There is a newly surfaced audio of Ripper’s rant, which was included in research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B journal on Monday.
The swearing musk duck, Ripper, was hand-reared at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Australia’s capital Canberra back in the 1980s. Ripper was only four years old when the recordings were made. The duck is believed to have learned the phrase from his handler. As well as that, the duck learned how to imitate the sound of his aviary door slamming.
Ripper-the-duck has become the focal point of the new research that analyses musk duck recordings in order to find out how animals are capable of acquiring vocalization through learning.
FROM CONTROVERSY TO COMPASSION: DANIEL SNYDER'S JAW-DROPPING GIFT LEAVES NATION IN AWE
The researcher Carel Ten Cate of the Institute of Biology Leiden in the Netherlands spearheaded the study after hearing rumours of the Australian talking duck. Carel Ten Cate tracked down the footage that was recorded by Australian birder Peter Fullagar in about 1987. According to the researcher:
WATCH: RFK JR. WILL REVERSE 80 YEARS OF FARM POLICY
“The man, Peter Fullagar, told me that the duck was hand reared and would have had heard the sound as a duckling.”
Ten Cate thinks that it may be the first documented account of a duck imitating a human. He told the press:
JAMES CARVILLE'S CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE: IS WOKE CULTURE KILLING DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT?
“This came as a big surprise. Because even though the bird was recorded 35 years ago, it remained unnoticed by researchers in the vocal learning field until now. That makes it a very special rediscovery.”
FROM CONTROVERSY TO COMPASSION: DANIEL SNYDER'S JAW-DROPPING GIFT LEAVES NATION IN AWE
As Carel Ten Cate wrote in his paper:
"Ripper was raised from a fresh egg sourced from East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia in September 1983 and was the only musk duck present at the time of rearing. Unfortunately, all documents from Tidbinbilla were lost in the wildfire that swept through the reserve in January 2003 making it difficult to establish all the exact details."
INTRUDER SLIPS PAST TSA, BOARDS DELTA PLANE, IN EPIC SECURITY FAILURE
Fifteen years later, another male duck that also lived at Tidbinbilla, yet was reared by a female in captivity, rather than a human caretaker. He was recorded in June 2000 sounding like a completely different duck – a Pacific black duck. Unfortunately, much of the information about this duck was also lost in the same fire.
WATCH: ATF IS SET TO CRIMINALIZE 10 MILLION AMERICANS
The reason the researchers are interested in this topic is because very few animals can imitate vocal noises like these musk ducks could. Musk ducks are the only living member of their genus, and are very distantly related to other birds that can mimic noises such as song birds and parrots.
A lot has yet to be researched. According to the scientists, we don't even know which living species are closest to the musk duck, although we do know that no other duck or fowl has shown such ability.