The Scorpion & The Frog - Classic Fable - Short Story

The Scorpion and the Frog is an animal fable which teaches that some people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests. This fable seems to have emerged in Russia in the early 20th century.

A likely precursor to The Scorpion and the Frog is the Persian fable of The Scorpion and the Turtle. This earlier fable appears in the Anvaar Soheili, a Persian collection of fables written c. 1500 by Hossein Va'ez Kashefi. The Anvaar Soheili is in part a translation of fables from the Panchatantra, a collection of Indian fables written in Sanskrit, but The Scorpion and the Turtle does not appear in the Panchatantra, which means it was added to the Anvaar Soheili by Kashefi and is thus likely Persian in origin.