full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Lucy Cooke: 3 bizarre (and delightful) ancient theories about bird migration

Unscramble the Blue Letters

aiecnnt naturalists had various theories to explain the annual vanishing act we now know as migration. Aristotle himself proposed three particularly popular iades. One theory was that birds transformed into different bodies that suited the season. For example, smumer time garden warblers were believed to transform into baclk caps every winter. In riaelty these are two distinct species— similar in shape and size, but never appearing at the same time. Over the following centuries, birds were said to morph into humans, plants, and even the timbers of ships. This last taitramotusnn was especially popular with many Christian cgelry. If barnacle geese were truly made of wood, they could be deemed vegetarian and enojeyd during meatless fasts.

Open Cloze

_______ naturalists had various theories to explain the annual vanishing act we now know as migration. Aristotle himself proposed three particularly popular _____. One theory was that birds transformed into different bodies that suited the season. For example, ______ time garden warblers were believed to transform into _____ caps every winter. In _______ these are two distinct species— similar in shape and size, but never appearing at the same time. Over the following centuries, birds were said to morph into humans, plants, and even the timbers of ships. This last _____________ was especially popular with many Christian ______. If barnacle geese were truly made of wood, they could be deemed vegetarian and _______ during meatless fasts.

Solution

  1. summer
  2. ancient
  3. enjoyed
  4. black
  5. transmutation
  6. clergy
  7. reality
  8. ideas

Original Text

Ancient naturalists had various theories to explain the annual vanishing act we now know as migration. Aristotle himself proposed three particularly popular ideas. One theory was that birds transformed into different bodies that suited the season. For example, summer time garden warblers were believed to transform into black caps every winter. In reality these are two distinct species— similar in shape and size, but never appearing at the same time. Over the following centuries, birds were said to morph into humans, plants, and even the timbers of ships. This last transmutation was especially popular with many Christian clergy. If barnacle geese were truly made of wood, they could be deemed vegetarian and enjoyed during meatless fasts.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
von bothmer 2

Important Words

  1. act
  2. ancient
  3. annual
  4. appearing
  5. aristotle
  6. barnacle
  7. believed
  8. birds
  9. black
  10. bodies
  11. caps
  12. centuries
  13. christian
  14. clergy
  15. deemed
  16. distinct
  17. enjoyed
  18. explain
  19. fasts
  20. garden
  21. geese
  22. humans
  23. ideas
  24. meatless
  25. migration
  26. morph
  27. naturalists
  28. plants
  29. popular
  30. proposed
  31. reality
  32. season
  33. shape
  34. ships
  35. similar
  36. size
  37. suited
  38. summer
  39. theories
  40. theory
  41. timbers
  42. time
  43. transform
  44. transformed
  45. transmutation
  46. vanishing
  47. vegetarian
  48. warblers
  49. winter
  50. wood