Ducks

All 10 species of ducks on WAnimals

Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.

Conservation status

Where they live

Recorded in 117 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:

Where to see them

Did you know…?

• It is a diving duck that hardly dives: the Netta feed more like dabbling ducks, sieving the water, and only submerge reluctantly.

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• It swallows gastroliths of less than 1 mm to grind up seeds, and that preference for small stones makes it less prone to lead poisoning from shotgun pellets than the northern pintail, the mallard or the common pochard.

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• After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, red-crested pochards wintering in Pakistan were found with intermediate levels of radioactivity.

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• Its domestic form, the Muscovy duck, is kept throughout Latin America.

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• It is the only domestic duck in the world that does not descend from the mallard: every other one does.

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• Indigenous American peoples were already keeping it in pre-Columbian times, long before the Europeans arrived.

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• It is the state bird of Assam, in India.

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• Its resemblance to the Muscovy duck turned out to be misleading: analyses of mitochondrial cytochrome b and of NADH dehydrogenase DNA showed that they are not close relatives, and it now occupies a genus of its own, Asarcornis.

Ecosystems