Does a Ducks quack, quack back…

I get tons of forwarded emails and messages about such facts. Infact, theres a new term for this. Its called internet-folklore. One of the interesting facts (or myths) that I recently came across was

“Does a ducks quack echo back”.

I was watching Myth Busters on Discovery Channel and they recently busted the myth. Ducks quack DO echo back. But the reason why its made it into internet-folklore is that the reverberations of the quack and the echo are so similar, that people (including compturs and wave form softare) confuse it as a regular quack.

Recent research on echos reveals that humans voice and echo is represented as a big spike (voice) followed by a lull and a smaller spike (echo) in the spectrum. Instead of this phenomena, in the ducks case, there is a gradual decrease in the waveform that forms after a ducks quack and its echo back. Which is hard to distinguish for both humans and computers alike since the gradual decrease gets confused for a duck quacking on and on when its quite and its echo is being thrown all over. Giving the wrong impression that a ducks quack, dont quack back after hitting a wall.

Hence, another myth busted…Good job Adam and Jammie…

–Tashfeen.