Using the original sketches, modern-day designers managed to re-create the robot. The replica can perform all the aforementioned movements, which indicates that the original probably could too.

French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a number of autonomous robots in his time, but is one of his more revered works.

The mechanical duck had over 400 different parts, which isn't too surprising considering what it could do. It could flap its wings, and it could eat, digest, and subsequently defecate. That's a pretty impressive robot!

How Caucanson managed to make the robot digest and defecate by installing various compartments to the grain. Only now, 274 years later, do we see modern-day robots with the similar abilities, such as --although Ecobot is purely one big digestive system, unlike The Duck, which performs other fun "tasks".