Duck says ‘You bloody fool’ and can imitate other sound, scientists fascinated | Hacker News Reader

Duck says ‘You bloody fool’ and can imitate other sound, scientists fascinated

zmescience.com

36 pointsPikkie14 comments

Interesting ... I wonder what other animals and what capacity they have to learn to mimick language.

Anecdotally, we have a small poodle. She's an unusually vocal dog -- not a guard dog; she rarely barks at people, but we noticed early on that her barking sounds like the word "what", so we've always riled her up by saying "what" to her and watching her repeat. We've noticed if we vary the sounds (two barks, three barks), she'll often concentrate and then reliably repeat the pattern, but it rarely sounds anything similar to the original sound.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I was recovering from strep throat. I lost my voice but the dog had a lot of energy and wanted to horse around, so I looked at her and said "what", but my "what" was very deep, rumbling and monotone. The dog looked at me for a second, let out a low rumbling growl and said "wha" in the lowest sound she could muster. I laughed, did it again, and she repeated it, successfully, several times in a row (missing one or two).

> and scientists couldn’t be more fascinated

Wow, the scientists are really at max fascination? Has that ever happened before? That's amazing. I think the story should be about that.

Let me introduce you to this thing called rhetoric....

The video wouldn't play. Here's one from YouTube instead

https://youtu.be/46RSYCXwSXo

I'd really like a video actually showing the duck making the sounds rather than an animated duck with an audio recording. Thanks for the better video than on the original link, though.

Funnily, I was walking along the American River yesterday morning, and there were some ducks quacking away in the river - but their quacks literally sounded like someone with a deep belly laugh

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

It was rather eerie. And there were two of them doing this back and forth, it sounded like the two were telling eachother really funny duck jokes...

> while most mammals are born with innate vocalization abilities, humans are not.

Maybe I'm not understanding the nuances of this statement, but in my experience, newborns of all origins have very similar vocalizations, and babies that can't speak yet say "ugh ugh" or similar guttural monosyllables.

Something similar appeared recently, in case anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28397524

A seal called "Hoover" that had a remarkably human sounding call :D

Swearing a lot at ducks while fishing, never got more than a quack back so far and I hope it stays that way, but I'll keep my ears open!

That's a way more intelligible voice than I was expecting.

The fact that the video did not play made me think it was a joke.

It's from yt so I guess you have some ad/track blocker

https://ytprivate.com/watch?v=MSJsKpKKBaI

We're so close to Canadian geese that just yell "fuck you" all day. The future is bright

Quick tip on moving Canada Geese out of the way without aggressive behaviour (from you or them): lift your arm up just above your head to make an "S" shape and pinch your fingers to make a goose "beak", then move your hand horizontally in a back-and-forth motion. The only threat geese seem to understand is a larger goose and they are "programmed" to back down when encountering a much larger goose (i.e. you). If you are wearing a black long sleeve shirt, the effect is even more apparent, and the geese will run away and bow their heads as a sign of submissive behaviour. You can even make your own "hissing" noise and the geese will scatter very quickly. Note that this will not work if a nest is being guarded, or if there are goslings. In those cases, it's best to just avoid the geese, if possible.

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