The erect carriage is a result of a pelvic girdle that is closer to the tail than other breeds of domestic duck.

[2] This structural feature allows the birds to walk or run, rather than waddle, as seen with other duck breeds; they do not fly.

[7] Ioan Custura and colleagues in 2021 observed breeding birds at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest, stating that egg production was on average 173.74 eggs per bird in Indian Runners, intermediate between their measurements of 189.77 for Khaki Campbells and 120.42 for "Peking ducks".

[9] In 1856, the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace recorded in The Malay Archipelago that the ducks in the Indonesian island of Lombok "walk erect, like penguins".

[13] Donald's publication is advertised briefly in The Feathered World, 1895, under the title of "The Indian Runner Duck".

Donald describes the pied variety and gives the popular story of the importation into Cumbria (Northwest England) by a sea captain some fifty years earlier.

The breed is unusual not only for its high egg production but also for its upright stance and variety of colour genes, some of which are seen in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings by the d’Hondecoeter family and others.

Harrison Weir's Our Poultry (1902) describes the Penguin Ducks belonging to Mr. Edward Cross in the Surrey Zoological Gardens between 1837 and 1838.

An account of the influence of the Indian Runner Duck Club (founded in 1906), particularly the input by John Donald, Joseph Walton, Dr J.

Using Runners crossed to Rouens, Aylesburys and Cayugas (the large black American breed), William Cook produced his famous Orpington Ducks.

Later, she introduced wild mallard blood and managed to create the most prolific egg-layer, the Khaki Campbell (announced in 1901).

Other breeds followed, some of which emerged as direct mutations of the Khaki Campbell, along with crosses back to Indian Runners, the most famous being the Abacot Ranger (known in Germany as the Streicher) and the Welsh Harlequin.

Original research by R. G. Jaap (1930s) and F. M. Lancaster has allowed breeders to understand the effect of genotypes in managing and creating colour varieties.