Immigrant from India

The Fulvous Duck is widely distributed in the Americas. But it is an East Indian not a native America species. Fulvous is one of eight species that make up the genus Dendrocygna. They are somewhere between a goose and a swan in the same sense that a Muscovy is between a goose and a duck.

Not much is really known about Fulvous. Delacour wrote of the scanty knowledge of its habits and behavior. Its name seems contrived. Fulvous just means brownish tan or tawney color. It is called a Tree Duck but is much less arboreal than the Perching Ducks and rarely roosts. It is called a whistling duck but it takes some imagination to imagine their squeaky voices as a whistle.

Fulvous is naturally a very tame duck (but not the tamest of the species), and therein lies a fascinating story. From time immemorial the Indians of Central and South America have kept tame ducks as household and village pets. This is not so unusual, the natives of East Africa and of Bengal keep tame ducks as well. Besides being companions and a response to the human caring urge, these animals serve a very useful purpose as village watchdogs, to sound the alarm, scavengers, insect and snake killers and as a live source of feathers.

South American Indians are fond of the Fulvous Duck, the Muscovy, and the Curassows as pets. This raises the question, Fulvous and Curassow, although just as tame, not domesticated?

The answer lies in the preadaptive  traits of each species. The Curassow fails the test straightaway because the female lays only two eggs and is not dependably broody when living in contact with humans. The Fulvous lays more eggs but is monogamous (meaning the eggs may not be fertile) and Delacour claims they never succeed in rearing their young and that their rather small ducklings are better entrusted to a bantam hen.

Delacour feels that Fulvous ducklings fall an easy prey to vermin and should be reared in rat proof enclosures. This inspires me to note that the rat arrived in the New World with Columbus. They could not have been a factor in the failure of the South American Indians to domesticated Fulvous.

On the other hand, the Muscovy is promiscuous, an indeterminate layer, i.e., if eggs are destroyed the duck lays some more, a dependable natural incubator, and a fiercely protective defender of her young. In a way the Muscovy is self-domesticating.

The Fulvous duck has the greatest range of any species of bird. It is found from California to Argentina, East Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, and Burma. There is no variation in the appearance of Fulvous over this very wide range. The birds of South America look the same as the birds of India and they interbreed freely.

This means that the widely separated populations have not been apart more than a few hundred of perhaps a thousand years, a moment in geologic time. It is 4000 miles from East Africa to Brazil. Fulvous is not salt tolerant nor a migratory flyer like the Mallard. How did Fulvous get to the Americas?

Glenn Whitley did a PHD Thesis at the University of Texas on Tame Birds in the Americas. He used linguistics to trace the spread of Fulvous in South America and found that, whatever the language of the local Indians, their names for Fulvous tend to fall into two groups of cognates. Each group of names for Fulvous can be traced back to one of the tribes of natives who once lived in the Amazon basin and subsequently spread over South and Central America. And the names in one group resemble the name for Fulvous in Bengal, the names of the other group resemble the name for Fulvous in Burma.

It is now widely realized that boat building and navigation began in Southeast Asia long before the Vikings sailed West.

Hindu traders regularly sailed to East Africa so it is not surprising to learn that tame ducks with Hindu names are found in East Africa as well as in India. But the trail of the Fulvous Duck suggests that the Hindu traders probably extended their voyages on to South America. Did the Hindu discover America many centuries before Columbus and bring the Fulvous with them?

This idea should not stretch the imagination too much. Favorable ocean currents would bring the Hindu sailors from the west coast of Africa to the East coast of Brazil in same vicinity from which the two Indian tribes and their tame ducks dispersed over South America. Whitley also notes that the native fisherman at the mouth of the Amazon still use a Hindu-type aft with a Hindu name.

Written history seriously limits the possibility of understanding the past and we must depend on archaeological and in this case linguistic evidence. This theory is admittedly based on purely circumstantial evidence, but isn’t fascinating that a duck would provide the clue?

Oh, in case you wondered, if the Hindu sailors travelled south along the coast of South America, they would have picked up a favorable current that would have taken them back to the Cape of Good Hope.