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Bird Experiment Shows Aesop's Fable May Be True

By Queuebot in Animal on Sep 4, 2009 at 11:10 pm


Aesop’s fables, those famous animal parables that teach us about morality and life’s lessons, have always been assumed to be based on imagination than factual basis.  But one study suggests that at least one of the fables may actually be based on fact. 

The fable about the thirsty crow tells of a crow coming across a pitcher of water that is too low to reach with its beak.  By dropping in one stone after another and raising the water level, the crow is able to drink from the pitcher, thus teaching us that little by little does the job.

In a study conducted by Christopher Bird of Cambridge, a relative of the crow called a rook was exposed to a six inch clear plastic tube with a worm floating in it.  The birds instantly used stones to raise the level of water in the tube, bringing the worm closer to the surface.  They even figured out that larger stones brought faster results.



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  1. L M Hawks
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 7:04 am

    Another smart raven:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMSKaJtBkYI

  2. felixthecat
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Crows and ravens are at least as smart as a non-human ape.

  3. Briannana
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 9:13 am

    Crows and ravens are incredibly intelligent. There's a reason so many ancient cultures have written fables and myths about them. Geniuses.

  4. LisaL
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 9:47 am

    Awesome. Love reading about these experiments w/ crows. Always so interesting to see just how clever they are.

  5. Ajan
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 10:05 am

    What happened to "The Boy who cried wolf".
    Anyways, what I mostly wondered was Why was this Aesop guy mostly interested in Animals??

  6. Varis
    Sep 5th, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Maybe also Archimedes learned his ideas from rooks.

  7. incognito
    Sep 8th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

    note that the researcher is christopher BIRD

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