Musk ducks are moderately common through the Murray-Darling and Cooper Creek basins, and in the wetter, fertile areas in the south of the continent: the southwest corner of Western Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania.

In its native range, the fanned tail is distinctive, allowing to distinguish this species from the freckled duck (Stictonetta naevosa) which has similar size, colouration, and habits.

The blue-billed duck (Oxyura australis) has a similarly shaped tail, but the main colour of its males in breeding plumage is a much richer chestnut brown.

It is traditionally included with the stiff-tailed duck subfamily Oxyurinae, but appears to be only distantly related to the genus Oxyura, and its peculiar apomorphies make it difficult to place.

In general, musk ducks remain in the water all day long, alternately loafing and feeding energetically, though they sometimes emerge to sit on a log or on dry land for a while.

Musk ducks are very much at home below the surface, slipping under head-first with barely a ripple, and staying submerged for as long as a minute at a time, often resurfacing only for a few moments before diving again.

The primary diet items are water beetles, yabbies, freshwater snails and shellfish, and the like, supplemented with a variety of aquatic plants and a few fish.

The musk duck breeding season varies with rainfall and water levels, but is typically between July and January, with the greatest number of clutches laid in September or October, the austral spring.

Although male musk ducks have a large leathery lobe below the bill and this swells during the breeding season, it is not connected to the vocal cavities and appears to be purely for visual purposes.

Mating is thought to be promiscuous, quite possibly on a lek system like that of the kākāpō (a very large, flightless parrot found only in New Zealand), but this remains uncertain.

Females select a secluded location for nesting, usually in tall reeds well away from land and protected by deep water, or under the cover of overhanging shrubbery, but sometimes in a range of innovative places, such as on a stump, in a hollow log, or even under an upturned boat.

Wholesale clearing and draining of wetlands has impacted on their numbers, as has the widespread rise in Australian water salinity levels, but the species is not presently considered to be in danger.