I don't know exactly when I first learned about duck penises and labyrinthine duck vaginas, it's not precisely a 9/11 memory, but it was certainly after I left the farm in 2001 and could be entirely due to news reports about this researcher's research trickling out to the pop sci blogosphere.
> That’s when she began thinking about conflict. Duck sex, she knew, could be notoriously violent. Ducks tended to mate for at least a season. However, extra males lurked in the wings, ready to harass and mount any paired female they could get their hands on.
I never knew ducks had hands! I thought that was only in cartoons! This is big news, even bigger than reverse-threaded vaginas.
The ducks in the photo belong to a entirely white breed. Those are much difficult to sex with only a solid difference in morphology: the curly feathers over the tail are exclusive of the male.
I've seen ducks mating. For their body size, they have magnificent penises. Flying with these things flopping around would not only be very difficult without getting caught in something, it would also be extremely irritating to people.
I’m not an ornithologist and I already knew about exploding corkscrew duck penises (via Wikipedia) for about half a decade. I also thought it was weird the article wrote it as if a researcher just discovered this information.
Ducks are notorious for having very aggressive sex. There are plenty of species which are well documented to have monogamous, long-term sexual relationships. Off the top of my head, seabirds have monogamous sexual behaviors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabird_breeding_behavior
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