No kidding, when I first saw one of these characters, I thought it had been experimented on with nuclear radiation by mad scientists. I asked and was told they were completely healthy and were Egyptian ducks. (they do have the name cairina which may have been mistaken for "from Cairo") This was back in the 1950's, at a well-known place called the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary (associated with MSU -- Michigan State University) in Western Michigan.

Even then I always thought they were really quite ugly, but noticed they had pretty good personalities. For a nickle you could buy a handful of corn in those days, from "gumball-type" machines and we fed all the birds and tried to get them to eat out of our hands. Very often we got bit, which is nothing serious, especially by the swans which do so deliberately. Swans are a little nasty, or they simply resent having to eat out of your hand.

Now these Muscovy ducks are very much at home in Florida so we run into them all the time, with all the canals and all. They even have become quite a pest, pooping in swimming pools and lawn furniture and the like, the same as the iguanas which are also out of control. ¡Viva la naturaleza!