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A Hare was making fun of the Tortoise one day for being so slow.
"Do you ever get anywhere?" he asked with a mocking laugh.
"Yes," replied the Tortoise, "and I get there sooner than you think. I'll run you a race and prove it."
The Hare was much amused at the idea of running a race with the Tortoise, but for the fun of the thing he agreed. So the Fox, who had consented to act as judge, marked the distance and started the runners off.
The Hare was soon far out of sight, and to make the Tortoise feel very deeply how ridiculous it was for him to try a race with a Hare, he lay down beside the course to take a nap until the Tortoise should catch up.
The Tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily, and, after a time, passed the place where the Hare was sleeping. But the Hare slept on very peacefully; and when at last he did wake up, the Tortoise was near the goal. The Hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the Tortoise in time.
The race is not always to the swift.
Comments
The fable was adapted into a Silly Symphonies animated short subject of the same name by Walt Disney Productions in 1935 (although IMDb states it was released in 1934, the official book Disney A to Z by Dave Smith states it was released on January 5, 1935). The hare was named Max Hare (a pun on the name of the boxer Max Baer) and the tortoise was named Toby Tortoise. In 1936, Max Hare and Toby Tortoise appeared in another Silly Symphonies cartoon called Toby Tortoise Returns, in which Max and Toby are engaged in another match as fighters in a boxing ring. It also served as the inspiration for three Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodies cartoons co-starring Cecil Turtle. Archie Comics also turned the character of the tortoise into a Sonic the Hedgehog character named Tommy Turtle.
The Tortoise and the Hare also make a cameo among the non-human Fables in the Fables comic book. And an animated adaptation will be made and completed in 2008.
Allusions to the fable
In the sitcom Scrubs, Perry Cox retells the fable with Chief of Medicine Bob Kelso in place of the hare, calling the tale "The Tortoise and the Pain-in-the-ass Chief of Medicine That Everybody Hates". The story remains true to the fable for most of the way, until the end when the tortoise bites the calf of the chief of medicine, who is then devoured by the other tortoises on the track. Cox describes it as "a disturbing children's book... but one that stuck with me, nonetheless".
Jazz Jackrabbit was described by their creators as "Remember the tortoise and hare? They are still fighting, even in the future".
In an episode of Garfield and Friends's U.S. Acres, Booker and Sheldon decide to make the fable more modern, by turning the characters into intergalactic hero and villain with powerful ships (they considered before turning the tortoise into a ninja, but they realized the idea is not original).
In mathematics and computer science, the "tortoise and the hare" algorithm is an alternate name for Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm.
Greek Stamp of the tortoise and the hare story of Aesop
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