It was the splat heard round the world.
On the afternoon of June 5, 1995, an unfortunate male mallard met his untimely end after flying into the newly inaugurated glass façade of Rotterdam’s Natural History Museum.
While the duck’s death was unremarkable — billions of birds die flying into windows and other reflective glass surfaces around the world every year — what happened next guaranteed his spot in the history books: Seconds after his corpse hit the ground, another male duck appeared, mounted the deceased waterfowl and proceeded to have sex with it for an impressive 75 minutes.
The entire episode was observed by biologist Kees Moeliker, who quickly realized he was witnessing a unique event: The first documented case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.
“I’d never seen anything like this before,” said Moeliker, who currently serves as the director of the museum. “Ducks are notoriously aggressive while reproducing and rape is part of their strategy, but the fact that this happened between a live and dead individual was completely new.”
Moeliker eventually published his findings in a paper that was awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize for research that “first make people laugh and then think.”
But the dead duck’s story doesn’t end with Moeliker’s paper.
Back in 1995 the biologist had the expired bird stuffed and added to the museum’s private collection, but — after visitors began to show up demanding to see the duck — the mallard was put on public exhibition alongside its more eye-catching taxidermized tigers, polar bears and sharks.
The duck is now the headliner of the museum’s permanent Dead Animal Tales exhibition, which also includes a hedgehog that got fatally stuck in a McDonald’s McFlurry cup and the stone marten that shut down the CERN particle accelerator in November 2016.
“There’s humor in these cases, but there’s also a lesson to be learned about how humans interact with the environment,” said Moeliker. “If we didn’t build glass buildings and if we didn’t have as much waste, many of these animals would probably still be alive.”
Beyond the museum, the duck’s story has also served to inspire cultural works like composer Daniel Gillingwater’s 2014 oeuvre, The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera and, of course, the annual Dead Duck Day celebrations, which are now in their 28th year.
“At exactly 5:55 p.m. we will gather in front of the spot where the duck’s body fell and, after observing a moment of silence to commemorate the duck’s tragic death, we will share insights about remarkable animal behavior and raise awareness about the global problem of birds and windows,” he said.
Moeliker stressed that “although people like shiny buildings,” it was important to think about the animal world and opt for architectural options that will reduce the number of bird collisions.
“An easy solution is to build with bricks, not glass, but builders can also invest in glass with an ultraviolet coating which is visible to birds and will make it clear that they can’t just fly through,” he said.
The biologist said that although the first Dead Duck Day had consisted of him having a beer with a colleague, on some occasions up to 50 people have attended the festivities.
This year’s commemoration of the fatality will be capped off as it always is, with a six-course duck meal at a local Cantonese restaurant. Despite the event’s morbid overtones, the feast is geared to leave attendees shaking their tail feathers with delight.
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