Wise owls are twits!
QUESTION Why are owls thought to be wise? In many cultures around the world, owls represent wisdom and knowledge. However, in reality, they are not especially intelligent birds.
Two-thirds of the owl brain is devoted to sight and hearing. Of the remaining third, about 75 per cent of it is devoted to hardwired instinct.
Only a very small part is used for what can be considered learning, such as remembering good hunting grounds. Owls are unable to be trained by humans or undertake complex tasks.
In the mythology of ancient Greece, the owl was the symbol of athene, the goddess of wisdom. athene’s bird was a Little Owl ( Athene
noctua), which was protected. Great numbers inhabited the acropolis — the ancient citadel above the city of athens. It even featured on athenian coins.
Owls were also the victims of fear and superstition. Pliny the Elder, the Roman philosopher, described the owl as ‘ the very monster of the night’ and argued that ‘when it appears, it foretells nothing but evil’.
Superstitions continued through the centuries. In the 7th century, St Isidore of Seville wrote: ‘The screech owl (barn owl) takes its name from the sound of its voice; it is a deadly bird, burdened with feathers and with a heavy laziness. It lives in caves and wanders in tombs day and night.’
The reputation of the owl was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, partly due to the growing popularity of ornithology — the study of birds — and the revival of the wise owl in children’s literature, including Edward Lear’s The Owl and The Pussycat, a. a. milne’s Winnie The Pooh and the nursery rhyme The Wise Old Owl.
If owls are not such wise birds, top of the intelligence tree are parrots and corvids — crows, rooks and jackdaws.
These social birds have a well-developed brain and demonstrate complex behaviours associated with intelligence, such as using tools and memory skills.
Derek Miles, Kendal, Cumbria. QUESTION What happened to the New York Times journalist Walter Duranty, who covered up Stalin’s crimes? WALTER DURANTY was the new york Times moscow correspondent from 1921 to 1941. He wrote numerous articles for the paper covering up Stalin’s excesses until he was discredited.
Duranty was born in Liverpool on may 25, 1884. He was educated at Harrow and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1906. He made his name during World War I working for the Paris Bureau of the new york Times, writing vivid dispatches on the fighting and sacrifices of allied soldiers.
When Duranty took up his post as moscow correspondent in 1921, his early reports were critical of Bolshevism, which he described as ‘a compound of force, terror and espionage, utterly ruthless in conception and execution’.
However, his reports became increasingly favourable to the Soviet regime. He backed Stalin’s show trials, arguing ‘most of the accused . . . deserve their fate’.
In 1932, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his articles on conditions in Russia — reports that were later discredited. Infamously, he covered up the ukrainian famine of 1932-33. This had been caused by Stalin’s forcible requisition of grain and resulted in the deaths of between seven and ten million people.
But in 1933 Duranty claimed to have seen: ‘Village markets flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter,’ and stated ‘a child can see this is not famine, but abundance’.
His positive reports most likely affected u.S. government policy, crucially in the decision by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to grant the Soviet union diplomatic recognition in 1933.
From 1934, Duranty split his time between moscow and new york as his editors became increasingly concerned about the truthfulness of his reporting.
after he was finally relieved of his post in 1941, he began writing books in favour of Stalin’s regime. In USSR: The Story Of Soviet Russia, published in 1944, he argued that Stalin was a popular leader who had successfully managed to reform his backward country.
after World War II, he moved to Florida, where he struggled to find work. When Stalin died in 1953, Duranty wrote an obituary for the Orlando morning Sentinel in which he hailed the Soviet leader for ‘lift[ing] himself and [his followers] to such heights of strength and influence as few mortals have ever known’.
Duranty’s health declined and he died on October 3, 1957, aged 73.
While the new york Times acknowledges Duranty’s biased reporting, the Pulitzer board has controversially declined to withdraw his award, finding ‘no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception’.
British broadcaster malcolm muggeridge described Duranty as ‘ the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism’.
Sally Evans, Oxford. QUESTION Have any celebrities become members of the clergy? FURTHER to the earlier examples, my brother-in-law, the Rev Tom Farrell, held the British record for the 400m hurdles.
He represented the UK in the melbourne Olympics of 1956 and Rome in 1960 for the 800m, despite, like Eric Liddell in the film Chariots Of Fire, refusing to race on Sundays because of his faith.
Rev Farrell was chaplain at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964, and had also been a schoolmaster at Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool when John Lennon was a pupil.
He is modest about his achievements, claiming his late father was a far better all-round athlete.
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