Southeast Asia is claimed to have been a major center of duck domestication (Zeuner 1963; Wood-Gush 1964), especially southern China, where the birds were kept during the Earlier Han Dynasty (206 B. C. to A. D. 220).The first written records of domestic ducks date back to the Warring States period (475-221 B. C.) (Weishu 1989). But according to one authority, the Chinese have had domesticated ducks for at least 3,000 years (Yeh 1980, cited in Clayton 1984), and it is the case that Chinese pottery models of ducks and geese, dating from about 2500 B. C., have been excavated (Watson 1969). However, archaeological evidence of a faunal nature is also needed before any firm conclusions about the antiquity of domestic ducks in China can be reached.
As already noted, Southeast Asia continues today as an important duck-raising area where domestic ducks surpass chickens in economic importance (Zeuner 1963). The duck thrives in watery environments, which promote clean plumage and increased disease resistance. Moreover, in warm, humid climates, with abundant rice paddies and waterways, ducks forage more successfully and produce more eggs than do chickens, which are not fond of this sort of environment (Clayton 1984).
In China, ducks are particularly important in the control of land crabs (which can devastate rice crops); the birds eat the crab nymphs that eat rice seedlings. Ducks are also released into paddy fields to consume locust nymphs, which, unlike adult locusts, are unable to fly. The recognition that ducks are effective instruments in combatting insect pests is probably of great antiquity (Needham 1986).
The main duck taxa winter in southern China and, except during the breeding season, move in large flocks, each consisting of hundreds - or even thousands - of birds. Although many different species of domestic duck have evolved in Jiangsu and other provinces south of the Yangtze River, where duck raising is common, their shapes, colors, and wings still bear much resemblance to those of their ancestors. The well-known Peking duck, for example, evolved through domestication of the mallard. Its feathers have whitened over a long period, but the curling central tail feather shows that the bird is descended from the same ancestor as the domestic ducks in the south (Weishu 1989).
True domestication elsewhere, however, seems to have come much later. Surveying the limited textual evidence (from Aristotle in the fourth century B. C. up to the ninth century A. D.), J. Harper concluded that ducks did not become fully domesticated outside of China until possibly the Middle Ages (Harper 1972).
The pintail (Anas acuta) is the most frequently represented taxon of waterfowl in ancient Egyptian art and hieroglyphics (Houlihan 1986), and such illustrations include depictions of pintails being force-fed. These birds can be tamed easily and remain able to breed (Delacour 1956-64). The widespread marshes of the Nile Delta would have provided excellent wintering grounds for both ducks and geese and, therefore, fowling opportunities for humans. But although geese, chickens, and pigeons are frequently mentioned in Egyptian papyri from the fifth century B. C. onward, ducks are noted only rarely.
Aristotle discussed only chickens and geese in his Natural History, and although Theophrastus mentioned tame ducks, he failed to indicate whether they were bred in captivity (Harper 1972). F. E. Zeuner (1963) has asserted that the keeping of domestic ducks in Greek and Roman times was unusual, though not unknown. Duck-shaped vases have been recovered at Rhodes and Cyprus, both centers of the cult of Aphrodite; they were dedicated to the goddess and to her companion, Eros. Ducks may have been on these islands for religious purposes only.
Several species were kept in captivity by the Romans, who maintained aviaries (nessotrophia) of wild ducks, probably to fatten them for the table (Toynbee 1973).Varro, writing in 37 B. C.,was the first to mention duck raising by the Romans, pointing out that ducks should be enclosed to protect them from eagles as well as to prevent their escape (Hooper and Ash 1935). In the first century A. D., Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella provided advice on keeping ducks (mallard, teal, and pochard) and other waterfowl in captivity, which was considered much more difficult than caring for more traditional domestic fowl (Forster and Heffner 1954).
Columella, along with Marcus Tullius Cicero and Pliny the Elder, recommended that the eggs of wild ducks be gathered and placed under hens to hatch. Columella claimed that ducks raised in this way would breed readily in captivity, whereas birds taken as adults would be slow to commence laying. He also stated that duck keeping was more expensive than the raising of geese, which fed mainly on grass (Forster and Heffner 1954). Marcus Porcius Cato mentioned the fattening of hens, geese, and squabs for the market, but not ducks (Hooper and Ash 1935).
