Tak (swamp duck)
From the Early Pandora Wiki Na'vi legend Wiki lore Real world
The tak was a small swamp duck of early Pandora. The Na'vi named it after its call: tak! tak-tak! It was the favourite food of the Taktswìkyu and was eaten until none were left. Na'vi legend
Description
- Small, round and soft, about the size of a fruit you could hold in two hands. Na'vi legend
- Sky-blue feathers, a short orange bill and four eyes, two stacked on each side of its head. Many Pandoran animals have four eyes. Na'vi legend Canon
- Nine orange feet. Wiki lore says four were on each side and one in the middle, to help it balance on slippery mud. Na'vi legend Wiki lore
- Tail feathers that glowed pale green at night, so ducklings could follow their mothers in the dark. Na'vi legend
Why four eyes?
Wiki lore says the top pair of eyes watched the sky and the lower pair watched the water, so a tak could look for food and danger at the same time. The one danger it never learned to watch for was a glowing light that smelled of honey. Wiki lore
Calls
| Call | Meaning |
|---|---|
| tak! | "Here I am." The everyday call. Na'vi legend |
| tak-tak! | "Come here!" Used to call friends or ducklings. Na'vi legend |
| tak-tak-tak-tak! | "Danger!" The lookout's alarm, which sent the whole raft paddling away. Wiki lore |
| taaaak… | A soft, sleepy call at night. Wiki lore |
Behaviour
Tak waddled on land and zoomed across the water, leaving foamy trails behind them. They ate water plants and bugs, laid many eggs, and loved sweet things more than anything, which is how the Taktswìkyu's nectar trap caught them. Na'vi legend
Wiki lore says tak slept in floating rafts of up to fifty birds on the pads of drift lilies, taking turns as the lookout, and that a mother tak could recognise her own ducklings by the pattern of their glowing tail tips. Wiki lore
Tak could fly, but only short distances, in low, splashy hops across the water. Early clans believed that once a year the tak flew all the way to the floating mountains in a great blue V. Wiki lore
Life cycle
| Stage | What happened |
|---|---|
| Egg | Mothers laid four to six pale green eggs in reed nests. The eggs glowed faintly, so the mother could find them at night. Wiki lore |
| Duckling | Fluffy and grey-blue, with tiny glowing tail tips. Ducklings followed the first green light they saw, almost always their mother's. Wiki lore |
| Young duck | Feathers turned sky blue. Young tak joined a sleeping raft and took their first turn as lookout. Wiki lore |
| Adult | Laid eggs several times a year. A tak could live about eight years, if a Taktswìkyu did not find it first. Wiki lore |
Its place in the swamp
The tak ate water plants and bugs, and was eaten by the Taktswìkyu. Its droppings fed the water plants again. That made it a key link in the swamp food web: when it disappeared, the whole web came apart. Na'vi legend Wiki lore
Ecologists call an animal like this a keystone species, after the top stone of an arch: take it away and everything else falls down. Real world
The tak and the Na'vi
Wiki lore says the early clans never hunted the tak. They believed the ducks belonged to the Taktswìkyu, and anyway, the tak's calls told them the swamp was healthy. "A noisy swamp is a happy swamp," the Stilt People said. This is one reason no one noticed how fast the ducks were disappearing, until the mornings went quiet. Wiki lore
Real duck science
The tak lived only on Pandora, but real ducks share many of its tricks. Real world
- Waterproof feathers. Ducks rub oil from a gland near their tail onto their feathers, which keeps them dry and warm. Real world
- Following the first thing they see. Newly hatched ducklings follow the first moving thing they see, usually their mother. This is called imprinting. A scientist named Konrad Lorenz once had a line of goslings follow him everywhere! Real world
- Super eyesight. Ducks can see colours people cannot, including ultraviolet light. Real world
- Sleeping with one eye open. Ducks at the edge of a sleeping group keep one eye open and half their brain awake, to watch for danger, a real version of the tak's lookout. Real world
Extinction
When the Long Rains made the Taktswìkyu grow bigger and more numerous, the ducks could not lay eggs fast enough. The very last tak was seen paddling in slow circles, calling tak-tak! for friends that never answered. Na'vi legend
Their story is a lot like the real passenger pigeon on Earth, which went from billions of birds to none in about a hundred years (see Lessons from Earth). Real world
Four-eyed tak skulls are still found in dried riverbeds. Na'vi storytellers say that on very still nights by the river, you can sometimes hear a faint tak!, but it is probably just a frog. Na'vi legend Wiki lore