Daleks better known than owls

Sunday, July 13, 2008

According to a survey published this week, today’s children are more able to identify different types of science fiction characters than they are types of birds.

Apparently, one in five children could not recognise a magpie and nearly half couldn’t tell the difference between a bee and a wasp. 56% of children in the survey couldn’t identify an oak leaf and one in three didn’t recognise Britain’s best-known butterfly, the red admiral.

Barn owlA barn owl yesterday, unavailable for comment.

Thankfully, all is not lost, as nine out of ten children could identify a Dalek. This is certainly the best success of the new series of Doctor Who, as the Dalek Links Webmaster can testify that prior to its transition, our most poor offsprings (not mine, obviously) had not seen a Dalek on TV and, when confronted with a collection of them, didn’t know what one was. So hats off to Russell T Davies again, for enriching the life’s of today’s youth.