Rubber duck

[3] The yellow rubber duck has achieved an iconic status in Western pop culture and is often symbolically linked to bathing.

[6] There are also ducks that glow in the dark, quack, change color, have interior LED illumination, or include a wind-up mechanism that enables them to "swim".

In 2001, The Sun, a British tabloid reported that Queen Elizabeth II had a rubber duck in her bathroom that wore an inflatable crown.

[11] C. W. McCall's hit song "Convoy" (and the movie and novel it inspired) are narrated from the viewpoint of a character who replaced the bulldog hood ornament on his Mack truck with a bathtub toy and used the on-air handle of "Rubber Duck".

[12] The nickname pays tribute to the city's history in the rubber industry, particularly as the birthplace of companies such as Goodyear, Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, and General Tire.

At the end of the fundraising drive, all of the ducks are dumped into a waterway, with the first to float past the finish line winning a prize for its sponsor.

In August 2008, NASA'S Jet Propulsion Laboratory undertook studies of Greenland's Jacobshavn Isbræ to determine how interior glacial meltflow during the summer influenced its movement.

A sophisticated football-sized probe that had a GPS device, pressure sensor, thermometer and accelerometer was lowered by rope into one of the glacier's moulins.

[23][24] As of 2012, none of the ducks were found or returned, possibly due to being trapped in large aquifers later discovered inside the ice.

The bathroom, despite being the place for the family to bathe and become clean, is surprisingly good at creating the perfect conditions for microbial growth and so the researchers wished to see if these soft plastic toys could potentially pose a risk.