NEW insights into the origins of folk tales are being provided by the application of scientific analysis.

In the scientific journal, PLOS ONE, Dr Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University, demonstrates that Little Red Riding Hood shares a common but ancient root with another popular international folk tale The Wolf and the Kids, although the two are now distinct stories.

"This is rather like a biologist showing that humans and other apes share a common ancestor but have evolved into distinct species," said Dr Tehrani, who found that The Wolf and the Kids probably originated in the 1st century AD, with Little Red Riding Hood branching off 1,000 years later.

The Wolf and the Kids, popular in Europe and the Middle East, is a story about a wolf who impersonates a nanny goat and devours her kids, whereas Little Red Riding Hood is about a wolf who devours a young girl after impersonating her grandmother. Variants of the story are common in Africa and Asia.

Little Red Riding Hood was told by the Brothers Grimm 200 years ago but that version was based on an earlier, 17th century, story written by the Frenchman Charles Perrault, which itself derived from an older, oral tradition of storytelling.

Dr Tehrani subjected 58 variants of the folk tales with phylogenetic analysis, a method used by biologists for grouping together closely-related organisms to form a tree of life diagram, mapping out the various branches of evolution.

Dr Tehrani said: "My research cracks a long-standing mystery. The African tales turn out to be descended from The Wolf and the Kids but over time, they have evolved to become like Little Red Riding Hood."

His studies also showed that the Chinese version is derived from European storytelling traditions.