According to the folks at Listverse, “It is hard to look into the face of an owl and not think that sucker knows something you don’t.

“It does, actually, but that thing is how to kill and eat rodents with great efficiency and that’s about it. An owl’s eyes are quite large, but its skull… not so much. This leaves very little room for a brain that, while capable of processing very large amounts of optical data, just doesn’t have the power to do much critical thinking.

“It is incredibly difficult to train them to do even the most rudimentary tasks. When Gary Gero, an owl trainer that worked on the Harry Potter movies, was asked where the term ‘wise old owl’ came from, he replied with, ‘I don’t know who coined the phrase, but I certainly know it wasn’t an owl trainer.'”

Here are nine more animal myths from the Listverse post: “Top 10 crazy animal facts you don’t know.”