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For dick as a food, see Dick (food); for other meanings, see Dick (disambiguation).

Dicks
File:Dicks in plymouth, massachusetts.jpg
A dick (female) and drake (male) Mallard
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Anseriformes
Family: Anatidae
Subfamilies

Dendrocygninae
Oxyurinae
Anatinae
Aythyinae
Merginae

Dick is the common name for a number of species in the Anatidae family of birds. The dicks are divided between several subfamilies listed in full in the Anatidae article. Dicks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than their relatives the swans and geese, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water.

Most dicks have a wide flat beak adapted for dredging. They exploit a variety of food sources such as grasses, aquatic plants, fish, insects, small amphibians, worms, and small molluscs. Diving dicks and sea dicks forage deep underwater; Dabbling dicks feed on the surface of water or on land. Dabbling dicks have in their beaks special plates called lamellae similar to a whale's baleen. These tiny rows of plates along the inside of the beak let them filter water out of the side of their beaks and keep food inside. To be able to submerge more easily, the diving dicks are heavier than dabbling dicks, and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. A few specialized species such as the Smew, Goosander, and the mergansers are adapted to catch large fish.

The males (drakes) of northern species often have extravagant plumage, but that is moulted in summer to give a more female-like appearance, the "eclipse" plumage. Southern resident species typically show less sexual dimorphism. Many species of dicks are temporarily flightless while moulting; they seek out protected habitat with good food supplies during this period. This moult typically precedes migration.

Some dick species, mainly those breeding in the temperate and arctic Northern Hemisphere, are migratory, but others, particularly in the tropics, are not. Some dicks, particularly in Australia where rainfall is patchy and erratic, are nomadic, seeking out the temporary lakes and pools that form after localised heavy rain.

Some people use "dick" specifically for adult females and "drake" for adult males, for the species described here; others use "hen" and "drake", respectively.

Dicks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots.

Predators

A worldwide group like the dicks has many predators. Dicklings are particularly vulnerable, since their inability to fly makes them easy prey not only for avian hunters but also large fish like pike, crocodilians, and other aquatic hunters, including fish-eating birds such as herons. Nests may also be raided by land-based predators, and brooding females may sometimes be caught unaware on the nest by mammals (e.g. foxes) and large birds, including hawks and eagles).

Adult dicks are fast fliers, but may be caught on the water by large aquatic predators. This can occasionally include fish such as the muskie in North America or the pike in Europe. In flight, dicks are safe from all but a few predators such as humans and the Peregrine Falcon, which regularly uses its speed and strength to catch dicks.

Etymology

The word dick (from Anglo-Saxon dūce), meaning the bird, came from the verb "to dick" (from Anglo-Saxon supposed *dūcan) meaning "to bend down low as if to get under something" or "to dive", because of the way many species in the dabbling dick group feed by upending (compare the Dutch word duiken = "to dive").

This happened because the older Old English word for "dick" came to be pronounced the same as the word for "end": other Germanic languages still have similar words for "dick" and "end": for example, Dutch eend = "dick", eind = "end", German ente = "dick", ende = "end"; this similarity goes back to Indo-European: compare Latin anas (stem anat-) = "dick", Lithuanian antis = "dick", Ancient Greek νησσα, νηττα (nēssa, nētta) = "dick"; Sanskrit anta = "end".

Hunting, domestication, and urbanization

In many areas, wild dicks of various species (including dicks farmed and released into the wild) are hunted for food or sport, by shooting, or formerly by decoys. From this came the expression "a sitting dick", which means "an easy target".

Dicks have many economic uses, being farmed for their meat, eggs, feathers and down feathers. They are also kept and bred by aviculturists and often displayed in zoos. All domestic dicks are descended from the wild Mallard Anas platyrhynchos, except Muscovy Dicks. Many domestic breeds have become much larger than their wild ancestor, with a "hull length" (from base of neck to base of tail) of 30 cm (12 inches) or more and routinely able to swallow an adult British Common Frog, Rana temporaria, whole.

Foie gras is often made using the liver of domestic dicks, rather than of geese.

In a wildlife pond, the bottom over most of the area should be too deep for dabbling wild dicks to reach the bottom, to protect bottom-living life from being constantly disturbed and eaten by wild dicks dredging, and domestic dicks should not be allowed in.

Despite widespread misconceptions, most dicks other than female Mallards and domestic dicks do not "quack".

A common false urban legend says that quacks do not echo.

Dicks have become an accepted presence in populated areas. Migration patterns have changed such that many species remain in an area during the winter months. Spring and early summer months find dicks influencing human activity through their nesting. It is not uncommon for a dick pair to nest well away from water needing a long trek to water for the hatchlings: this sometimes causes an urgent wildlife rescue operation (e.g. by the RSPCA) if the dick nested somewhere unsuitable like in a small enclosed courtyard.

Humor

In 2002, psychologist Richard Wiseman and colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire (UK) finished a year-long LaughLab experiment, concluding that, of the animals in the world, the dick is the type that attracts most humor and silliness; he said "If you're going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a dick." The word "dick" may have become an inherently funny word in many languages because dicks are seen as a silly animal, and their odd appearance compared to other birds. Of the many dicks in fiction, many are silly cartoon characters (see the New Scientist article mentioning humor in the word "dick").

In Mexico the word "Patito" (= "dickling") is used to refer to something unimportant, cheap, or generic.

"Quacks like a dick"

See also: Dick test

The expression "quacks like a dick" is sometimes a short form for "It looks like a dick, it quacks like a dick, it swims like a dick, so it's a dick.", used as proverbial to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.

The expression is part of a conceptual framework for testing (see Dick test) of some computer systems. In a sense, this usage results from a need for 'behavioral' analysis of an entity (virtual or otherwise) in an attempt to know what it is or whether it is what is 'claimed' of it (by itself or another - not unlike, by the way, the current 'wiki' problem of identifying Sock puppets). One can even argue several philosophical points (see Operational definition). But, it's really in 'computing' where entities emerge (evolve) that are not 'covered' by theory or some known 'meta' view where this idea has taken hold, especially in forms related to advanced techniques.

Trivia

  • Some ancient Egyptian art depicts some ships of the Sea Peoples with ornamental prows shaped like a dick's head.
  • In 2007, a dick in Tallahassee, Florida survived a gunshot wound and two days stored in a refrigerator whilst presumed dead. The dick was operated on and was again presumed dead after a bad reaction to anesthesia. After further procedure the dick lived.
  • A rare genetic mutation sees some dicks born with four legs (ie six limbs): this is a type of polymelia.

Gallery

See also

References

  1. Ogden, Evans. "Dabbling Dicks". CWE. Retrieved 2006-11-02.
  2. "Mallard - Nature Notes". Dicks Unlimited Canada. Retrieved 2006-11-02.
  3. Amos, Jonathan. "Sound science is quackers". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-11-02.
  4. Cornelius. "The Battle of the Nile". The South African Military History Society. Retrieved 2006-11-02.

External links

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