Science on the trail of The Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. Science on the trail of The Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood New insights into the origins and development of folk tales such as Little Red Riding Hood are being provided by the application of scientific analysis more commonly used by biologists to produce an evolutionary tree of life diagram. In the scientific journal, PLOS ONE, Dr Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University, resolves a long-running debate by demonstrating that Little Red Riding Hood shares a common but ancient root with another popular international folk tale The Wolf and the Kids , although the two are now distinct stories. "This is rather like a biologist showing that humans and other apes share a common ancestor but have evolved into distinct species," explained Dr Tehrani, who found that The Wolf and the Kids probably originated in the 1st century AD, with Little Red Riding Hood branching off 1,000 years later. The Wolf and the Kids , popular in Europe and the Middle East, is a story about a wolf who impersonates a nanny goat and devours her kids, whereas Little Red Riding Hood is about a wolf who devours a young girl after impersonating her grandmother. Variants of the story are common in Africa and Asia, for example, The Tiger Grandmother in Japan, China and Korea.
