Tiny Duckling Has Rare Mutation: 4 Legs
Feb 18th – 7:07am
LONDON (AP) – Webbed feet run in Stumpy’s family, but a rare mutation has left the eight-day-old duckling with two nearly full-sized legs behind the two he runs on.
Nicky Janaway, a duck farmer in New Forest, Hampshire, 95 miles southwest of London, unveiled the duckling to reporters on Saturday.
“It was absolutely bizarre. I was thinking ‘he’s got too many legs’ and I kept counting ‘one, two, three, four,'” Janaway said.
Stumpy would probably not survive in the wild, but Janaway, who runs the Warrawee Duck Farm in New Forest says he is doing well.
“He’s eating and surviving so far and he is running about with those extra legs acting like stabilizers,” Janaway said.
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Cool story!
If they can get a male and female and then try to breed them together. That would be very interesting.
The male sperm can be frozen to wait for a female to come along. However, I suspect not much research has been done on duck semen. Being able to freeze sperm and bring it back is not so easy. It takes some experimentation to work things out.
I am beginning to wonder if these unusual births are cased by poisons in the environment.