Pfeilstorch
61 comments
·August 16, 2025EvanAnderson
baxter001
> I was surprised how well the bird was getting around.
SurvivorBias.png except it's a silhouette of a goose with numerous red arrows drawn over it.
aidenn0
So King Arthur knowing that swallows fly south for the winter in Monty Python And The Holy Grail was anachronistic?
ceejayoz
The only historical mistake in that movie, for sure.
anonym29
That depends. African or European?
ForceBru
Crazy stuff: "white storks that are injured by an arrow or spear while wintering in Africa and return to Europe with the projectile stuck in their bodies", they apparently helped people in 1822 learn that birds migrate?! Was it not widely known before that? Cool!
magospietato
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose_myth
From our late scientific-era perspective it's really difficult to appreciate how badly intuitive understanding of cause and effect can let us down.
grimgrin
A little further down it said this:
> Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds, mice, or hibernated underwater during the winter, and such theories were even propagated by zoologists of the time.
mapmeld
Some people thought that the birds flew to the moon in the winter!
tremon
Well, how did they know that the spear didn't belong to the men in the moon then?
eenridoku
that’s crazy, I read it in a book but can’t recall which one. In the same book they were going through the eels mistery about where they go to breed, hopefully we gonna find an eel with a spear in the neck one day
cubefox
It was likely widely believed before 1822 that birds migrate:
k__
"some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds, mice, or hibernated underwater"
What did people in Africa think? I mean, they also saw birds disappearing.
herewulf
They might have wondered about finding birds filled with bird shot (little rocks) or carrying a bullet (small pebble) but that's not obviously connected to human hunting activity for a society oblivious to firearms (unlike arrows and spears).
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a3w
That "birds hibernated on the moon" is even stranger, unless you are into 18xx sci-fi.
dvh
The interesting part is that before that people thought birds are changing form in winter or hibernate.
gyomu
Yes, that's also what caught my attention. I landed on this article by way of reading about barnacles, and that the Barnacle Goose is named as such because it was thought it was born from barnacles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose
Maybe it's hard for us to realize how filled with superstition the world used to be; and how so little was understood and in such minuscule proportions compared to today, such that most anything could appear plausible under the right circumstances.
akk0
The false hypotheses of the past become the superstitions of the future. I can see how "birds hatch from barnacles" and "birds travel thousands of kilometers twice a year" mightve once sounded equally plausible, especially given that you can't exactly follow a migrating bird very far.
ecocentrik
How many false hypotheses today will seem like equally ridiculous superstitions to people in the future? I'm sure we can all think of a few popular beliefs that already fail under modest scrutiny.
jacquesm
On the contrary, you'd be surprised to learn how filled the world with superstition still is today.
procgen
Reminds me of the theory that insects like flies spontaneously emerge from decaying matter and dung. I wonder what magical thoughts we're taking for granted today.
kace91
In the Mediterranean, people think if you swim just after eating you’ll get a “digestion shock”, fall unconscious, and drown. You need to wait two hours after lunch.
I strongly suspect the rumor was started by parents wanting kids to leave them alone for a nap, but it’s extremely extended. Somehow showers don’t count.
xdennis
The draft/promaja. In Eastern Europe people genuinely think that if you leave two windows open you'll get various diseases like cold/flu/headache/ear pain/etc.
I've tried to understand this belief. So if you stand outside and it's windy, that's perfectly fine. But if you're inside, and you open two windows, that's deadly, even if there's no draft to be felt. I think some people think it's even more deadly if you can't feel it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1csstle/draft_myth...
