It appears that everyone has at some point been told this one, generally as a child. Is it just a ruse devised by parents to prevent little ones “worrying” the wild fowl or is there truth to the persistent factoid?
The local duck pond (with it’s occasional visiting swans) remains a safe, serene haven of tranquility rather than a blood soaked battlefield overrun with killer swans. This and the fact that a swan’s skeleton is designed to float and fly rather than swing around in trees and lob the odd rock like human skeletons would lead me to believe that the swans are just bluffing.
I’ve never heard this one. Must be a regional thing. That said, the only way I can imagine a swan breaking a person’s arm is for it to be frozen and fired out of a cannon. Otherwise, no way.
I’ve heard this before, I’ve also heard it about geese. I do know that swans can get vicious when they have young, and geese are often used as guard geese, instead of dogs around here.
I’d believe it. Swans are a lot bigger and stronger than they look. We row by some everyday and they’re really fierce, particularly if they have goslings around. And I’ve accidentally caught one in the neck with an oar going full speed in an eight and it wasn’t even fazed.
I don’t know about breaking an adult’s arm, but I suppose it is remotely possible with a small child. They are very strong animals and one was once observed crushing a metal pail. They are certainly strong enough to harm a child in some way and I believe there are two recorded instances of them killing one ( at least one of those involving a drowing - a big pissed off Mute Swan could certainly make it very hard to to keep your head above water ).
An adult on land would be a whole lot less vulnerable, but could probably pick some nasty bruises in an encounter. They’re certainly not easily intimidated.
The version I heard as a child was that the swan’s wingbones, being fairly light and flexible due to its hollow structure, could act like a very effective whip. If one were to snap its wing at you like someone snaps a wet towel, the force would be sufficient to break your arm. A couple of quick searches on Google haven’t yielded anything, so I defer to our resident ornithologists on the matter.
I won’t believe it until I’ve got a real news report of it. Some years back in the St Louis newspaper there was a story if a man who was drowned aby a mute swan–what happened was (for whatever reason) it knocked him out of the small 2-person boat in which he was fishing out on a lake, and then kept attacking him on the water and he couldn’t breathe enough. Mute swans don’t normally frequent my locale, they only pass through migrating. Perhaps a news search of newspapers near their regular habitats is in order.
I know that Canadian geese try no such thing–they just bite and flap their wings. Any adult can just give them a light kick and send them reeling. I had a job that took me around to lots of office parks, many had ornamental lakes that the geese would congregate at. At first they would refuse to get out of your way and sometimes one or two would snap at me but when I kicked one it would let out a squawk, and then all of them would jump up and fly away. Goose crap an inch deep everywhere. A couple’s nice to look at, but 300 in an area the size of a tennis court is a mess.
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The first link isn’t exactly what I’d call evidence, and the second misspells the word downy which makes me question its validity too.
I got in what amounted to a fistfight with a swan in England (at Ninesprings park in Yeovil, Somerset) when I was about seven, and while its beak left me a nasty bruise and a cut that required stitches, it didn’t seem any stronger than me.
They were just things I turned up on a google search - I didn’t claim them to be proof beyond all doubt. But, since the first link provides witness accounts, I’m happy to give it the benefit of the doubt until I hear some kind of evidence to the contrary, especially since anecdotal evidence is about as good as you’re going to get with this kind of subject.
Have you ever looked at a big male swan’s neck girth? They look pretty powerful to me. I wouldn’t pick a fight with one. Maybe the swan you fought was a female? Or maybe it was only young or maybe you caught it in a good mood that day and it let you go? Or maybe it realised you were only a child and didn’t see you as a real threat so it just did enough to scare you away, who knows?
But if you were only seven at the time I doubt you would be able to beat a full-grown male swan in a fight. So I suspect you weren’t fighting a full-grown male swan that seriously wanted to hurt you.
I won’t believe it until I’ve got a real news report of it. Some years back in the St Louis newspaper there was a story if a man who was drowned aby a mute swan-
That wasn’t a mute swan, that was one of those rare duck-like birds that don’t cause an ehco when they quack.
They brought a stuffed one (taxidermy) into my Wildlife management class, and we throught it was pretty big, about 4’ from bill to tail. Then they told us it hadn’t been full grown yet when it died. :eek: Not too much later I got to “meet” some living adult swans, and yeah, they’re bigger than poor stuffie was.
That first article is short on some details. It says the man suffered broken bones but it doesn’t say which bones. From reading it again it might just mean facial bones (not that that isn’t pretty traumatic).
That was my take on it too, Laughing Lagomorph. And it’s also not clear to me whether the case of the woman with the broken wrist broke it on direct contact with the swan or as a result of the fall she took.
I’ve received a few injuries in my work with birds, mostly from bites or grabs from taloned feet. The hardest hits I’ve taken from flapping wings are from Rock Doves and Mourning Doves, and quite frankly, they smart a lot more than you’d think. (But, then again, maybe I’m a delicate flower )
Can a large, aggressive swan break an arm or leg bone with a direct hit? I suppose it’s *possible * if the bone was hit at the right spot or was in a weakened state. But I’ve never heard of a specific case.
I’d never heard of this in my life! There’s a big controversy in Maryland about whether to slaughter mute swans in the Chesapeake (They’re an artificially, and recently, introduced species and their population exploded). Seems this would be a good argument in the “pro” column…
