Hoo else could be so easily fooled?
"When you jumped through my ceiling you let in an owl. I know they're supposed to be wise, but all it did was shriek and throw up half-digested mice."
—Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
Throughout history and literature, owls are seen as being very wise. Some say it's because owls were a symbol of the Greek goddess of wisdom. More modern interpretations say it is because they look like they are wearing glasses, another sign of a reader and, thus, intelligent. However, this has also led creators to subvert this multiple times and instead have made owls that one is expected to discover to be intelligent and wise, but they are not. Hence, the trope of the Unwise Owl.
In spite of the usual portrayal of owls, this trope is Truth in Television. Owls in real life are actually less smart than other birds — their brains aren't as developed for intelligence with their skull space mostly taken up by their eyes — and some cultures even consider them stupid instead of smart.
This is obviously a subversion of The Owl-Knowing One, and related to Dumb Dinos (as owls, being birds, are part of "surviving" dinosaurs). Sister trope Owls Ask "Who?" can be used as a sign of a lack of intelligence on the owl's part. See also Doofy Dodo for another type of bird with low intelligence. A subtrope of Species Subversives.
Examples
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Advertising
- The classic ad for Tootsie Pops has a little boy asking an owl how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. The owl takes the pop and licks it three times before biting it, then tells him that it takes three licks.
- One GEICO commercial
is about an owl responding "Who?" to everything his mate says to her frustration.
Asian Animation
- Boonie Bears: Instead of being a wise owl like usual, Hoo Hoo is lazy and will often try to sleep while flying.
- The Legend of Lucky Pie: Ah-Pie is a Noble Bird of Prey and is of average intelligence (subverting both The Owl-Knowing One and the more common version of this trope for owls). The rest of the Owl Kingdom plays the more negative stereotypes about owls straight as a rail, being one the antagonistic factions along the Dog Kingdom.
Comic Books
- The Autumnlands: Tooth & Claw: Sandorst is a complete inversion of The Owl-Knowing One. He is short-sighted, ignorant, and a terrible judge of character. His daughter Enna is thankfully smarter and more rational.
Films — Animation
- Bambi: Disney's version of Friend Owl initially appears to be wise but turns out to be a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
- As depicted in Disney's numerous animated adaptations of the Winnie the Pooh stories, Owl's advice often makes absolutely no sense.
Literature
- The Adventures of Pinocchio: One of the Know-Nothing Know-It-All doctors that visits Pinocchio while he's fainted following the hanging he received is an owl, who's little more than a verbose contrarian to anything his colleague observes.
- The Patchwork Girl of Oz: A featured minor character is called the Foolish Owl, who is just that.
- Marcel Pagnol's autobiography mentions an incident where an owl caught in a trap mishandled the situation to the point of decapitating itself. When later taught in class that owls were seen as a symbol of wisdom, Pagnol laughed to the point of getting kicked out of the class.
- Winnie the Pooh: Owl, while Book Smart, still "hasn't exactly got brain", as Piglet puts it, and is a bad speller as well.
- James Thurber's short fable The Owl Who Was God has an inversion of The Owl-Knowing One. The other animals believe that the owl is God Himself because he can see in the dark and answer any question. In reality, he was just making random hoots and calls that coincidentally happened to work as answers to the questions that were asked of him. A bunch of animals end up getting killed under the wheels of a car while following him around, because while he can see in the dark, he doesn't do great in the daylight.
Myths & Religion
- In Finnish mythology, owls were seen as stupid animals. While the imported image of owls as a symbol of wisdom is now the more popular one, the Finnish word "pöllö" is still used to describe stupid people.
- In Indian mythology, owls are often portrayed as stupid because of their blank expression. Owls are also considered a symbol of stupidity in Japanese myth for the same reasons.
Radio
- In a sketch in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, Patsy Straightwoman finds herself interviewing an owl (voiced by Finnemore), who openly shows himself to be pretty stupid and comments that he doesn't know where they got associated with wisdom from, seeing as most of their skulls are taken by massive eyes that don't leave room for a brain. He does make one very clever-sounding comment at one point... only to admit he doesn't know what it means, it's just something he heard a crow say once.
Video Games
- Billie Bust Up!: Barnaby is a ghost owl with all the powers of a Reality Warper, but not as much power of being smart; he has to take a moment to realize Billie is alive instead of dead and seemingly doesn't get the hint that Billie doesn't want to die or go to his party when she protests.
- Pokémon Sun and Moon: Among the members of the Rowlet line, Dartrix is described to be "a bit of a birdbrain" that tends to make mistakes and tries to cover them up, only to make them worse.
Web Animation
- hololive: Nanashi Mumei, the Guardian of Civilization and Barn Owl flips between this and The Owl-Knowing One on a regular basis. She is the keeper of all the wisdom that comes from watching Mankind's development over countless millennia. However, with it comes the ability to outright forget mankind's accomplishments as well, as even her own knowledge ends up lost with the decline of civilizations. Right in her very debut, she introduced herself three times over in quick succession because she couldn't remember if she introduced herself. She is a bit scatterbrained and has the tendency to "forgor" things. Even by her admittance, her current name is simply the last one she can remember.
Webcomics
- The Perry Bible Fellowship: in the strip "Wise Shitashi" a warrior seeks Shitashi's counsel, but the bird he finds... doesn't look particularly wise.
Western Animation
- Central Park: Discussed in "Rival Busker" when Owen points out that owls are not intelligent.
- The Owl House: Hooty is an owl-like demon who is a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Visionaries: When Leoric activates his Wisdom stave, the responding image is that of an owl. However, while its advice may be correct, the advice is generally of no use until the very last moment.
Real Life
- The Owl-Knowing One is a stereotype, but not accurate in real life. Although owls are large-brained birds, they seem to be at the lower end of bird intelligence based on behavioral studies of captive birds and mostly failed attempts to train them for use in falconry. Owls in the wild have been observed to make life-threatening blunders not frequently witnessed in other birds - such as failing to avoid traffic on busy roads when hunting prey. This is because owls are an example of Crippling Overspecialization. Their large brains are optimized for extremely acute audio-visual sensory processing and not much else. Thus they're highly effective hunters, but they don't have what humans interpret as "intelligence"- their ability to learn and to solve puzzles (such as trying to reach food that's been placed somewhere inaccessible) is very poor.