Drumming Duck

Submission 4,079

Part of a series on Animals. [View Related Entries]

About

Drumming Duck, aka Ben Afquack, is a duck which went viral for several videos in which it uses its feet to tap on various drums. The videos have led to news coverage and parody remixes on YouTube.

Origin

On January 20th, 2020, Facebook user Derek Johnson posted a video of his duck, named Ben Afquack, to Facebook.^[1] In the video, Johnson holds the duck above a drum, causing the duck to tap its feet on the drum, gaining over 3.2 million views on the platform (shown below). Prior to the video spreading online, Johnson had run an Instagram account specifically for the duck, @minnesotaduck.^[2]

Spread

After posting the clip on Facebook, Johnson reposted it to Instagram the following day, gaining over 282,000 views.^[3] It began being picked up by news organizations shortly after. Sites including the Star Tribune,^[4] CBS,^[5] and the New York Post^[6] covered the video. The duck was picked up by YouTube channel Daily Dose of Internet on January 23rd (shown below, left). Parodies and mashups of the duck started shortly after. On January 26th, YouTuber ploxyzero posted a parody where the drumming duck was mashed up with the video game Taiko no Tatsujin.

Over the following month, more parodies began appearing on YouTube. Popular examples include a February 22nd post by Louie Zong that gained over 75,000 views (shown below, left) and a death metal cover by Jules Conroy that gained over 12,000 views (shown below, right).