The 18th-Century Mechanical Duck That "Digested" Food

Vaucanson's "Digesting Duck" was a marvel of clockwork engineering, made of thousands of intricate parts. While it truly ate and expelled a processed substance, the "digestion" was an illusion; the grain was stored in a separate compartment and a pre-prepared processed meal was expelled. Despite this mechanical trickery, its realistic movements, including flapping wings and imitating defecation, represented a sophisticated feat of engineering that captivated Enlightenment-era Europe and influenced later inventors of automata.