Rooks are Pretty Bright…

By Corey • August 6, 2009 • 2 comments

…they can even use stones to raise the water level in a tube to get at a floating worm, thus possibly proving one of Aesop’s fables to be, well, not a fable, but a fact!

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About the Author

Corey is a New Yorker who has lived most of his life upstate but has spent the last three years in Queens. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy, their son, Desmond Shearwater, and their two indoor cats, Hunter and B.B.

2 Responses to “Rooks are Pretty Bright…”

Rick Wright Aug 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
The history of this story, in ancient and medieval natural history, literature, and theology, is explored in Chapter One of a little book I wrote (yikes, I’ve been digitized!):
http://ia301512.us.archive.org/3/items/hielertunsdermei00wriguoft/hielertunsdermei00wriguoft.pdf
All the texts are translated in an appendix.
Wes Aug 7th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
This article got picked up by a lot of papers(including the Middletown NY Herald), and was even a bullet on Yahoo news.

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