You’ve seen this question pop up a lot on Reddit’s many AMA sessions: “Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?”

Hmm, difficult to answer.

It’s a question that has been pondered by the greatest minds of our generation.

Obama? Well, he’d choose the horse-sized duck. Same with Bill Gates. And Slipknot’s Corey Taylor? Well, he “would fight all ducks, at all times.”

You can’t escape this question, so it should come as no surprise that a variation of it popped up in a recent AMA hosted by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Holy crap!? Is it true?

We contacted Society of Vertebrate Paleontology member and research scientist Jennifer Nestler to find out more information about these mythical creatures.

Without further ado, we’d like to introduce you to—drumroll—Eohippus: a duck-sized horse.



Eohippus is the third animal from the left (Heinrich Harder/Wikimedia Commons)

This cute little thing, Eohippus, was one of the earliest-known horses to have ever existed, living 55 million years ago. Its name literally means “dawn-horse,” says Nestler.

“Eohippus is, in fact, duck-sized … if we’re talking about a hefty duck. More like a swan, really,” explains Nestler.

The animal had stubby teeth and fives toes, but it only walked on four of them. They were short, small, and so darn adorable because they primarily inhabited forests, according to a study published in Ecology Letters.

When the environment started changing into grasslands—horses became bigger, evolving longer legs to run longer distances.

And then there was this monster—Dromornis (the horse-sized duck):



Arthur Weasley (Wikimedia Commons)

“Of course, horse-sized ducks are nothing to sneeze at,” Nestler says.

Dromornis is technically in the duck family, even though these animals looked more like ostriches. In fact, the giant birds are sometimes referred to as “demon ducks.”

And it’s easy to see why these birds (which were native to Australia, of course) are called demons. The ducks were massive. They weighed anywhere from 200 pounds to 500 pounds. And while they stood upright and had wings, they couldn’t fly.

“Most were thought to eat plants, but at least one species could have been carnivorous,” she shares with Upvoted.

And that’s a pretty scary thing, considering they may have overlapped with the first humans in Australia.

They lived around 25 million years ago to about 40,000 years ago. In fact, this 40,000-year-old Australian cave painting looks an awful lot like Dromornis.

The question still remains. Knowing the history of these animals, which one would a paleontologist rather excavate—100 duck-sizes horses or one horse-sized duck?

This is what University of Tennessee paleontologist Stephanie Drumheller prefers:

Here’s what reptilian researcher and PastTime podcast host Adam Pritchard had to say:

Postdoctoral researcher Eugenia Gold weighs in on the debate:

But Stony Brook researcher Eric Wilberg would choose neither. He’d rather excavate this extinct crocodile that had a duck-like snout:



Todd Marshall/Wikimedia Commons

New question: Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized crocodiles or one crocodile-sized duck?