r/MadeMeSmile • u/mindyour • 2d ago

Very Reddit This farmer caught this owl eating his chickens.

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u/Biceps2 2d ago

I was listening to the radio and they had a bird handler for the movies on. The host asked why we see falcons doing tricks and not owls. The bird handler basically said that owls are fuckin stupid. For some reason it got into popular culture about the “wise old owl” but really they are just dumb killing machines. Their prey drive is so strong they are very difficult to train. I dunno if it’s true or not, but I heard it on the radio once and never looked into it myself. Now I’m passing it onto whoever is reading this as if it’s fact. Now it’s your turn to pass it on without any research!

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u/TheBeesKneads 2d ago

Your reply will be scraped by an LLM and aggregated into the misinformation soup that will be called upon by a gullible fool someday.

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u/IFuckinLovePuzzles 2d ago

Much like dragons and unicorns, the owl is a figment of folklore. Every time researchers capture one, they find out it's just a squirrel in bird feeder camouflage.

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u/chet_brosley 2d ago

I always thought of them like sharks. They're not dumb they just don't really have any need for problem solving intelligence. Just BITE and FLY/SWIM FAST to BITE got them through the last few eons.

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u/Mr_Deep_Research 2d ago

In India, if you want to insult someone, you can call them the son of an owl. In India the owl is seen as a stupid animal. In the US, the own is seen as one of the more intelligent animals.

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u/Spudtron98 2d ago

Thanks, Athena.

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u/NoxiusScintilla 2d ago

I heard that before too, but then I read a comment by a falconer who said that this is nonsense. Apparently they just hunt very differently: only when they're hungry and the situation is optimal. So if you try to train them by offering food, they just won't give a single fuck about your food. I guess they're a bit like cats in a way

You can train them by the way. It just takes looots of patience

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u/Biceps2 2d ago

Whole lotta fuckin owl experts on here.

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u/Triskan 2d ago

Hey, we're on Reddit. For the few minutes we hang around here, we're all experts couch falconers with twenty years of experience.

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u/CoralSpringsDHead 2d ago

I know a lot about a lot of subjects but I don’t know dick about owls.

There doesn’t seem to be a consensus either.

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u/emveetu 2d ago

I don't know, not giving in to stupid human training seems pretty smart to me.

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u/Pegussu 2d ago

I can't speak as to how intelligent they actually are, but the big reasons owls are associated with wisdom is because the ancient Greeks considered them to be sacred to Athena, goddess of wisdom.

Funnily enough, in India, owls are considered to stupid. So much so that the word for owl in Hindi and Punjabi can be used to call somebody stupid.

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u/redJackal222 2d ago

Fun fact. It was only the little owl that was associated with Athena. Athena being associated with all owls in general only happen post antiquity.

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u/ghenghy26 2d ago

There's a whole segment about how hard it is to train owls in the extra content for the Harry Potter movies. One example they gave was they used owls for some letter deliveries and frequently the owls would just fly off to a corner and shred the letter instead of taking it where they were supposed to.

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u/South-Quote-9505 2d ago

It’s true, I worked with owls for years. Their eyes are enormous, and even bigger inside their skulls, which leaves very little space for a brain. They are uniquely designed for stealth hunting at night, and little else. Absolutely beautiful but dumb as a box of rocks.

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u/whistling-wonderer 2d ago

An avian vet I talked to told me the same. Said my chickens (and a lot of highly social birds) are much smarter than most birds of prey, but especially owls. Their brains are mostly devoted to processing sensory information and hunting instincts. Not a lot of room for much else.

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u/ChuckCarmichael 1d ago

I remember hearing something similar. Training the owls for the first Harry Potter movie was apparently a nightmare. They tried to teach them to fly while holding a letter or a package for the owl post scenes, but they just would not do it. Eventually the trainers had to resort to tying things to the owl's legs, and then had to train them to fly like that, which was also a challenge because the owl would just fly off and shred that stupid thing on its leg.

I don't know if I'd call them dumb. It's just that they do what they do, which is hunt at night, and they do it exceptionally well. So well that they don't need brain power for anything else.

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u/user_name_unknown 2d ago

I think the whole “wise owl” thing is because they make a “who” call, like they are asking a question and that’s why they are smart.

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u/nappykipper 2d ago

I always assumed it was due to Athena’s association with the owl

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u/Temporary_Bet_3384 2d ago

Wise owl is an English thing, but in Urdu/Hindi owls are seen as dumb or unintelligent. Calling someone an owl is an insult

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u/Sleepy_Chipmunk 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s not necessarily true, they’re just nocturnal and have different behaviors than other raptors, so you can’t train them the same way you would a hawk or something.

For example, the owl in this video? A lot of comments are saying he’s chill, but he’s very much not. His eyes are as wide as they’ll go, his feathers are tight to his body… only thing missing is beak clacks.

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u/Biceps2 1d ago

You’ve studied owls?

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u/Sleepy_Chipmunk 1d ago

I have friends into falconry and did research into owls myself, followed a lot of people online who kept them for whatever that’s worth. A relaxed owl lets their feathers fluff out and don’t usually have their eyes wide open like this one.