# Duck's quack echo, and a Cecil Adams mention last night
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 13, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996 "2010-10-13T14:19:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/1 "2010-10-13T14:19:25Z")
Last night on “Animal Planet” (US), they aired a doc from 2004 called [Unexplained Unexplored](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1265181/). Mostly a cribbed collection of animal oddities with some narration. In one segment, they investigated whether or not a duck’s quack echos. It shows them doing a Internet search for “does a duck’s quack echo?” or something like that. One of them was a Straight Dope hit. Unfortunately, I deleted it this morning, so I can’t supply a screen cap.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/2 "2010-10-13T20:54:44Z")
This is my favorite and why I started frequenting the site. I literally laughed out loud when I first read it and it still makes me smile when I read it.
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### Author:  [@Wolverine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolverine)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/3 "2010-10-14T02:26:14Z")
What? You included a link to the program but not the Cecil article in question?
[Here it is](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1090/is-it-true-a-ducks-quack-wont-echo). Problem fixed.
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### Author:  [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/4 "2010-10-14T04:49:26Z")
I was watching an episode of _Mythbusters_ once, and there was a shot of Grant googling something or other. The Straight Dope was right at the top of the hit list.
Wish I could remember what he was searching for.
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### Author:  [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/5 "2010-10-14T05:49:04Z")
…and nobody knows why!
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### Author:  [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/6 "2010-10-14T06:45:23Z")
Didn’t the Mythbusters do this? And didn’t they find that more or less there was some truth to it?
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/7 "2010-10-14T08:26:25Z")
Here’s a clip of _Mythbusters_ about a duck’s quack echoing:
[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QYHcQbGNhE)
What they find is that a quack sounds like an echo in any case, because it fades away in a similar fashion. Yes, of course a duck’s quack echoes. Any sound echoes. It’s just hard to hear the difference between a quack and an echo of a quack.
What I’ve just discovered is that _Mythbusters_ is boring. It’s far more concentrated on the jerks who host it screwing around than on answering any question.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/8 "2010-10-14T09:08:36Z")
Any excuse to post one of my double-dactyls.
Flippity Flappity
_anas platyrhynchos_
Do things flow like water
Off of your back?
Don’t try to navigate
Echolocational
Tested by Mythbusters
“Quack, damn you, quack!”
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### Author:  [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/9 "2010-10-14T17:04:07Z")
Mythbusters lost its appeal from me when it stopped being about debunking myths/urban legends and started framing itself around “what experiment can we invent as an excuse to blow shit up this week?”
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### Author:  [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/10 "2010-10-14T17:09:32Z")
That doesn’t bother me as much as that lame-brained experiment they did to see whether or not walking across a bridge in step will cause it to vibrate. Somehow those walkign helmets remindee me of Buzzy Beetle. It should have been easy enough to round up a bunch of extras from Central Casting and just have them march.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/11 "2010-10-14T18:36:48Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#):
>
> That doesn’t bother me as much as that lame-brained experiment they did to see whether or not walking across a bridge in step will cause it to vibrate. Somehow those walkign helmets remindee me of Buzzy Beetle. It should have been easy enough to round up a bunch of extras from Central Casting and just have them march.
I don’t think the bridge Adam built would have been quite up to the task of supporting full-grown humans. And there would have been some thorny liability issues to deal with in case it worked.
Strangely, that’s one of the shows where I think they got it wrong, but for reasons having to do with the bridge, not the marching feet.
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### Author:  [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/12 "2010-10-14T18:57:24Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#):
>
> I don’t think the bridge Adam built would have been quite up to the task of supporting full-grown humans. And there would have been some thorny liability issues to deal with in case it worked.
I agree on the second point–but for the first, I meant a real bridge somewhere. I think if there were any harmonic resonance, it would have manifested itself well short of a collapse.
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### Author:  [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ducks-quack-echo-and-a-cecil-adams-mention-last-night/556996/13 "2010-10-14T20:19:55Z")
IIRC, Breakstep Bridge was early enough in the series that they probably didn’t have the budget or the recognition to get a group of people on a real bridge.
Similarly, if they had not done chicken gun until now, they wouldn’t have spent time wandering around used airplane supply shops looking for windscreens, they’d probably just get in new ones.