LudwigNagasena
Being cold weakens your immune system. Draft air increases heat loss. There is nothing complex to understand. Outside you would wear a scarf or other appropriate clothing to not feel cold.
otras
Sounds like the same energy as fan death in South Korea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
HiPhish
Oh yeah, I remember The Draft, killer of Man, slayer of the innocent and bane of humanity since the dawn of time. I have been suffering from migraine attacks since childhood, and every time I complained about headaches it was attributed to draft. I knew that I had not been hit by draft, but that did not matter. It even made me afraid of The Draft for a time until I noticed that draft had no negative effects on me. And it wasn't regular headache either because regular headache medication like Aspirin had no effect on me. It took until early adulthood to finally get diagnosed as having migraines. (for those who wonder how the diagnostic process works, you get a questionnaire and if you answer three out of five questions correctly the doctor is like "congratulations, you have migraine, here are your triptans")
Thinking back, there was a lot of other bullshit I was told as a child that adults believed, but that seemed wrong to me:
- Tongue map, the idea that certain tastes can only be felt on certain regions of the tongue, even got taught that one in school in 5th grade. I never experienced that sensation, it always felt like every region of my tongue can sense any taste. The teacher went as far having us apply different tasting substances to different regions to "experience and confirm" the lesson. I still could not feel it, which makes it really scary to think how indoctrination can override what one's own sense tell you. Either everyone else was just going along with the BS, or they successfully had gaslighted themselves into believing the lesson.
- The idea that people on Columbus's time thought the earth was flat. How could he ever have gotten enough funding and personnel for what would have been seen as a suicide mission?
- The Great Wall of China being visible from space. Sure, it's really long, but it's quite narrow. So why would this structure specifically be the only man-made structure visible from space? I guess it depends on one's definition of "space", but then it is not the only mman-made structure visible from "space", and as such nothing special in that regard.
There is probably more stuff that I can't think of right now.
akk0
I don't know about colds and stuff, but I have a knee that's very sensitive and starts hurting from drafts (fans and AC blowing also triggers it, and cold and humidity makes it worse also, so it fluctuates quite a bit through the year). Being outside on a windy day doesn't have this effect.
portaouflop
“We are building thinking machines”
hnlmorg
[flagged]
iafiaf
I "smell" a bias there. Keep your politics out please.
troupo
> Elon Musk is a genius and not just an obnoxious narcissist who got lucky with the startup lottery
There's an undeniable truth that Musk had quite a unique talent: he could find and fund people to run outrageous startups and make them work.
The moment he tries to run anything himself, or have a say in anything, it turns out to be shit. And this has become worse over the past several years.
cubefox
The article doesn't actually say that, it's just phrased badly. A Pfeilstorch just provided pretty conclusive evidence for migration between Africa and Europe.
But the theory that birds were migrating to somewhere else is likely older. It's even plausible that bird migration was the mainstream theory/assumption, not the hibernation theory.
Indeed, Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that the phrase "migratory birds" was already in use before the 18th century, so before the first known Pfeilstorch in 1822:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=migratory+bird...
The current German term for a migratory bird, "Zugvogel", apparently became common around 1750: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Zugvogel%2CZug...
cubefox
Apparently only swallows were suspected to hibernate, and even in ancient Greece, people knew about bird migration. The swallow hibernation theory was described as disproved before the 18th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_migration#Historical_view...
hermitcrab
"Aristotle declared that summer Redstarts annually transform themselves into Robins in winter."
homebrewer
Everyone immediately thought about the famous story of returning damaged airplanes
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fluorinerocket
That's a lot of extra drag for the poor stork, besides the pain of having an arrow in its neck
hermitcrab
IIRC there is an example in the Pitt-Rivers museum in Oxford, UK. The museum is packed full of amazing artefacts borrowed (ahem) from around the world and is well worth a visit:
amelius
Wondering what the bird must have been thinking.
jstummbillig
I am injured, this is not great?
Retr0id
oof ouch my neck
uhhhd
Does this hurt the bird?
hermitcrab
I expect it feels the same way about having an arrow through its throat as you would.
api
Something funny about the first Pfeilstorch being found near Klutz. Sounds Monty Python-ish.
fnordian_slip
I thought of the discworld.
I saw a Canada goose with an arrow through its neck frequenting the retention pond near a community college where I worked. The arrow was almost parallel to the ground in orientation. I called a local wildlife rescue but never heard if they trapped the bird. Hopefully they did and were able to remove the arrow. I was surprised how well the bird was getting around.