Is the story of “The Crow and the Pitcher” true?

Is the story of “The Crow and the Pitcher” true?

Author: Wu Danni

Many people learned the text "The Crow and the Pitcher" in Chinese class when they were young: A crow was thirsty and looked for water everywhere... It found a bottle of water, but there was not much water in the bottle and the bottle mouth was small, so the crow could not drink the water. The clever crow picked up the surrounding stones and threw them into the bottle, raising the water level and successfully drank the water. So is this classic story true? Don't mention it, this question has actually been studied by scientists.

In 2009, a zoologist from Cambridge University conducted an experiment. He threw a few plump little bugs into a test tube, then added some water and placed it near four bald crows. Sure enough, the crows were attracted at once. However, the water level in the test tube was not high, and the bugs were floating on it. The crows could not reach them, so they could only look around the test tube. Then, the researcher took out small stones and placed them next to them. As a result, the scene in the textbook really happened - the crows picked up the stones and threw them into the test tube, and the bugs floated up as the water level rose. What's even more surprising is that the crows also know to pick as big stones as possible, and can also predict the water level. When enough stones are thrown in, they will take out the bugs in the test tube, instead of throwing a stone and trying once. Two of the crows succeeded in one try, and the other two only tried twice before eating the bugs.

This experiment was just the beginning. Five years later, in 2014, still at Cambridge University, another group of scientists upgraded the experiment: they tampered with those "stones". This experiment was divided into two groups. In one group of experiments, the scientists provided the crows with not real stones, but 10 small cubes made of different materials but of similar size. Five of the cubes were heavier and would sink to the bottom of the water, and the other five were lighter and would float on the water. As a result, the clever crows were not fooled. Most of the time, they were able to choose the heavier cubes and throw them into the water. The smartest one of them never made a mistake. In another group of experiments, scientists changed their thinking and provided the crows with solid cubes and cubes with grooves. The crows also saw through the trap and were able to cleverly avoid the cubes with grooves most of the time. It seems that crows are indeed very smart, even smarter than what is written in the story of "The Crow and the Pitcher".

So, does this prove that the story of the crow drinking water really exists in nature? Actually, not necessarily.

First of all, the examples mentioned above are all experiments done by scientists. The crows participating in the experiments were not randomly caught from the wild. They were specially trained before the experiment and were very familiar with the operation of throwing stones into test tubes. However, for crows in the natural environment, this set of skills is completely unfamiliar. They do not use this skill in daily life, and they may not use this method when encountering problems. On the other hand, in the experiment, scientists used fat insects to attract crows, which is much more tempting than water. If crows in the wild want to drink water, they just need to fly to the river or lake and drink directly. There is no need to go through so much trouble and compete with a bottle of water. Therefore, based on the above analysis, we can say that the story of crows drinking water does have a certain scientific basis, but it is unlikely to be a real story in nature.

This article is produced by Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project (Creation and Cultivation). Please indicate the source when reprinting.