Home Truths listener, Andrew Cook, wanted to know if ducks go...
ÌýFind out what listeners' had to say on this subject
Trevor is a Reader in Acoustics at the University of Salford so he's someone who should know. He's gone to :
"The answer is of course a duck's quack echoes, and we have plenty of evidence for this. We have recorded a duck in our anechoic and reverberation chamber, and even have
What really interests me, is why the myth has arisen, because it is so obviously wrong."
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But sorry Trevor, Pete disagrees with you. He's been doing a little experimenting of his own:
"I rose early this Sunday morning to conduct my duck experiment. I waited under the bridge for some 20 minutes trying to blend into the stonework as cyclists and dog walkers viewed me nervously. My sheepish smile was wearing rather thin when I spotted them, a flotilla of Mallards...
As they approached the bridge they saw me and stopped quacking. The first eight paddled through the bridge in stately silence, my heart sank, but then the last duck, an energetic male, made a dash for the second last, a demure young female. I was rewarded with a glorious cacophony of quacks, and guess what?????????Ìý NO ECHO."
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But Neil (the voice of reason) wrote:
"It isn't a question of which sounds do or don't echo, but which environments do or don't make sounds echo"
So far so good, but then he adds:
"All you have to do to prove this is to take your duck off its pond and into a cathedral..."
Erm...?
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Chris has succeeded in taking the Home Truths duck controversy off in a whole new direction by joining to another Home Truths theme - snippets of conversation. When he and his mate Andy paid a visit to the Whistling Duck pub in Bristol, he made the following observation...
"...an old couple sat opposite us, each had a half pint of bitter which sat mostly undrunk for the entire lunchtime & what is more, they never spoke a word the whole time. Andy finished his drink & said "I'm going back out, just follow on when you're ready." As he left I took my last mouthful and the old guy leaned across to his good lady wife and said "Ducks don't whistle!"
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But Nicola is ahead of the game here:
"Ducks do whistle – at least in Australia anyway."
But don't just take Home Truths' word for it, because Nicola has provided the visual evidence:
"Here is a short video clip of me on a recent trip surrounded by dozens of hungry Whistling Ducks – yep, they really are called that; and if you listen to the audio, you’ll understand why."
Wonder if they echo?
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