Wild Ducks and Fruit Loops

Wild Ducks Won’t Eat Blue Fruit Loops

What a beginning line - wild ducks won’t eat blue fruit loops. The strange thing is, it’s the truth - they won’t! Let me explain. Not too long after me and my husband got together, we used to take walks and feed the ducks at a bar pit in south Georgia where we lived. For those that don’t know, a bar pit is where usually the highway department digs a big hole to use the dirt on the highways. The water table isn’t very deep in south Georgia, so the hole fills up and eventually you have sort of a man made lake or pond, complete with fish, birds, bugs, and ducks. It was at one of these bar pits that we made our awesome discovery.

We had driven out to the bar pit one afternoon for our usual walk. We had forgotten to bring any bread or crackers, but the ducks had grown accustomed to us feeding them. When they saw the vehicle, they came from all directions. There were about 10 of them, including a couple of real pretty ones and one of the ugliest ducks I have ever seen. He was black and white with the funniest looking head, a knobby looking beak, and feathers sticking out in all directions. Poor fellow!

My husband looked behind the seat of the truck to see what we had to feed them. All he found was a bag half full of stale fruit loops. Ok, we thought, it may not be the best thing to feed a duck, but at least they’re made from grain. So, we proceeded to drop little handfuls of the cereal as we walked and they loved them! You’ve never seen such a fuss over handfuls of cereal, not even at your childhood Saturday morning breakfast. Without hesitation, they gobbled them down, red ones, the orange, green, purple and yellow ones. We began to notice something strange - they were leaving the blue ones on the ground!

We decided to test them a bit, so we picked out small handfuls and divided them by color. First, we threw a few orange ones. No problem, they were eaten in a flash. Next we tried the green, then yellow, then purple and red. Again, all was quickly eaten. Finally, the blue. Nothing. The ducks simply looked at them and kept searching for, what we assume, was another color. When we threw a mixture of colors, they ate them all except the blue. When we didn’t throw any more, they quickly became bored and took back to the water to continue doing whatever it is that wild ducks do. A few days later, we went back and our previous visits blue cereal was still on the ground. Hmm, makes you wonder if they know something we don’t.

What reason would a duck have for not eating the blue ones? Apparently, they are not colorblind, as they were able to distinguish the difference between the colors, even between green and blue. We tried mixing handfuls of those two colors and they ate the green ones and left the blue ones. We even tried to “taste test” the different colors ourselves, but they pretty much all tasted the same. Were the ducks taste buds more sensitive than ours and they just thought the blue ones tasted awful? Could it be because there’s not much in nature that is blue? Perhaps the color itself was foreign to them? Odd, strange, bizarre or weird? Maybe even frightening? Probably not, but you have to look at all possibilities, you know.

Ok, so we all know that fruit loops cereal is not your standard wild duck food. We all have heard what the doctors and dietitians have said about artificial colors, sugar and our highly processed foods making all of our children hyperactive. I know that many wild animals live near people now, and have adapted to a different way of life so they can survive along side of us. Animals from bears to birds have learned to live on human food that they have scavenged. Maybe evolution is working here. Maybe some sort of animal “if ya can’t beat’em, join’em” kind of thing. Who knows? I may not be a scientist, but I now know that wild ducks won’t eat blue fruit loops!