Atlas Obscura has posted an article detailing Five Astounding Animal Automata, which includes a story about a life-size mechanical duck created in 1739 by Jacques de Vaucanson. The article notes:
[I]t was Vaucanson’s dearest dream to make a duck automaton that did actually eat, digest, and excrete grain like a real bird. Why is not quite clear.
Alas, the digesting duck met its end in an 1889 fire…
And of course this gives me an excuse to again post one of my all-time favorite quotes:
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency