Talk:Digesting Duck

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This article has some clarity issues. The opening paragraph states:

The mechanical duck demonstrated the ability to eat kernels of grain, metabolise, and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this ...

This makes it sound like the duck did not eat anything and did not defecate anything, but rather that its creator merely hoped that it would do so. But later in the article we find this:

The duck stretched its neck to take grain from a hand and then swallowed and digested it. It drank, paddled and quacked, and imitated the gestures which a normal duck makes when swallowing precipitately. The food was digested by dissolution, not by trituration, ‘the matter digested in the stomach being conducted by tubes, as in an animal by its bowels, into the anus, where there is a sphincter which permits it to be released.'

Which makes it sound like this duck did have the ability to eat and defecate, at least through mechanical means. I have read and re-read this article and I cannot determine which interpretation is correct. Someone which more knowledge on this subject than myself should edit this article to make clear whether this mechanical duck actually did what it was supposed to (eat, defecate, etc.) or whether it failed to achieve that goal. -64.107.192.18 20:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The duck did "eat" and "defecate" (only the "faeces" were not a product of the mechanism itself).

But I am sure many would like to know what happened to Vaucanson's duck and other automatons. They were rigthly admired as masterpieces - so where are they now? What happened to them?

As far as I've heard, most of his inventions are presumed destroyed/lost. The digesting duck, however, is in a museum called the "Musée des Automates" in Grenoble, I believe. 64.202.147.90 17:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Musée des Automates de Grenoble: Rêves Mécaniques closed in April 2013, per this news item. — HipLibrarianship ^talk 23:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Someone actually did build a working digestion machine, a few years ago I think. I'm surprised to find no reference to it in this article. I know, I should be bold, but I don't really know anything about it.Salvar (talk) 17:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are thinking of Cloaca by Wim Delvoye, documented at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_(art) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.151.234 (talk) 07:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The French comic series Donjon features a charater called Herbert von Vaucanson who is a duck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.24.15.194 (talk) 09:53, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Vaucanson1.jpeg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:36, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Shitting duck of France. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 August 29#Shitting duck of France until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In this phrase: "In 2002, it was destroyed Wim Delvoye introduced the world to his "Cloaca Machine", a mechanical art work that actually digests food and turns it into excrement," I don't know what is meant by "it was destroyed". The grammar and contextual meaning are confusing to me. But it's not a simple typo so I leave it to those who claim authority to deal with it. WithGLEE (talk) 11:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just vandalism. Now fixed.

If you look at the page history you can often spot this stuff, especially if it's recent. Thanks for flagging it up. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]