As a kid, one of my favorite books was a collection of Aesop's Fables. I recall reading it as I walked home from elementary school, barely pausing to look up when I had to cross a street (life was calmer then in New Britain, Conn.) So I was amazed to read about a new study by British researchers that verifies the scenario in The Crow and the Pitcher. As you may recall, a thirsty crow finds a pitcher, but can't reach the water at the bottom. So it drops stones into the pitcher, gradually rasing the water level. The moral: Necessity is the mother of invention. (Or, Little by little does the trick.)

Researchers Christopher David Bird (seriously) and Nathan John Emery found that "Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm," according to the journal Current Biology. A summary: "We presented four captive rooks with a problem analogous to Aesop's fable: raising the level of water so that a floating worm moved into reach. All four subjects solved the problem with an appreciation of precisely how many stones were needed. Three subjects also rapidly learned to use large stones over small ones, and that sawdust cannot be manipulated in the same manner as water. This behavior demonstrates a flexible ability to use tools, a finding with implications for the evolution of tool use and cognition in animals."

Now if Bird and Emery can just find a wolf that dresses in sheep's clothing.