Wild Loons Lose Their Baby, So They Adopt An Orphaned Duckling

[catbyte]

They love him just like he's theirs ❤️️

BY CAITLIN JILL ANDERS

When researchers with The Loon Project headed out to Long Lake, Wisconsin, in mid-June, they expected it to be just another day of researching and observing the birds out on the water — but as a mother loon swam by with her baby on her back, the researchers couldn’t believe their eyes: This baby wasn’t a loon.

It was a duckling.



None of the researchers had ever seen anything quite like it, but through some careful investigation, they were able to piece together some of the story.



The loon couple had had their own baby not long before adopting the duckling, but unfortunately, the little loon didn’t make it. The couple’s parental instincts were still strong and they desperately wanted someone to care for — and so when they saw a tiny duckling all alone without his family, they decided to raise him as their own. Ducklings imprint on the first moving, parental figure they encounter, so when the loons took him in, the duckling didn’t object — and instead happily settled in with his new family.



“This was a very exciting discovery,” Walter Piper, head of The Loon Project, told The Dodo. “It is a weird one, because my job is to study loons, not loons that raise ducklings! But this event allows us to examine the flexibility of loon behavior and duckling behavior.”



Baby loons and ducklings are raised very differently, but this little duckling doesn’t seem to mind adapting to the tendencies of his parents. In fact, he’s even learned to dive down to the bottom of the lake for food, a behavior that most ducks like him don’t have. Loons and ducklings also eat different food, but somehow, the duckling is making it work, and seems perfectly content with his unconventional family.



It’s hard to say what will happen to the duckling as he gets older and if he’ll continue to hang around loons or go off and join other ducks, but for now, he’s thriving, and that’s incredible. The fact that a loon couple who lost their baby decided to take in an orphaned duckling is an example of how wonderful nature can be, and researchers are excited to continue to observe the adorable family.

https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/loons-adopt-orphaned-duckling

[50 Shades Of Blue]

1. OMG That is so sweet!

[Sneederbunk]

2. The duckling's mother be damned.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. The duckling was alone, so something bad probably happened to the mother duck.

[lunatica]

11. Read the captions

The duckling was alone. Ducks are very protective and don’t just leave their ducklings by themselves. The duckling would normally not survive.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. He's the one.

He’s the one who will rejoin his kind and teach them the new ways he learned from his loonie parents.

[mr_lebowski]

4. I thought Loons were kinda 'known for this' (adoption)... No?

Adorable, in any case ...

[TrogL]

5. So if it ends up mating with a loon does that make the offspring a doon or a luck?

[Karadeniz]

6. Animals can be so accepting! Gotta admire that!

[sinkingfeeling]

8. More so than a lot of our fellow Americans.

[pansypoo53219]

9. in our p aper weeks ago . finally stopped resisting the fish the parents offered baby duck.

[kiri]

12. rescued duckling

Our neighbor teen boy rescued a baby duck from a storm drain. Brought it home and kept in his bedroom for months, feeding it chicken feed. We tried every wildlife group we could find to see if there was any help for the poor duck, a mallard, to return to the wild. No one had any help or advice. The duck lived in a good size coup in the yard, would occasionally be taken out for walks, was kept warm in the winter.

It was totally imprinted on Ivan but never knew he was a duck, never met another duck, never had opportunity to swim, never learned how to fly.

This summer when the top was left off his cage, a hawk swept in and killed him.

Without Ivan, the duckling would surely have died. Whether it had a good life for two years is unknowable.

[onetexan]

10. Evidence that biology does not a family make