Moving from Rome to other parts of Europe, we find that metrical data from Colchester, England (from the first to the fourth centuries A. D.), indicate that length and breadth measurements of mallard wing and leg bones are within the range of variation for wild mallards (Luff unpublished). Similarly, measurements of mallard remains from the Roman fort of Velsen I in the Netherlands were considered to be of the wild variety; length and width measurements of the mallard bones fit perfectly within the ranges of recent wild mallards studied by H. Reichstein and H. Pieper (1986; also see Prummel 1987).
The Saxons may have had domestic ducks, but as yet the evidence is unclear. Remains unearthed at Saxon Hamwih (Southampton) could have been those of domesticated ducks but could also have been those of wild birds (Bourdillon and Coy 1980). However, J. f! Coy (1989) has suggested that the low proportion of wildfowl at Saxon sites in Britain is indicative of the economic importance of domestic birds such as ducks and chickens.
A bit later, in Carolingian France (the eighth to the tenth centuries A. D.), estate surveys listing payments due feudal lords indicate that chickens and geese served as tender far more frequently than ducks (Harper 1972). Similarly, in Germany, the Capitular-ium de Villis grouped ducks with ornamental birds such as peafowl, pheasants, and partridges, but not with chickens and geese, kept for purely economic reasons (Franz 1967).
The scarcity of wildfowl was most likely significant in hastening domestication. Early medieval England, for example, had apparently witnessed a wholesale slaughter of wildfowl in spite of Acts of P arliament specifically aimed at their conservation, and in 1209, King John, finding insufficient game for his personal falconry, issued a proclamation forbidding the taking of wildfowl by any means (Macpher-son 1897). Statutes were also passed by Henry V, and again by Henry VIII, against the destruction of wildfowl. Interestingly, in the price controls of the Poul-ters’ Guild in London, dated to 1370, a distinction was drawn between wild and tame mallards (Jones 1965).Wild mallards were more expensive than tame ones, which suggests that wild birds were more prized than farmyard birds and indicates their general scarcity at that time.
Jean Delacour (1956-64) has suggested that the mallard may have become truly domesticated in Europe only in the medieval period - although, of course, prior to the distinction made by St. Hildegaard (twelfth century) between wild (silvestris) and domestic (domesticus) ducks (Figure II. G.9.1). Certainly, the latter were being reared in France by the end of the fourteenth century, when the Menagier de Paris (c. 1390) also distinguished between wild and domesticated ducks (Prummel 1983).
Nonetheless, ducks of domestic origin are uncommon in archaeological contexts of the medieval period (Eastham 1977; Maltby 1979). At early medieval Dorestad (Netherlands), some ducks were larger than others, indicating that they might well have been domesticates (Prummel 1983). However, the majority of remains at that site probably derived from wild specimens, because their measurements fall within the range for modern wild mallards (Woelfle 1967). Many mallard remains from late medieval Amsterdam measured even larger than those from Dorestad, once again suggesting the presence of domestic ducks among the Dutch (Prummel 1983). But by contrast, at Haithabu in northern Germany, duck remains have been firmly identified as deriving from the wild variety (Requate 1960; Reich-stein 1974), which was also the case at eleventh - and twelfth-century Grand-Besle, Buchy, Normandy (Lep-iksaar 1966-8).
Although domestic ducks are often identified in archaeological deposits from the sixteenth century onward, they did not increase dramatically in size until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when distinct varieties were recorded. Methods of rearing ducks were modeled on those mentioned by classical authors. G. Markham, for example, in the seventeenth century described ways of keeping wild mallards, teals, widgeons, shellducks, and lapwings that were very similar to those mentioned by Columella (Markham 1614).
In the eighteenth century, breeders began to promote and further develop certain traits for frequent egg laying or rapid growth for meat production, and sometimes breeds were crossed to produce hybrids suitable for both purposes (Batty 1985). Other varieties were used mainly as ornamental birds to decorate gardens and park ponds.
Aspects of Domestication
S. Bokonyi has emphasized the differences between “animal keeping” and “animal breeding,” with the former occurring without purposeful selection or the control of feeding, whereas the latter involves the deliberate selecting of specific traits for animal breeding and also control of nutritional intake (Bokonyi 1969).
