The end of spring brings more than graduation here at California State University, Stanislaus (Stan State). It brings invaded pathways of adorable ducklings to our beautiful campus, but these adorable ducklings are an outcome of what many Stan State students have noticed on campus: a heated evolutionary war of duck intercourse, known to humans as seemingly violent and sometimes frightening sex between ducks.
That loud, quacking battle and feather revolt scene that takes place as you are walking from Naraghi Hall of Science to Demergasso-Bava Hall is a result of extremely aggressive male ducks constraining a reluctant female duck to have intercourse.
This act of nature can cause the female duck to be defeated, drowned or killed.
Ducks’ reproduction organs are used as weapons during intercourse. Male ducks use their expandable penis to force their semen into the female. Male ducks are part of the only three percent of birds that have penises. Their penises measure about ten inches, and some have barbs on it to push away opposing sperm.
However, a female duck gets to choose her mating partner after all of that natural intercourse combat she goes through.
Female ducks have small chambers in their corkscrew vagina that work as fake pouches, helping to expel unwanted duck sperm, allowing them to conceive from the male duck of their choosing.
This interaction between the waterfowl is habitual at Stan State during the spring, yet student Marisol Ochoa (junior, Communication Studies) has not witnessed it. Ochoa admits that if she were to see duck intercourse on campus, she would be clueless about their behavior.
Even though Giselle Alvarado (sophomore, Business) has attended Stan State for a shorter period than Ochoa, she has seen the prominent displays of aggression had between the ducks.
“My reaction to this was what is going on with the ducks,” Alvarado said. “I knew what was going on but I didn’t try to stop it. The ducks were fighting between each other and I didn’t want to get between that.”
All is fair in love and war, and that goes for world of the waterfowl, too. There is more to duck intercourse than just those adorable little ducklings that we all wish we could pet.
You have not experienced it all here at Stan State until you have witnessed the creation of these charming ducklings. 
Contributing reporters: Oscar Copland and Jesus Alvarado