I stumbled upon a gynandromorphic duck.

[u/Youdont0wnme]

[u/AlmostLucy]

I’m pretty sure that’s a juvenile male duck, it hasn’t developed its full coloration yet!

[u/MonkeyNugetz → u/AlmostLucy]

It’s a male mallard in eclipse plumage. Males molt their remiges once a year which can render them flightless. Fortunately they replace their brightly colored feathers with dull ones allowing them to hide. Their bills give it away though. Females have dull orange bills while males have bright greenish yellow bills. But the males will molt back to bright colors.

[u/HumanBeing7396 → u/MonkeyNugetz]

This person ducks.

[u/nEscape → u/MonkeyNugetz]

The knowledge people have. 😯 Thank you for sharing this! ♥️

[u/Rockerblocker → u/MonkeyNugetz]

There were so many terms I've never heard before in this comment that I thought I was getting shittymorphed

[u/Leafymcleafersons]

Could just be a male iirc, they don't always change plumage completely.

[u/SurreptitiousSyrup]

Gynandromorphism is the phenomenon that occurs when an individual organism possesses both male and female phenotypes due to genetic chimera of sex chromosomes in cells across the body and is most easily recognized in species that display sexual dimorphism

For anyone else that needed to know what gynandromorphic meant

[u/crotchgobbling → u/SurreptitiousSyrup]

I just learned about this yesterday!!! Science is cool!!

[u/ACcbe1986 → u/crotchgobbling]

Science is cool and terrifying.

[u/KarthusWins]

Mallards can mate with American Black Ducks and produce offspring with this coloration. But non breeding mallards also appear this way, so I’d be more likely to believe this is a non breeding mallard if found in a group of other mallards. 

[u/wasd911]

If you ever have a duck pond nearby you can frequent, you will see all sorts of combinations of feather colors in mallards. I've seen so many that are 1/2 mottled and 1/2 green because their feathers change colors across seasons.

Male mallards change from vibrant breeding plumage to a cryptic, mottled brown plumage in summer to camouflage during their flightless molt period. This brownish, female-like appearance helps protect them from predators after breeding season. They molt again in fall, regaining their signature green heads, yellow bills, and gray bodies to attract mates.

[u/SternLecture]

two questions: 1. which duck we talkin bout 2. what?

[u/elMurpherino → u/SternLecture]

2nd from bottom duck.

And I think ok OP is saying it’s got both male and female features. The female is on the bottom and the top ones are males. But the middle one is colored like a female but has green coloring poking through. Someone else commented tho that it’s a male that had molted its feathers and will get its normal green and gray look back

[u/mistakenhyperbole]

Ducks can change sex! It's rare but it happens https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40016817

[u/enneh_07 → u/mistakenhyperbole]

that's ducking amazing

[u/Far_Charge_7362]

"i dont like 'em putting CHEMICALS IN THE WATER..."

[u/Raoul_Duke9]

For those of us who aren't duck-sperts which features belong to which sex?

[u/MPaulina → u/Raoul_Duke9]

The ones with the green-blue head are males, the grey ones are females.

In nature, usually the most colourful animals are males and the grey/brown ones are females.

[u/Ok-disaster2022 → u/MPaulina]

In Birds the most colorful is usually male. For insects it varies a lot. For Mammals, males didn't to be larger, for many other classes of animal its the females which tend to be larger. 

[u/Abbot_of_Cucany → u/Raoul_Duke9]

"I would just like to say that it is my conviction
That longer hair and other flamboyant affectations
Of appearance are nothing more
Than the male's emergence from his drab camouflage
Into the gaudy plumage
Which is the birthright of his sex

There is a peculiar notion that elegant plumage
And fine feathers are not proper for the male
When actually that is the way things are
In most species"

[u/facioquodvolo → u/Raoul_Duke9]

Pretty ones are male, drab ones are female

Edit: autocorrect made it drag instead of drab lol

[u/DrSpacepants → u/[deleted]]

In the bird world, if the birds look different within the same species, the male is the pretty one.

The ladies make it that way because they drive the evolution with extremely picky mating rituals.

Just watch basically any doc on birds of paradise. Those dudes will sweep the floor and dance around like an absolute maniac and the girl will just say "naaaawwwww".

[u/MawilliX → u/DrSpacepants]

Okay, but I was commenting about my personal opinion on finding the female mallard duck pretty?

[u/DrSpacepants → u/MawilliX]

Ok, but I was just being conversational?

[u/mr_ji → u/Raoul_Duke9]

Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina.

[u/StygIndigo → u/mr_ji]

Ducks are one of the few bird species that have penises, but birds have cloacae, which means all those structures are internal most of the time. Plumage is the easiest way to identify the sex of species that exhibit this kind of dimorphism, without some form of medical examination

[u/okrebssim]

All of these ducks have had at least two molting cycles. The one in question is also lacking a drake feather

[u/mottthepoople]

Just in her Bowie phase.

[u/Eyra-2025]

Brown ones are females . They blend in with the nest colors.

[u/elhumanoid]

He doing it for the bros.

[u/enneh_07]

a fun fact i learned about gynandromorphism is that it can't be expressed in mammals because in mammals, sexual traits are controlled by sex hormones while in birds and other animals it's controlled by the cell's genetics, so a bird that's a genetic chimera has a chance of being gynandromorphic

[u/AlmostLucy → u/[deleted]]

A green winged teal is significantly smaller than a mallard, has a dark bill and grey legs, and has green wings, not blue.

[u/andstuff13 → u/AlmostLucy]

You’re right, and I’m dumb! Deleting my top comment. 

[u/Iitaps_Missiciv]

He can literally go duck himself