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        riddles >> easy >> A bird and a vase
        
(Message started by: Kozo Morimoto on Oct 8^th, 2002, 4:41am)

Title: A bird and a vase
Post by Kozo Morimoto on Oct 8^th, 2002, 4:41am

There is a vase half filled with water. The bird would like to drink the water in the vase, however, the neck of the vase is too narrow for it to fit its head. The bird's beak is too short for it to reach the water. If the vase is tipped over, the water will spill out and will be soaked up by the soild/sand/ground. Obviously, the bird can not use a straw.

How can the bird drink the water in the vase?

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by James Fingas on Oct 8^th, 2002, 9:35am

Pick up small stones and drop them into the vase?

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by jeremiahsmith on Oct 8^th, 2002, 3:01pm

Wait a very long time until environmental pressures on the bird (i.e., not being able to drink) cause it to evolve a beak suitable for drinking from vases.

(I'm aware of the fact that evolution is for populations over time, not individuals, and that it for just one bird, it would technically be a mutation.)

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by william wu on Oct 27^th, 2002, 3:04pm

Go dumpster diving for plastic wrapping or other sheet-like material that doesn't absorb water. Lay the sheets on the ground near the vase, then kick the vase over and drink off the sheets.

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by Tarazik on Nov 29^th, 2002, 1:41pm

How about tip it over onto himself. His head, obviously wider than the neck of the vase will keep the water from pouring out and he can drink the water really fast.

Otherwise, he could throw stones (I'm not totally sure on how birds would throw...maybe get his other woodland creature friends to help out) at the vase until the neck broke off and his beak could reach.

He could just fly off to a bird bath of course.....

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by jon_G on Dec 3^rd, 2002, 6:16pm

I would prefer to wait for it to rain and when the water level has risen the bird can drink from the vase, rather than wait for the bird to evolve or mutate. That might take hundreds of thousands of years. By then the polar caps would have melted and the earth would be flooded allowing the bird and all his woodland creatures (which drowned many thousnads of years ago) to drink all the water they want. But the question now is where can a bird get a bite to eat since all the humans have flew off in there space ships and all the Mcdonald's are flooded, delapadated and only serve curtisy cups of water. ;)

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by SWF on Dec 8^th, 2002, 5:58pm

Does this really qualify as a "New Riddle"? This situation is exactly from the Aesop's fable, "The Crow and the Pitcher", which dates from around 600 B.C. :) In the fable the crow dropped in pebbles as others have suggested. Aesop's moral for this story: "Necessity is the mother of invention".

Title: Re: New Riddle: A bird and a vase
Post by i_m_n_idiot on Jan 4^th, 2003, 10:11pm

drop pebbles in the vase n when the water level rises it can drink ;D