21x20 Media presents

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

How many straws does it take to break a camel's back? An unbothered camel, a growing pile, and one final straw.

Two hundred thousand straws, give or take

The saying began with a feather on a horse, in Thomas Hobbes's 1654 argument about free will, and by 1799 a Scottish magazine had it as a camel and a straw. A 1996 rice pile in an Oslo lab shows why the last grain gets the blame, and old travelers wrote that camel drivers had a trick for a camel that grumbled at its load.

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Studio21x20 Media
FormatAnimated short
Runtime1 minute, 12 seconds
Published

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