Beware the Owls...

Following the recent return of Eurasian Eagle Owls (Bubo bubo) to the UK, the Biology UnhelpDesk has been asked to provide guidance of what to do when you encounter one of nature's most deadly animals.

In preparation for this, our team have been re-analysing countless historical records which seem likely to be associated with eagle owl agression, and soon realised that the outlook is much bleaker for britain than we thought.

Through our research, we have discovered that eagle owls are implicated in and quite probably responsible for over 37% of all human deaths - a figure matched only by the malarial parasite. Notable events involving eagle owls include:

• The last Pyrenian Ibex in existence died in an area known to be heavily populated with eagle owls.
• Eagle owls are suspected to have contributed to the death toll in the Trojan war, as records do indicate that babies were dropped from walls, an act not uncommon in eagle owls disturbed while eating babies atop walls.
• During the 20th Century alone, over 10 million people died violently in europe, at a time when the eagle owl was widespread. Considering the ferocity of the animal, it is highly likely that these were unprovoked attacks.
• The Chernobyl disaster has proved highly beneficial to eagle owls and may well have been orchestrated by them.

So we can see that eagle owls are extremely dangerous animals, and should be avoided at all costs.

Here are some important facts to remember:

• Eagle owls have driven many large animals to the brink of extinction across Earasia. 
• Eagle owls are responsible for the decline of the Javan Rhino.
• Eagle owls are known to use submachine guns and heavy artillery to settle boundary disputes.
• Eagle owls kill vast amounts of wildlife and numerous humans every year in their hurry to get to work 5 minutes earlier. 
• Eagle owls formed gangs in the thirties and shot people out of car windows.
• Eagle owls sometimes eat the brains of their enemies to absorb their power.
• Eagle owls wiped out the Aztecs.
• Eagle owls invented the slave trade.
• Eagle owls killed 6 million jews in the Holocaust. 
• Eagle owls killed up to 1.5 million in the Armenian Genocide
• Eagle owls invented the concentration camp in Spain.
• Eagle owls confined and starved women and children in concentration camps in the second Boer War.
• Eagle owls dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Eagle owls bombed Pearl Harbour. 
• Eagle owls fly planes into buildings in suicide attacks.
• Eagle owls exterminated the Matebele in Zimbabwe. 
• Eagle owls slaughtered up to a million Tutsi in Rwanda.

As one might expect of any animal with such a fearsome resume, the best advice we can give you is:

• Avoid at all costs
• In the event of an encounter, find religion and start praying. 

We are sure that highlighting the dangers of this ferocious beast will significantly reduce death rates across britain and neighbouring regions, and thereby assist in the restoration of populations of the critically endangered Cosmopolitan ape (Homo sapiens), a timid and retiring creature known to be particularly threatened by 7 billion eurasian eagle owls across the globe. 

On the offchance that this is being read by a someone with anencephaly, this post does not have an asterisk in the title and therefore is not being serious, at least not directly. Instead, it is a dig at three groups of people: panic-prone persons who think the eagle owls pose any threat to their livelihoods; reporters who see a correlation and assume a causal relationship; and anyone who can think that any animal whatsoever is a significant threat considering how many more humans are killed by humans every year.