A Sentience Article from All-Creatures.org

Getting one's ducks in a row...

From EdgarsMission.org
June 2024

Ducks have great problem-solving skills, keen memories, the ability to learn from their environment and even each other. 

Kissy Suzuki, Miss Moneypenny and Christmas Jones

Kissy Suzuki, Miss Moneypenny and Christmas Jones were dumped in a small and busy parkland outside of Melbourne. Making that crime even more egregious was the fact that the area was shared by an off-leash dog park.

Perhaps being Easter ducklings whose novelty had worn off was what caused these young girls to fall fowl of human kindness—we shall never know. But what we do is that the lot of dumped domestic ducks rarely ends well.

Kissy Suzuki, Miss Moneypenny and Christmas Jones

Although these are Muscovy ducks, which have limited flight, most domestic ducks do not even have that. Earthbound, they find themselves in a world where predators are many, yet food provisions are few. Even kindly humans who try to feed these hapless animals, and do so with the best of intentions, often feed them foods that they should not, such as bread, lettuce and junk food.

Healthy domestic ducks kept in kindness and raised with love and knowledge, look forward to a life expectancy of around 10–12 years, while dumped ducks, it is reported, rarely make it to 3. The odds greatly reduce if the animals are abandoned as downy ducklings.

Ducks generally do not come to mind when one thinks of intelligent species, nor are they often mentioned when one is asked to name their favourite pet, yet they can easily fit both of these categories.

Take the time to get to know them, and you will see they have great problem-solving skills, keen memories, the ability to learn from their environment and even each other, and can make awesome best friends if you pass their friendship test. They are best kept in numbers of three or more, but only one drake if those numbers are few.

Idling one’s time watching chatty and cheery ducks industriously go about their day can be very cathartic indeed. It’s rich fodder, too, to remind one that it’s time for us humans to get all our ducks in a row and make a kinder world for them.

How? Dump animal cruelty—not ducks!

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: June 20, 2024
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