"This Pfeilstorch was crucial in understanding the migration of European birds. Before migration was understood, people struggled to explain the sudden annual d

"This Pfeilstorch was crucial in understanding the migration of European birds. Before migration was understood, people struggled to explain the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the white stork and barn swallow. Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds, mice, or hibernated underwater during the winter, and such theories were even propagated by zoologists of the time" That sounds both funny and bad, but it seems that those zoologists did not actually believed the weird shape shifting stuff, but rather the more reasonable theory, that they hibernate under water. " This misinformation lasted all the way into the late 1800s, when American ornithologist Dr. Elliott Coues listed the titles of 182 papers dealing with the hibernation of swallows" Which had its roots in a rumor " that fishermen in northern waters sometimes hauled in mixed catches of fish and hibernating swallows" So it is not that ridiculous, since they did not know yet, that birds cannot breath underwater, but they knew that birds could dive very long and deep. And fish do hibernate and running water is still way warmer, than frozen ground.