Imagine walking around somewhere, and as you look behind you, you see a bunch of young ducklings following you around. This adorably peculiar situation is something that commonly happens not only with ducks, and this phenomenon has an explanation. Before we get to that, let’s first look at this short clip of a duckling horde following a random passerby on the street.
Someone passed by a family of abandoned ducklings on the street.
A man was driving his car around a street somewhere and found a bunch of ducklings in the middle of the road. He noticed that the ducklings were missing their mother. Perhaps something happened to the mother, or their human owner on the street abandoned them.
He said he did not want to hurt the stray ducks, so he went out of his car to shove them gently to the side of the road. However, he did not expect that a simple touch made the ducklings become attached to him.
The ducklings started following the man around.
The man was walking back towards his car but when he looked behind him, he saw the ducklings trailing him around. He was really surprised to see them waddling behind him that he had no choice but to park his car for a quick second to check on them. The man took a camera and shot a video showing the ducklings following him wherever he goes.
As the man narrated, it looked like the ducklings already knew where he is going to be, and their eyes are always glued to him. At the end of the video, he closed in with his camera and had the ducklings chirp their ‘Hi’s’ in front of the camera. They were hilarious and adorable to look at, but knowing their situation, it is also sad to see these little ducklings just roaming alone.
The power of imprinting in animals.
Imprinting is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in younglings (animals and humans). According to an article in Better Help, Imprinting is a phenomenon in which a newborn creature bond to the type of animal it meets at birth.
There are different kinds of imprinting but what we see in ducks and geese is called the Baby Duck Syndrome, and this occurs within the critical period of their lives after hatching. They become attached to the first moving animal they see, thus, making it possible that they become attached to a human. However, in this case, the imprinting occurred when the ducks were already hatched, making this phenomenon a rare one.
The man shared the video on the internet and immediately went viral.
The short 36-second clip was posted on YouTube in 2015 and it earned more than 7 million views on the platform. With the cuteness that these little ducklings have shown, this number of views is quite expected. It’s just impossible not to be charmed with their little waddles and baby chirps.
Luckily, someone adopted the ducks for good.
If you are worried about whether the ducklings found a home and family to be with, then worry not as these little ducklings ended up somewhere safe. The uploader of the video wrote on the video description that the ducklings were adopted by the Disney Animal Kingdom. Therefore, there is no need to worry about what became of those ducks after this viral video.
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