just so stories

Rudyard Kipling was a brilliant story-teller and writer of poetry:
Jay Doubleyou: If
Jay Doubleyou: performing poetry
Jay Doubleyou: prose as poetry

Among his best-known and best-loved stories are the 'Just So' stories:



Just So Stories for Little Children is a book of stories by Rudyard Kipling. It was published in 1902 by Macmillan & Co. The stories are "origin stories". They explain how things in the natural world came about, such as the elephant's trunk and the camel's hump. Kipling drew the pictures for the original edition.

Just So Stories - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Just So Stories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The BBC looked at them recently:
BBC Radio 4 Extra - Just So Stories - Episode guide

For example:

Series 1

Vivienne Parry presents the science behind some of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.

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• 3. The Beginning of the Armadillos

  3/5 Why the story of the armadillo is stranger than fiction, according to Richard Dawkins.

  FIRST BROADCAST: 16 Jan 2013

  
  

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• See all episodes from Series 1

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3. The Beginning of the Armadillos

3/5 Why the story of the armadillo is stranger than fiction, according to Richard Dawkins.

• BBC Radio 4

Wed 28 Aug 201309:30BBC Radio 4

See all previous episodes from Just So Science

BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1

And here we have a very different take on the stories:
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1, How the Whale Got His Throat
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1, How the Leopard Got His Spots
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1. The beginning of the Armadillos
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1, The Cat That Walked By Himself
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 2

For example:

How the Leopard Got His Spots

Just So Science,Series 1 Episode 2 of 5

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Vivienne Parry presents the science behind some of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, with wondrous tales of how things really came to be.

In Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, we're told how the leopard got his spots, the camel his hump, the whale his throat and so forth. But what does science make of these lyrical tales? For the most part, just-so stories are to be dismissed as the antithesis of scientific reasoning. They're ad hoc fallacies, designed to explain-away a biological or behavioural trait, more akin to folklore than the laws of science. But on closer inspection, might Kipling's fantasies contain a grain of truth? And might the "truth" as science understands it, be even more fantastic than fiction?

In Just So Science, Vivienne Parry meets researchers whose work on some of Kipling's 'best beloved' creatures is helping us to answer a rather inconvenient question: how do traits evolve? Why are some animals the way they are?
Excerpts from five of the Just So Stories are read by Samuel West
2. How the Leopard Got His Spots. Chemist Andrea Sella and biologist Buzz Baum explain why a leopard could change its spots, thanks to mathematician Alan Turing.
Producer: Rami Tzabar.

BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 1, How the Leopard Got His Spots
BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, Series 2

And for the original story:
How the Leopard Got His Spots - Rudyard Kipling
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