# What's this duck-like bird? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 29, 2020, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623 "2020-03-29T21:27:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/21 "2020-04-06T22:33:29Z")
The Muscovy duck is an invasive species in Florida and many parts of Texas. So much so that people are allowed to kill them or capture them for relocation. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/22 "2020-04-06T22:45:30Z")
> [@naita](#): > > In the first one their “cite” for this statement is a collection of pictures of animals with white spotting. In the second they have no cite at all. And neither is a paper on white coloration and both are exclusively on mammal domestication. Both papers have citations. The first also has pictures, linked in the text with the notation ‘fig’ as in “figure 2”. The pictures are not the citations. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/23 "2020-04-06T22:54:07Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > The Muscovy duck is an invasive species in Florida and many parts of Texas. So much so that people are allowed to kill them or capture them for relocation. I think they are ugly, and they have a wicked bite too – that beak has sawtooth edges. But then I don’t like Mallard-domestic ducks either. They are really really nasty in their personal lives. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/24 "2020-04-06T23:16:18Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Well, to be fair, the answer was correct. And, honestly, that’s the first thing I thought when I saw the picture, as well. “It’s a duck.” [Moderating] Since it was followed by a question mark, it wasn’t even an answer, but evidently a guess. It certainly didn’t identify the bird or answer the OP. And we ask people not to guess in GQ, since we have a lot of experts here who can give authoritative answers rather than useless ones. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/25 "2020-04-06T23:27:37Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > I think they are ugly, and they have a wicked bite too – that beak has sawtooth edges. But then I don’t like Mallard-domestic ducks either. They are really really nasty in their personal lives. “ducks are sadistic raping monsters.” > [@](#): > > Forced copulations are “pervasively common in many species of ducks,” writes Prum. These are socially organized “gang rapes” that are “violent, ugly, dangerous and even deadly” and even sometimes end in the death of the female. > > This represents a “selfish male evolutionary strategy that is at odds with the evolutionary interests of its female victims and possibly with the evolutionary interests of the entire species,” Prum writes. To spread their seed, these ducks are upsetting the natural order of selection. > > But the females have mounted their own defense with an increasingly elaborate anatomy — including, in some cases, sharp turns in her reproductive canal that act almost as teeth, making it harder for ducks to inseminate during forced copulations. > > ‘Like a selection of sex toys from a vending machine in a strange alien bar, duck penises come in ribbed, ridged and even toothy varieties.’ > “Male ducks had evolved penises that would enable them to force their way into an unwilling female’s vagina, and the females in turn had evolved a new way — an anatomical mechanism — to counter the action of the explosive corkscrew erections of male ducks and prevent the males from fertilizing their eggs by force,” writes Plum. > > [The horrible thing you never knew about ducks](https://nypost.com/2017/05/06/dont-be-fooled-ducks-are-sadistic-raping-monsters/) ---
**Author:** ![Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backwater_Under_Duck)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/26 "2020-04-07T00:58:58Z")
A bunch of years ago, we had a Muscovy duck show up at the lake at the part. He was so interesting and very friendly. I’m aware of most the different wildlife we have and he was unique to me at the time. I had to look him up, but when I found out that was, in fact, a Muscovy, I thought that word was somehow similar to Muscovite, and I named him Gorby. He was my buddy for a while. Loved to be petted. Then they went on a ground squirrel extermination program, and he got poisoned. So long Pal. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623/27 "2020-04-07T13:43:41Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Both papers have citations. The first also has pictures, linked in the text with the notation ‘fig’ as in “figure 2”. The pictures are not the citations. Yes, the papers have citations. But in scientific papers you don’t get to just list your sources at the end, and, **as I wrote** , those **specific** statements don’t have citations. Maybe it’s considered common knowledge in the field and it is in all their textbooks, but sometimes those textbooks don’t have citations for what they consider common knowledge either, and _sometimes_ it is turtles the whole way down. And sometimes someone goes “huh, I’m not sure that’s right” and follows the citations and discovers the originating statements are bad science. But at a minimum, for a statement in a scientific paper to be used to bolster a point, it either has to be a result of the research of that paper, or the paper has to have a cite for that specific statement. ETA: And note I did put “cite” in quotation marks when I used it to describe the reference to the figure, so the lecture on what a figure reference is seems unnecessary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-this-duck-like-bird/850623.md?page=1)