The Crow and the Pitcher

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The Crow and the Pitcher, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology

The Crow and the Pitcher is a fable ascribed to Aesop, number 390 in the classification established by Perry. It is found in the 2nd century AD Greek fable collection by pseudo-Dositheus,^[1] and later appears in the 4th–5th century Latin verse collection by Avianus.^[2]

In the fable, a thirsty crow comes upon a pitcher with water at the bottom, beyond the reach of its beak. After failing to push over the pitcher, the crow devises a clever plan: it drops in pebbles, one by one, until the water rises to the top of the pitcher, allowing the crow to drink.

Avianus follows the fable with a moral that emphasises the virtue of ingenuity: "This fable shows us that thoughtfulness is superior to brute strength..." Other tellers of the story stress the crow's persistence,^[3] while George Fyler Townsend concluded with the old English adage, "Necessity is the mother of invention".^[4]

While real-life crows have not been reported to employ this technique, a group of biologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology did report that orangutans could retrieve peanuts from plastic tubes by spitting water into them. The researchers were quoted as drawing a parallel between their findings and the fable.^[5]^[6]

The story is referenced indirectly in the 1997 film Metro starring Eddie Murphy. Scott Roper (Murphy) tests his new partner Kevin McCall (Michael Rapaport) by having him get a pen out from the bottom of a jug without touching it. McCall pours water into the jug, causing the pen to rise to the surface.

[edit] References

^ Ben Edwin Perry (1965). Babrius and Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 493–494, no. 390. ISBN 0-674-99480-9.
^ Avianus 27 (Latin, English). Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Joseph Jacobs (1894). The Fables of Aesop, with illustrations by Richard Heighway, no. 55. Retrieved on 2007-07-19. “Little by little does the trick.”
^ George Fyler Townsend (1867). Aesop's Fables, with illustrations by Harrison Weir, no. 186. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ "Clever orangutans confirm Aesop's fable", China Daily, July 5, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
^ Charles Q. Choi. "Clever Apes Recreate an Aesop Fable", LiveScience, July 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.