Break the childhood filter! Are those animal stories we read when we were young true?

In the nursery rhymes and storybooks of childhood, animals are often endowed with human emotions and morals: crows feeding their parents demonstrate filial piety, eagles breaking their beaks and being reborn demonstrate tenacity, and gorals flying across cliffs compose a story of sacrifice... These stories carry cultural expectations, but they also quietly shape our misunderstanding of nature.

01

Crows don’t feed their parents, but they help each other raise their babies

As one of the most prominent birds in childhood memories, crows bear the unique growth marks of countless people. In addition to the unlucky image of being tricked by foxes, or the image of a smart bird that knows how to drink water with stones, some people also remember the oriental allusion of "crows feeding their parents" that has been passed down for thousands of years.

In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen recorded in Compendium of Materia Medica, Birds: "The Ciwu: When this bird is born, it is fed by its mother for sixty days, and when it grows up, it will return the favor for another sixty days." This story, which perfectly combines animal behavior with Confucian filial piety, has evolved over hundreds of years. It has not only become an important symbol of traditional culture, but has also been adapted into contemporary nursery rhymes such as "The Little Crow Loves His Mother" and passed down from generation to generation.

"Little Crow Loves Mom" ​​Image source: Internet

In fact, the idea of ​​crows feeding their parents is just a wishful fantasy of the ancients. Zoologists have found that young crows will be fed by their parents for two months before leaving the nest. Because of their parents' careful feeding, their body size can be 30% larger than their parents, while adult crows will appear thin due to the consumption of raising chicks.

When the ancients saw the skinny parents feeding the fat and big little crows in the nest, they interpreted this scene as adult children feeding their old mother who was too old to fly.

However, although crows will not feed their elderly mothers, as a social bird, crows will "repay their parents" in another way : in 2024, scientists conducted a study on small-billed crows and showed that young small-billed crows will take the initiative to help take care of the chicks in other crows' nests.

Small-billed crow Image source: Wikipedia

For example, when someone's chicks need to be fed, these "crow brothers and sisters" will lend a helping hand. The chicks raised by their brothers and sisters gain weight faster and therefore develop better.

These young crows who help take care of the babies are also very smart: they specifically choose to help families with whom they have a blood relationship, such as their parents or brothers. The reason for doing this is not only to accumulate experience in raising chicks for themselves, but also to sell "bird affection"!

When they give birth to their own babies the following year, the relatives who helped them in the past will also offer help in return. According to research, the probability of small-billed crows that help other birds raise their young increasing by 42% when their relatives help them build nests the following year!

02

Can an eagle be reborn? It hurts to hear that!

According to legend, an eagle can live to 70 years old. At the age of 40, its claws begin to age and can no longer effectively catch prey; its beak becomes long and curved, and its wings become heavier, making it very difficult to fly.

At this time, it will try its best to fly to the top of the mountain, hit the long and curved beak against the rock until it falls off completely, and then wait for the new beak to grow out; then use the new beak to pull out the nails one by one; after the new nails grow out, it will pluck out the feathers one by one.

After new feathers grow out, the eagle can fly again. During this period, the eagle must fast for five months and then continue the remaining 30 years of its life journey.

This is a widely circulated inspirational article. As more people read it, some will naturally believe it. In the English version of this story, the eagle is translated as "Eagle". It is not accurate to translate the word eagle into "eagle". The correct translation is "eagle" (the English word for eagle is hawk).

Bald Eagle Image Source Network

So how long does an eagle live? The bald eagle, the national bird of the United States, is familiar to everyone. Its life span is only about 20 years. In captivity, it can live for nearly 50 years. Living to 70 years old is just wishful thinking. It can be seen that this story was exposed at the first hurdle.

In addition, the longest-lived bird known is not an eagle, but a parrot. A large sulphur-crested cockatoo in Sydney, Australia, lived to be 120 years old. Not only is it the longest-lived bird, it may even be the longest-lived dinosaur (birds are a branch of dinosaurs)!

