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ANAS MELLERI 
GENERAL HABITS 
Little is known of this bird beyond what is summarized by Milne-Edwards and 
Grandidier (1876-81). They speak of the duck as inhabiting chiefly the swamps and 
morasses of the interior of Madagascar, where it finds the aquatic animals and 
young shoots or grain on which it feeds. On the coasts it appears to be more 
rare in spite of the numerous lagoons and water courses. The eggs are yellowish in 
color, measuring 42 by 59 mm. The native names Angaka and Akaka are said to be 
onomatopoetic. 
Eggs in the British Museum are of a rich cream-color, blunt and oval in form and 
smooth, with a fair amount of gloss (E. W. Oates, 1902). 
Mr. F. R. Wulsin, collecting for the Museum of Comparative Zoology, in 1915, 
secured nine specimens with the help of native boys at the southeast end of Lake 
Alaotra and on the Gahabe River in the same general region. The country there, 
so IVIr. Wulsin tells me, was very swampy with enormous quantities of rushes. 
The low ground was thoroughly water-soaked and partially flooded; not a 
shallow lake free of vegetation. His boys got nine in two and a half days, 
shooting the ducks sitting so they could not have been very wild. He also thinks 
that this species cannot be persecuted overmuch at present for there are not a great 
many native hunters in Madagascar. The few ducks that are taken are probably shot 
from or near the shore and not from boats. 
Behavior in Captivity, A specimen of this rare species was presented to the 
London Zoological Gardens by W. H. Sharland in 1894 (Hubbard, 1907). It mated 
with a Mallard and the hybrids produced in 1904 proved fertile when mated with 
other complex hybrids containing strains of Mallard, Spot-bill, Australian and 
Pintail (Bonhote, 1907). 
