Individual Recognition

[Snipes]

http://www.thegoosesmother.com/id6.html
says that ducks imprint on species, not individual. Is this true as they grow up? So you can't teach them that kids are bad but you're okay, or a certain dog/cat is ok but any other is dangerous, etc? How do they follow their own mother out of a bunch in the wild? Is it like us where they can easily see the difference in each other because that is how their brains are wired, but for other species it is harder to find individual difference. For that last question, I mean that a lot of birds, often pelagic and colonial nesting ones, out of thousands of babies, a momma knows her baby and her baby knows her, which is often by sound, but they have brains that are attuned to the subtle differences, and we cannot for the life of us tell much of a difference between them because our brains arent suited for it.

 

[Miss Ducky]

It says that they imprint on species first, individuals second. The duckling will recognize that it is of the species imprinted immediately, while it won't recognize a face for a little while (Though it may know voice) You can train them, using peas, but learning that kids are bad and such, they will probably pick up on their own.

 

[sourland]

Ducklings imprint on their mother's voice as much as her looks. This is one of the reasons hens "talk" to their eggs more frequently as the incubation period goes on. I think that ducks or geese imprinted on a human do recognize faces, but they also recognize voice and body language or movements.

 

[Miss Ducky]

That is defiantly true about imprinting on voices. My 3 ducklings (week and 4 days old) always get excited when I talk to them. (And they talk back-so cute!!

) They sometimes freak out when I leave the room, but if they hear me talking down the hall they'll calm down.

 

[nettie]

Ducks will imprint on a species, but they will bond to a particular person (sometimes more than one depending on the duck). Our ducks were not hatched by us, but they were hatched by people in an incubator at a hatchery. They see humans as their kind, but they bonded to us from us handling them and caring for them when they were little. If a duckling is raised alone by a person, it creates the strongest bond.

As for voices, they definitely learn them! And when they hear a familiar voice, they get excited. When Joe aka Duck_feeder was out of the country M-Th of each week for three months, whenever he came home the ducks would go nuts when they heard his voice!

Our duck Victor has a liking for spanish music... lol. The workers at his hatchery must have been playing the radio and talking in spanish before he hatched and he heard them and thinks of them fondly. Whenever Victor hears spanish being spoken or hears spanish music, he gets all excited and starts quacking happily. it's so cute.