The Torturing of Ducks
by Abiageal Filon, edited by Daniel Johnson
On Wednesday April 27, 1966, Elizabeth Huffstutler’s story covering the reason for the “pervading aroma” surrounding Murphy Hall was published in Beaver News, Vol. 40, № 23. In this story, Huffstutler highlights an experiment that was being conducted in the basement of Murphy Hall by psychology professor Ronald Green. The experiment consisted of Green subjecting “naive mallard ducks” to what were essentially torturous conditions.
To summarize Huffstutler’s article, Green was a psychology teacher at Beaver College in the 1960s who took it upon himself to use Murphy Hall’s basement as the grounds for his weird experiment. In his experiment, Green housed ducks in pens in the basement of Murphy. He isolated one duck from the rest of its flock and put it alone in a different pen. Above the duck’s pen, Green would either hover a cardboard hawk or a cardboard goose above the lone duck. The purpose of the experiment was to observe the reactions of the duck to the fake predators flying above. The results showed that the presence of the cardboard hawk caused the duck to panic, while the cardboard goose induced no fear in the duck.
The torture of being presented with something that could potentially want to eat you is scary enough, but the concept of it happening while you’re alone in a pen where you have nowhere to hide and no one to fight with is even more concerning.
Green wrote a paper in collaboration with two other psychologists and published it in the Journal of Psychology. It became a widely known experiment.
Green claimed that his experiment was simple, but to be honest, it raises more questions than it answers. What would cause him to come up with this experiment in the first place? Who on the school board/administration approved this? Where did he get the ducks? Did he name them or form relationships with them, or did he simply see them as subjects? Why would he want to put innocent animals through such anguish? Why would he choose Murphy Hall’s basement to host this experiment and forever make it a part of Murphy’s history?
