The Ig Nobel Awards are a distinctly English celebration of the year’s most improbable research “that first makes people LAUGH, then makes them THINK.” Just about everything within the Annals of Improbable Research is pure science-geek heaven, but as the Guardian notes, this year’s paper on Duck Necrophilia is particularly stupefying:

Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual - no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands - but they regularly indulge in “attempted rape flights” when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. “Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards,” explains Mr Moeliker.

As he recounts in his seminal paper, The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard anas platyrhynchos, he was in his office in the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, when he was alerted by a bang to the fact a bird had crashed into the glass facade of the building. “I went downstairs immediately to see if the window was damaged, and saw a drake mallard (anas platyrhynchos) lying motionless on its belly in the sand, two metres outside the facade. The unfortunate duck apparently had hit the building in full flight at a height of about three metres from the ground. Next to the obviously dead duck, another male mallard (in full adult plumage without any visible traces of moult) was present. He forcibly picked into the back, the base of the bill and mostly into the back of the head of the dead mallard for about two minutes, then mounted the corpse and started to copulate, with great force, almost continuously picking the side of the head.

“Rather startled, I watched this scene from close quarters behind the window until 19.10 hours during which time (75 minutes) I made some photographs and the mallard almost continuously copulated his dead congener. He dismounted only twice, stayed near the dead duck and picked the neck and the side of the head before mounting again. The first break (at 18.29 hours) lasted three minutes and the second break (at 18.45 hours) lasted less than a minute. At 19.12 hours, I disturbed this cruel scene. The necrophilic mallard only reluctantly left his ‘mate’: when I had approached him to about five metres, he did not fly away but simply walked off a few metres, weakly uttering a series of two-note ‘raeb-raeb’ calls (the ‘conversation-call’ of Lorentz 1953). I secured the dead duck and left the museum at 19.25 hours. The mallard was still present at the site, calling ‘raeb-raeb’ and apparently looking for his victim (who, by then, was in the freezer).”

To be honest, it took me over half an hour to fully process the above material. I first laughed and then I thought… and then I laughed some more about how disturbing my thoughts were. I’m now left with only two parting thoughts:

1. Jerry Falwell must be alerted. I give it 5 minutes of deep thinking before the Southern Baptist media darling proclaims: “Ducks are gay! They’re even worse sodomites than Sponge Bob and Tinky-Winky!”
2. I really would like to give—or be the subject of—a speach at the Ig Nobel tours at some point in my life. Now if I can just get behind that goal with the same determination of a Nercophiliac Duck, I’m set.