Australia's sulphur-crested cockatoo is the longest-lived bird

Its lifespan can reach 120 years.

What about the other parts? Let's first look at the beak. The beak of a bird is equivalent to our upper and lower jaws, and is part of the skull. If a bird smashes its beak, it is equivalent to smashing our upper and lower jaws, which will be broken with bones and flesh, and blood will fly everywhere. Once it is broken, it will never grow back.

Bird skull structure

In addition, during the five months of "fasting", birds have a higher metabolism than mammals in order to adapt to the needs of flying. They are more intolerant of hunger, and birds of prey do not have the habit of hibernation. If a live eagle really stood there without food or water for five months, it would have become a stuffed eagle!

As for feathers and claws, it is not uncommon for birds to shed their feathers. However, they do not need to pluck their feathers, as the old feathers will fall off naturally . The eagle's claws have nails just like human fingers. Since the eagle needs to use its claws to hunt prey and stay on rocks or tree trunks, its claws are always in a state of wear and tear. Therefore, it will not age too long and be unable to catch prey.

03

Can gorals really fly across the sea?

There is a story called "The Flying Deer" in the stories of animal novel king Shen Shixi. It tells the story of seventy or eighty gorals who were in desperate situation. The old gorals used their bodies and lives as springboards to help their children fly over the cliff and escape.

This story was once included in the Chinese textbook and became a "strange tale" that everyone talked about with relish.

Illustration of "The Flying Deer" from the Internet

Although the story is good, there are many doubts in it. Although gorals live in groups, the group does not exceed 12, and the goral group is mostly ewes and lambs, and adult males usually live alone . Therefore, the group of 70 to 80 gorals described by the author, with rams in the group, is basically impossible.

Goral picture source network

Moreover, the author's description of the gorals' mid-air "docking" movements is comparable to circus acrobatics, and is so skilled that it makes people feel distressed. However, wild gorals are not trained by wild people and cannot perform such difficult movements. Therefore, overall, this story is just a story.

04

The Mystery of Lemmings

In addition to the Flying Deer, many of you may have also learned a text called "The Mystery of Lemmings". The text says that when the number of lemmings in the Arctic reaches a certain number, they will begin to migrate collectively and rush to the sea day and night, and finally drown in the sea.

This text makes many people think that lemmings are tragic animals that commit suicide. However, the so-called lemming suicide was a lie from the beginning. It originated from a 1958 documentary "White Wilderness", which first told the story of a group of lemmings committing suicide by jumping off a cliff and falling into the sea.

The film was well received when it was released, and even won the Oscar for Best Documentary of the year. After these contents were introduced to my country, they were first adopted by public knowledge magazines such as "Reader" and "Yilin" and written into articles. Soon they had a great influence.

Lemmings burrowing in the snow

Image source: kgleditsch / Wikimedia Commons

However, according to subsequent investigations, the truth behind the "lemming suicide" in the film is this: the so-called lemmings were bought by the production team and put on a turntable to run and shoot from various angles. After editing, there appeared a scene of thousands of lemmings migrating. The famous jumping into the sea scene was a scene where they were artificially driven to jump off a cliff and then fall into the river, which was then grafted with the footage of floating corpses in natural waters to achieve the effect.

Artificial footage of lemmings committing suicide by jumping into the sea

Image source: Movie "White Wilderness"

In fact, lemmings in reality are not social animals and do not act in groups . Some lemmings die from exhaustion while wading, and the current just happens to wash their bodies onto the shore, creating the illusion of mass suicide.

References:

[1]Trapote, E., Moreno-González, V.,Canestrari, D., Rutz, C., & Baglione, V. (2024). Fitness benefits of alternated chick provisioning in cooperatively breeding carrion crows. Journal of Animal Ecology, 93, 95–108.

[2]https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.14033

Author: Qianxi Jun

Editor: Dong Xiaoxian

Reviewer: Liu Ying, Li Peiyuan