Amazing stuff! This almost certainly gives Walt Disney's Donald Duck a whole new meaning. What did Walt know about ducks that we did not? 😄
"... found more evidence that musk ducks (Biziura lobata) can mimic sounds from nature, as well as those made by humans. ... Vocal learning refers to imitating sounds or producing completely new vocalizations, depending on the species involved. Central to this ability seems to be auditory feedback during development. ..."
From the abstract:
"Acquiring vocalizations by learning them from other individuals is only known from a limited number of animal groups. For birds, oscine and some suboscine songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds demonstrate this ability. Here, we provide evidence for vocal learning in a member of a basal clade of the avian phylogeny: the Australian musk duck (Biziura lobata). A hand-reared individual imitated a slamming door and a human voice, and a female-reared individual imitated Pacific black duck quacks. These sounds have been described before, but were never analysed in any detail and went so far unnoticed by researchers of vocal learning. The imitations were produced during the males' advertising display. The hand-reared male used at least three different vocalizations in the display context, with each one produced in the same stereotyped and repetitive structure as the normal display sounds. Sounds of different origins could be combined in one vocalization and at least some of the imitations were memorized at an early age, well before they were produced later in life. Together with earlier observations of vocal differences between populations and deviant vocalizations in captive-reared individuals, these observations demonstrate the presence of advanced vocal learning at a level comparable to that of songbirds and parrots. ..."
Vocal imitations and production learning by Australian musk ducks (Biziura lobata) (open access)
Donald Duck as he first appeared in The Wise Little Hen (1934)
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