Definitely a thing that gets independently discovered over and over. I'd heard this described the "hairy arm technique[1]", with similar setup as the Queen's Duck anecdote, but a hairy arm instead of a duck. I remember reading about it and thinking "oh, so that's the name for that".
The Queen's Duck is a catchier name though! [1] https://lifehacker.com/use-the-hairy-arm-technique-to-deal-w...