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)

[edit] Where is it?

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)

[edit] Digesting Machine

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)