In minnesota, usa, there is a state national park called Lake Bemiji, and one day in the fall of 2018, eco photographer Brent Zizek saw a fairly rare scene in the lake.
A female duck leads a large group of small ducks to cruise in the lake, to raise so many children, presumably this female duck can only have one word in her heart: Duck Force Mountain!
Abu counted the number of ducklings, and there were 76 of them, which is more abnormal, the question is, are these ducklings the children of the mother ducklings? If so, how does a single female duck manage to give birth to so many children at once?
Hello, I'm Biosphere Aaron, and today I'm going to decrypt it for you: Super Duck Mom.
First of all, the first question: Can a female hatch 76 ducklets in a single fertility?
It is not impossible to have more children, after all, in the animal world, there are still many parents who are crazy to give birth to children.
For example, in an ant called a weaving ant, an ant queen can produce about 100,000 eggs in a nest.
Weaving ants
Such a huge ant family, to build a high-end palace, it only takes a day or two to build, and when there is a foreign invasion, 100,000 troops will also pour out to defend the country, the ants are more powerful, it is particularly useful in fighting, each ant sprinkles a bubble of formic acid urine, you can scare the enemy away.
Weave ants spray formic aciduria
In addition to super species such as ants, most animals in the sea are also implementing relaxed fertility policies.
For example, seahorses, when they give birth, are like blowing bubbles, and a single pregnancy of the seahorse can spew 1000-2000 small seahorses.
The hippocampus is giving birth
What's even more amazing is that the seahorse, which is responsible for bearing children, is male.
When the female seahorse meets the favorite male seahorse, they will dance together, and the female seahorse will take the opportunity to discharge mature eggs into the male seahorse's nursery bag, and after about half a month, the male seahorse will blow bubbles.
Since even a male seahorse can become a super daddy, is it possible that the duck in Lake Bemigi is also a super child-bearing mother?
From the morphological appearance, this group of ducks is the North American autumn sand duck in the duck family, and this duck mother we call it Aqiu. The average egg production of a female Autumn Sand Duck during the reproductive period is 10 eggs per litter, and the ability to tolerate larger ones usually does not exceed 16, while the one-time production of 76 eggs is an almost impossible task for Ah Qiu.
Since it is not entirely born of it, is it possible that other ducks laid eggs into Ah Qiu's nest and tried to trick Ah Qiu into hatching for them?
After all, there are already guys among birds who do this.
Cuckoos, for example, sneak into the nests of other birds to lay eggs.
Although their eggs appear to be larger, the invaded mother crow did not notice anything unusual, but continued to incubate the eggs diligently, and after a while, the cuckoo's eggs would first break the shell, and then a rather dark scene occurred.
The newborn cuckoo cub pushes the bird's own egg out of the nest, and it does so in order to monopolize the love of the mother of the bird.
The reason why cuckoos leave their eggs to other birds to hatch is because they never build nests, and lazy cuckoos have become accustomed to feeding their biological children to other birds.
cuckoo
Ducks, also as birds, have also learned the behavior of foster children. According to scientists, about half of the female ducks in North America scatter some eggs and parasitize them in other duck nests.
For example, a kind of North American duck called the red-headed diving duck, they will observe the neighbor's female duck, if they find that the next door female duck raises children well, they will lay some of their eggs into the next nest, in order to spread the risk and improve the survival rate of offspring. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, the ducks have long understood this truth.
common pochard
Therefore, we have reason to believe that some of Ah Qiu's 76 small ducks may have been parasitized by other female ducks, and Ah Qiu is only responsible for completing the hatching.
Autumn sand duck mother and children
However, there is still one issue that remains unresolved.
With Ah Qiu's body, it is impossible to hatch 76 duck eggs at a time.
Since the possibility of hatching parasitic eggs has also been ruled out, is it possible that the duck adopted by Ah Qiu after the mother duck of another family hatched? Or is Ah Qiu's own profession the director of the nursery, which is dedicated to helping other female ducks take care of their children?
This is not a random guess, after all, there are still many birds that help other families take care of their children.
For example, the emperor penguin in Antarctica, when the baby penguin is born, the penguin father and mother will take turns to fish in the sea, and the little penguins left at home can only be taken care of by one of the parents. The bad weather in Antarctica is a serious challenge for the little penguins, when the parents of the penguins who stay behind will unite and watch over each other's children, and the little penguins will huddle together to keep warm.
Emperor Penguins
In addition to the emperor penguins, flamingos, known as the "noble ladies of birds", have also learned to flock in groups, and when the mating season comes, the flamingos will form a large courtship group, and then they will take the steps of six relatives who do not recognize.
Note that this is not the square dance of the "lady of the birds", but their ancestral courtship dance, when they are tired of dancing, they will bow their heads and fish for something to eat, and the flamingo dance will not stop until they find a suitable partner.
When the little flamingo is born, the flamingo's hot mothers will gather at the entrance of the village to take care of each other' children, the children play happily together, and the hot mothers will chat about their parenting experiences.
Little flamingos
However, if you compare them carefully, you will find that their approach is still different from ah qiu's situation.
Emperor penguins and flamingos, the mothers, raise their children together, which is equivalent to opening a nursery together and caring for each other's children.
Ah Qiu is a lone duck with 76 ducklings, which is still very abnormal.
How did Ah Qiu become a super mother in the duck world? After the previous analysis of several possibilities, we still have not solved the puzzle, at least from the perspective of the mother duck.
But what if it's from a duckling's point of view? The puzzle may be solved.
In 1937, there was an animal behaviorist in Austria, Konrad Lorenz, who did such an experiment with a common duck, the grey goose.
Conrad Lorenz and Grey Goose
The female grey goose laid a nest of eggs, and Lorenz divided the eggs into two parts, one for the female grey goose to hatch, and the other for artificial hatching. The little gray goose that came out of the first egg first saw the female gray goose, and the little gray goose that came out of the second egg first saw Lorenz, and then, something magical happened, Lorenz put all the little gray geese together, and half followed the female gray goose, and the other half followed Lorenz.
This animal behavior is what Lorenz calls: imprinting.
The newly hatched ducklings will think that the first moving object seen in the environment is the mother, and then show the behavior of following attachment.
If the duckling sees the female first, they will follow, if the duckling sees the human first, they will follow, and if the duckling sees the dog first, they will also follow.
According to this imprint behavior, back to Ah Qiu and The Little Duck, the puzzle is solved.
Here in Lake Bemiji, because winter is coming, some female ducks have just completed hatching and migrated to the south, leaving a group of orphan ducks, and Ah Qiu is the female duck who stayed in the lake, its biological children were originally so few, but when they came out to hang out, other orphan ducks saw it, they mistakenly thought that Ah Qiu was their mother, and then followed, and as a result, there were more and more orphan ducks to follow, and Ah Qiu became the super mother of the duck world that people saw.
Magical nature is always full of emotions, hoping that after these little ducks grow up to be ducks, they can inherit the glorious traditions of Ah Qiu's mother and save more orphan ducks.
I am Aaron of the biosphere, thank you for your patience in reading. Next article Aaron will take you to decrypt: the bizarre death of a great white shark on a beach in South Africa, pay attention to Aaron not to miss the wonderful life science and story, we will have a period later.