Stork With A Central African Spear Piercing Its Throat Was Found In Germany in 1822, Providing The First Evidence For Long-Distance Bird Migration

by Maryjane

Even though we don't always fully comprehend how and, in some circumstances, why some species of migratory birds undertake such lengthy migrations, we now know more about other countries than we ever have before, and their yearly absence is no longer a mystery to us. Up until a couple of centuries ago, it was a different story.

People became aware of the fact that particular bird species would appear and then vanish at particular times of the year. Although the tide was turning, hard evidence was still required to support the theory of avian migration.

In 1822, that evidence literally dropped from the sky. On the Baltic coast of what is now Germany, a white stork, Ciconia Ciconia, to give it its ornithological name, was discovered outside the settlement of Klütz.

And that wasn't just any old stork. A 30-inch spear had ran through it and had gone through the left side of its torso and emerged halfway up its neck on the right side, impaling it horribly.

The hunter could at least find solace in the fact that it was "a shot in a million" while mourning the loss of his dinner and prize spear. Upon closer examination, it was discovered that the spear was crafted from African wood, which forced the inevitable conclusion that, despite its wounds, the stork had managed to fly the roughly 2,000 miles from the continent of Africa, from which it had migrated.

More Info: Reddit, countrylife.co.uk

Redditor u/Sumit316 shares an interesting piece of information with the TodayILearned subreddit community

u/Sumit316

The doubly unfortunate bird was killed, stuffed, and mounted, and it is still on exhibit at the Zoological Collection at the University of Rostock, replete with its spear

countrylife.co.uk

The Reddit post has 16K upvotes along with more than 200 comments. Here are a bunch of their topmost replies from Redditors below.

Lol... The internet has ruined this Redditor

Are storks harder than a coffin nail?

This Redditor declares their best comment for the day

Did the spear thrower complain about lag? Who knows

Stuffed for eternity with the spear in its neck

The reaction of other birds as it flew by them

The proof of bird migration is this interesting

This stork takes a metal to the neck and didn't die

This Redditor guesses that we'll never really know

Today I watched a YouTube video

That spear was a family heirloom

It just seems late to figure it out

The entire world got cold during winter

Pray to be a stronger bird than praying for an easy life

They could grip it

This bird had to get speared and then shot?

It could grip the coconut by the husk

African spears are non migratory

A professor wrote that migrating birds flew to the moon

A truly interesting if not completely useless information

As is customary, the Germans gave the stork the name Pfeilstorch, or arrow-stork. Surprisingly, twenty-four more of these birds were discovered throughout time, providing undeniable evidence that birds migrate rather than hibernate or change into other species.

Thanks to a spear, researchers were now able to solve some of the puzzles of migration.