Up until the 19th century — humans didn’t know that bird migrated for winters, and there were wild theories that explained the disappearance of birds during winter.
While Aristotle thought that one type of bird changed into another type, there was a Harvard professor who thought they just went to the moon during winters!
In 1822 – a German hunter shot down a stork with his arrow, and to his great surprise found that the stork had an African spear going through its neck! This gave birth to the term Pfeilstorch, which means arrow stork.
Source: Wikipedia Commons
It would seem that this is the unluckiest stork in the history of all storks – it flew to Central Africa from Germany, got shot by a spear, and then traveled all the way back only to be shot down by an arrow! But, what’s even more incredible is that there are 25 recorded instances of such storks! The first pfeilstorch has been preserved, and is on display in the German Museum of Natural History.
The video below is very interesting, and has other tidbits about this.
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