I found about this from a friend last night in the typical perverted mallard sex practices conversation one often overhears at New York art openings. Frankly, I figured she was making this up, especially when she casually mentioned that the scientist studying these little miscreants, Kees Moeliker, won the Nobel peace prize for biology.
He describes hearing a thud outside his office, which was a specific genus of mallard doing a nose dive right into his window (one of those tragicomedy realities of civilization throwing curveballs at nature). When he went to survey the damage, he noticed another mallard casing out his dead counterpart:
The unfortunate duck apparently had hit the building in full flight at a height of about three metres from the ground. Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present. He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.Apparently, this particular Sting-esque mallard practices tantric necrophilia, as he made sweet duck love for (and I shit you not) over SEVENTY FIVE minutes.
My big question last night - was this ever repeated? And it seems the answer is no. I haven't looked closely yet, but I'm a little unclear what it is about one case of a psycho sexual duck that warrants receiving a Nobel peace prize. Then again, it seems they'll give those things to anyone these days. Here's Donald reenacting the scene:
3 comments:
in nature homosexual mounting can be a dominance behavior. A humping dog is doing the same thing. This duck was in mating mode and very testosteroned. He may have been doing the same thing. This is not love. It's a Mike Tyson kind of thing.
We had a male testosteroned chickadee at our living room window. He continuously flew into the window and knocked himself out - NOT because he sees a reflection of the outdoors and not the glass,
but because he looked in the window and sees a mirror of himself,an aggressive sexual male. So as a competitor enemy he attacked it, and knocked himself out. When he awakened, he flew back up to check out if his adversary was still there. Sure enough he was, so he attacked him again and knocked himself out again.
He did this for six straight hours. Birds aren’t the pretty sweet little things we think they are. The more beautiful the plumage and song, the more sexually aggressive they really are. So to the duck, go ahead and knock yourself out.
It is not the Nobel Prize Kees Moeliker won, but the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology. Read more here: http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2003 The Ig Nobel Prizes are for achievements that first makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Well that explains it!
Thanks groepje!
Man, I want want of those nobel prizes too...
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