The Deer without a Heart
Aesop's fable / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Deer without a Heart is an ancient fable, attributed to Aesop in Europe and numbered 336 in the Perry Index.[1] It involves a deer (or an ass in Eastern versions) who was twice persuaded by a wily fox to visit the ailing lion. After the lion had killed it, the fox stole and ate the deer's heart. When asked where it is, the fox reasoned that an animal so foolish as to visit a lion in his den cannot have had one, an argument that reflects the ancient belief that the heart was the seat of thoughts and intellect. The story is catalogued as type 52 in the Aarne-Thompson classification system.[2]