[7] Steamer ducks are a young group from an evolutionarily point of view and have a last common ancestor believed to have lived about 2 million years ago.

[8] In short, the Falkland steamer duck is a promising model organism to study and understand the process behind the evolution of flightlessness in birds.

Although they are difficult to tell apart in the field, the Falkland steamer duck has shorter wings and tail, and a thicker neck and bill.

Charles Darwin devoted two paragraphs to this bird (or the similar flying steamer duck) in The Voyage of the Beagle, having observed them at the Falkland Islands in 1833: In these islands a great loggerheaded duck or goose (Anas brachyptera), which sometimes weighs twenty-two pounds, is very abundant.

These birds were in former days called, from their extraordinary manner of paddling and splashing upon the water, race-horses; but now they are named, much more appropriately, steamers.

The manner is something like that by which the common house-duck escapes when pursued by a dog; but I am nearly sure that the steamer moves its wings alternately, instead of both together, as in other birds.

These clumsy, loggerheaded ducks make such a noise and splashing, that the effect is exceedingly curious.Thus we find in South America three birds which use their wings for other purposes besides flight; the penguins as fins, the steamer as paddles, and the ostrich as sails: and the Apteryz of New Zealand, as well as its gigantic extinct prototype the Deinornis, possess only rudimentary representatives of wings.

When in the evening pluming themselves in a flock, they make the same odd mixture of sounds which bull-frogs do within the tropics.The species' distribution is limited to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.

These ducks are year-round residents of the islands and the surrounding archipelago, and can be found mainly on rugged shores and in sheltered bays.

This species spends most of its time in small family groups composed of the female, the male and the chicks.

[10] Although they can upend when feeding in shallower waters, they mainly dive to find their preys on the sea floor.

Every day, the female carefully covers the eggs with plant material before leaving the nest for 15 to 30 minutes to bath and preen.

[11] The nest is usually located in tall grass, piles of sea weed, rocks, and even in unoccupied Magellanic penguin burrows.

[11] A recent study has shed some light on the negative effect of invasive species on shore bird populations in the Falklands.

Scientists determined that rat-invested islands had lower numbers of many shorebirds including steamer ducks.

The species has a limited distribution and its food supply could be severely affected by a large-scale release of oil in and around the Falklands.