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.
baxter001 · 2h ago
> 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.
ForceBru · 3h ago
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!
mapmeld · 1h ago
Some people thought that the birds flew to the moon in the winter!
dvh · 3h ago
The interesting part is that before that people thought birds are changing form in winter or hibernate.
gyomu · 2h ago
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.
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 · 2h ago
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.
procgen · 2h ago
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.
xdennis · 2h ago
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.
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.
knackundback · 13m ago
That‘s one of the biggest health myths around. Cold weather does NOT weaken your immune system AT ALL (except if you‘re actually hypothermic, which is very different from just feeling uncomfortable). It’s the CONDITIONS that RESULT from cold weather that actually cause those infections to ramp up in winter (think more people staying inside in enclosed spaces).
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 · 2h ago
“We are building thinking machines”
hermitcrab · 2h ago
"Aristotle declared that summer Redstarts annually transform themselves into Robins in winter."
"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.
a3w · 1h ago
That "birds hibernated on the moon" is even stranger, unless you are into 18xx sci-fi.
fluorinerocket · 38m ago
That's a lot of extra drag for the poor stork, besides the pain of having an arrow in its neck
hermitcrab · 3h ago
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:
SurvivorBias.png except it's a silhouette of a goose with numerous red arrows drawn over it.
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.
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...
https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/2228
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#Military
What did people in Africa think? I mean, they also saw birds disappearing.
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
https://wiki.lspace.org/Klotz