Casual Ducks

The Ducks on campus are no new story. They're always been here, and I like them. That's still true, but I've noticed something recently. The Ducks have gotten a lot more casual. Usually ducks are standard prey animals. I approach within about thrice the distance I could pounce, the Duck turns to face the walkway behind me, looks me in the eye (remember that ducks have sideways eyes, prey eyes, so they can do that) and I can see the ducks flight or very flight prey response going off behind it's eyes. In general they won't run until I'm within twice my pouncing distance, and I like the ducks so I try to stay in the 2<3 distance so that I can look at the ducks without scaring them.

Well recently the ducks have gotten a lot more layed back. They still hang out in groups, but they aren't constantly waddling around anymore. It's pretty common now to see two ducks just sitting in the grass. I'd say they're sunning themselves, but I don't think ducks do that. Also the rules of Duck / Max confrontation have changed. If I approach in my usual, walking up to animal hyper-nonthreatening stance, they used to do the 2<3 thing mentioned above. Now I can get within 2 pounce lengths before they do anything. After that the duck turns to the duck next to it (prey eyes, remember?) and gives me a "Hey human, what's up?" style of look. It reminds me of sunbathing again because that's the way humans respond when you approach one whose sunning. And while I'm against humanizing wildlife I must admit the similarities between the Californian phonies and ducks amuzes me deeply. The change in the ducks isn't a bad thing, it's actually really interesting because it shows that the activity of lying around in the sun not caring about stuff trasncends the mamal/avian barrier. It may even be another piece of evidence of the bird/reptile common ancestor.

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I actually just thought of this, as I was writing. If our common ancestor was a photo-auto-troph, then maybe we have left over photosynthesis behavior. Now That is vestigial.