Nobody did actually features an answer. The challenge was, the common bird-dissection techniques focused almost found on a man. Whenever experts did dissect a lady duck, it chopped completely up from the edges of the snatch to get to this new cum-stores tubules near the womb (from inside the wild birds, it is called the shell gland), distorting their correct anatomy. They put the rest aside, unexamined. Whenever she questioned Birkhead what the inside a woman duck’s reproductive tract appeared as if, she remembers, the guy assumed it had been just like various other bird: a straightforward tube.

However, she understood there was not a chance an enthusiastic appendage as state-of-the-art and unusual as the duck manhood would have advanced towards the its very own. If your knob was an extended corkscrew, the new snatch needs to be a similarly cutting-edge framework.

The first step would be to find some lady ducks. Brennan along with her husband drove over to one of several nearby facilities and you can bought a couple of Pekin ducks, hence she euthanized instead service on an effective bale of hay. (Brennan’s partner is used to the version of journeys: “He brings me personally roadkill while the good nuptial gift,” she says.) In the place of slicing this new reproductive area up the edges, she spent circumstances meticulously flaking out the fresh structures, level because of the level, “such as unwrapping a present.” In the course of time, an intricate shape emerged: turned and mazelike, that have blind alleys and you can hidden cabins. (more…)