Xref: utzoo sci.bio:802 soc.men:2422 soc.women:8880 sci.misc:724
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!agate!arisia.berkeley.edu!caeri
From: caeri@arisia.berkeley.edu (;;;;0000)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Is duck rape "natural"? (was Re: Rape a reproductive advantage?)
Keywords: yes, it happens
Message-ID: <6613@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 19 Jan 88 22:51:18 GMT
References: <517@gtx.com> <248@nancy.UUCP> <6852@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <969@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: caeri@arisia.berkeley.edu.UUCP ()
Distribution: na
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

In article <969@rocky.STANFORD.EDU> andy@rocky.stanford.edu (Andy Freeman) writes:

>In article <6852@ihlpa.ATT.COM> you write:

>>    Second, I'm sorry to be a poor sport, but I am kind of skeptical
>>of coercive duck mating behavior.  Where was this documented?
>>How hard did the female fight?  If it were a violent fight resulting
>>in broken feathers, it would hardly be an evolutionary advantage.

>In the cases I'm familar with (friend observed the behavior), there
>is no apparent evolutionary advantage, nonetheless, the male ducks
>gang-rape a female duck until she escapes or they get bored, long
>after she dies.  I think the flock size is stable.  I'm sorry, I
>don't have a published reference or a learned explanation.  (It
>happens in Northfield, Minnesota.)


When I went to Carleton College in Northfield,MN, I saw these duck rapes
with my own eyes. It was pretty disgusting & traumatic for me to watch.
1 of the most memorable aspects of my 2 years there. I have no idea why
they happened, except possibly population pressures. Yes, the females
were sometimes assaulted to death. Even when they didn't die, it was clear
the females were unwilling. A single female duck would be assaulted
by several males. She usually would struggle & attempt to escape, unless
she was too tired or injured. Interestingly, the same duck population exhibited
normal pair mating behaviour which was both graceful & pleasurable to watch.
(No voyeurism jokes, please... :)  I always wondered when the ducklings hatched
which 1's were the products of the gang rapes & how anything so cute & fuzzy
could result from such atrocities of nature. But, then, nature isn't always
pretty, is it?


Cheers,
 Carrie