Today is Dead Duck Day

Today, Sunday, June 5th, is Dead Duck Day. Dead Duck Day commemorates the sudden and dramatic death of the mallard duck that entered the scientific literature as the first ever recorded victim of homosexual necrophila in this species.

IN ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: If you are in Rotterdam, join us at the historic spot for a short, open-air ceremony. It’s open free to the public, including ducks. The ceremony starts June 5th at 17.55h sharp, the actual time the duck lost his life on that historic day in 1995. Click here for details of the celebration in Rotterdam (and here for more detail, in Dutch).

EVERYWHERE ELSE: If you cannot be in Rotterdam, do your own public reading, in your own town, of the scientific report “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos“.

That report, and its author, were honored by the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in biology.