{"id":23439,"date":"2018-05-09T14:14:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T21:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=23439"},"modified":"2018-05-09T18:45:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T01:45:23","slug":"mallards-metoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=23439","title":{"rendered":"Mallard&#8217;s #metoo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most mating between Mallards seems to be consensual and initiated by the female. Yet, there are more males than females. This leads to roving bands of bachelor drakes. This, in turn, leads to rape &#8212; or as naturalists delicately put it: forced copulation.<\/p>\n<p>Ducks are not humans and the forced copulation presumably has evolutionary advantages for the species. Yet when seen through human eyes, the behaviour is disconcerting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mommy Mallard was taking her dozen ducklings out on the water. Being a member of a <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20748\">sexually dimorphic species<\/a>, the mallard female attends her chicks without male support.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23441\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So it was unexpected to see two males swimming towards the family. There, they began neck pumping, a sign of courtship. Mommy quacked her objection to this inappropriate behaviour.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23441\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mommy&#8217;s first thought was to escape. However, she has a problem: if she leaves, her chicks are vulnerable. So, she returned.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23451\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Having returned to guard her chicks, Mommy was put upon.\u00a0<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23456\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509gs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As far I could tell, over the next few minutes the males took turns.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23457\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509fs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh come now; Do you have to do this in front of my chicks?<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23454\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What are you doing to Mommy?&#8221;<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23452\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/mallard180509ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Most mating between Mallards seems to be consensual and initiated by the female. Yet, there are more males than females. This leads to roving bands of bachelor drakes. This, in turn, leads to rape &#8212; or as naturalists delicately &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=23439\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23439"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23465,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23439\/revisions\/23465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}