There are a number of possible reasons why duck domestication in the West lagged so far behind that of the goose and chicken. One is that goslings accept the first living creature that they see as their mother, whereas mallards, who imprint through sound, do not do this. For them it is the call note of the mother that is important in identifying her (Lorenz 1964). Consequently, ducks were much less amenable to domestication, and the Roman idea of placing wild duck eggs under hens to hatch them into domesticity was off the mark because it did not go far enough.
Interestingly, the Comte de Buffon (Georges Louis Leclerc), who authored 32 volumes of Natural History, explained how such a procedure did work:
Eggs taken from the reeds and rushes amidst the water, and set under an adopted mother, first produced, in our farm-yards, wild, shy, fugitive birds, perpetually roving and unsettled, and impatient to regain the abodes of liberty. These however after they had bred and reared their own young in the domestic asylum became attached to the spot and their descendants in process of time grew more and more gentle and tractable, till at last they appear to have relinquished and forgotten the prerogatives of the savage state, although they still retain a strong propensity to wander abroad. (quoted in Bewick 1826)
Figure II. G.91. The mallard duck, ancestor of most domestic ducks.
Another reason for what appears to have been tardy domestication in the West has to do with temperature. S. Bottema (1989) has pointed out that domestic fowl in the Near East always have larger numbers of young than those in more temperate regions, which is the result of a higher survival rate connected not with greater clutch size but with higher temperatures.
Temperature, in turn, is linked to diet. If eggs of the teal (Anas crecca) are hatched when temperatures are low, the young may not survive, even though teal ducklings in the wild are not affected by cold weather. The reason is that a natural diet in the wild compensates for a lack of body warmth, but in captivity, with a suboptimal diet, a warm temperature becomes a critical factor (Bottema 1989). In fact, it is for this reason that Bottema (1989) has proposed that areas with high spring temperatures (such as much of Asia) would have been the locus for initial duck domestication.
Charles Darwin (1875) was one of the first researchers to deal with morphological changes in domestication. Using a small sample of wild mallard, Aylesbury, Tufted, Penguin, and Call ducks, he found that: (1) In comparison with the wild duck, the domestic duck experienced universal but slight reduction in the length of the bones of the wing relative to those of the legs; and (2) the prominence of the crest of the sternum relative to its length was much reduced in all domestic breeds. In addition, E. Brown (1906: 5), citing Edward Hewitt’s breeding of wild ducks in 1862, has commented that “the beautiful carriage of the wild mallard and his mate changes to the easy, well-to-do, comfortable deportment of a small Rouen, for they at each reproduction become much larger.”
Yet although most researchers, such as Darwin and Brown, have equated domestication with a size increase,
E. PAllison has suggested that there was a size decrease in mute swans from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Cambridgeshire, and that the birds were, on average, significantly larger than recent specimens. This phenomenon is not related to climatic change (Northcote 1981, 1983). But it is related to confinement, which can produce smaller birds that have not been selected for intentionally, such as the shellduck (Tadorna tadorna) or the male pintail (A. acuta). It is also related to food conditions in captivity, which can bring about a size decrease (Bottema 1989).
Confinement and food conditions in captivity may also have affected ducks in ways we have yet to understand. Another confounding factor in faunal analysis of mallards from riverine urban sites is that they may have arisen from a number of different populations, including wild, domestic, and scavenging ducks, with the latter most likely to interbreed with the former (O’Connor 1993). Thus, it is debatable just how pure the strains of present-day river mallards are, as they are obviously the product of considerable inbreeding. Ducks can hybridize (doubtless this was responsible for genetic contributions to domestic stock), and, in fact, all breeds of domestic duck can interbreed.
Also bearing on the history of duck domestication has been the birds’ fussiness (much greater than that of chickens), which forestalls their development in caged coops because they have large appetites and because their feet are not tolerant of the wire floors. Ducks produce proportionately larger eggs than gallinaceous birds (and their young seem more resistant to starvation) (Marcstrom 1966), but selection under domestication has been for a larger bird and not for a larger egg. Moreover, duck eggs, as already noted, have never been in high demand in Europe; they are strong in flavor and lack the palatability of hens’ eggs (Brown 1930). This is unfortunate, as ducks are naturally prolific layers and the eggs are highly nutritious.
World History
