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We hate to break it to you, but all our sources say a duck's quack echoes just like any other sound. There doesn't seem to be anything special about the noise, except that it has mysteriously produced this persistent bit of folklore. That intrepid tester of suspicious stuff, Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope, assigned it to one of his researchers. She disproved the myth herself in 1998 with a few friends, a duck, and a large courtyard conducive to echoes. Sure enough, the quack echoed (once they figured out how to make the duck quack, that is). Likewise, the good folks at the premiere urban legend resource, Snopes.com,
have personally experienced the quacky echo of talkative ducks. The MadSci Network suggests an explanation for this common misconception. An echo is caused by sound waves reflecting off a hard surface. Higher frequency sounds reflect better and create stronger echoes. Perhaps some ducks have quacks without a lot of high frequency components, resulting in very faint echoes. Physlink.com explains how an extremely clever duck might avoid creating an echo at all. If the distance between the duck and a reflective surface falls exactly at one of the nodes of the quack's sound wave, sound will not be reflected back, thus no echo. The duck could
also use partially reflective material and some sound wave measurements to prevent a quack from echoing, much in the same way the military hides aircraft from radar. However, we suspect Daffy and his pals aren't quite that sophisticated or conniving.
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