them that the customer changed his mind and only wanted twenty-seven ducks. He returns one duck to each of the three farmers. The assistant keeps the remaining two ducks and takes them home. We know the customer’s assistant kept two ducks for himself, and adding to the twenty-seven ducks that were sold to the customer, this makes twenty-nine ducks. Where did the other duck go?

14

Sets his watch

15

Tumbolia.

See Hofstadter, Douglas R., Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.

16

Only if the name of the forest ends in “-gry”.

17

There weren’t 27 sold to the customer, there were 25. Add the three returned and the two kept, and you get 30. Or have I been whooshed?

18

Yes, yes it does; furthermore, when it comes back, it brings pie!

19

Now I don’t know if I’m hungry, or angry, or, or, something else.

20

Yeah, pretty much.