Owl Animal Symbolism

If you were born between November 22 – December 21, the Owl is your Native American Birth Animal and the Deer is your Polarity Animal. If you were born between May 21 – June 21, the Owl is your polarity animal and the Deer is your birth animal. Learn more about Native American Spirit Animals and Polarity Animals here.

Owls have long symbolized wisdom, intuition, mystery, and death. This owl animal symbolism probably comes from owls’ exceptional sensory skills. They have been both revered and feared throughout time and across civilizations due to their amazing hunting skills. Some peoples have viewed owls as something to be afraid of while others viewed them as protectors.

Why Owls Are Such Great Hunters

Not only do owls kill rodents, snakes, and even small pets, but also owls kill other owls! For example, great horned owls will eat smaller barred owls. Owls have various traits that make them able to zoom in on their prey and kill with precision.

First owls have incredible hearing abilities. An owl has ears that don’t line up. They are located at different heights on the owl’s head. This allows them to hear better from all directions and determine with greater accuracy where a sound is coming from – especially where their prey is located.

Second, owls have built in binoculars and the best night vision of any animal! They don’t have eyeballs like other creatures. They have tube-shaped eyes that allow them to zoom in on their next meal with precision.

Third, owls may not have eyes in the back of their heads, but they may as well! Owls have a 270 degree range of motion in their necks. This makes up for the fact that they don’t have eyeballs that look around. They have to literally turn their heads to see side-to-side.

Fourth, they have incredibly strong talons. Owls have two forward facing talons and two backward facing talons on each foot. A great horned owl can apply up to 300 pounds of pressure with their talons.

Unlike cardinals, owls are not monogamous if they have plenty to eat. Parenting and feeding isn’t as time consuming if there’s lots of prey available. A well-fed male will mate with up to three females, and a female will often have another male on the side.

Owls don’t build nests, they hang out in holes in trees or steal other birds’ nests. My father-in-law gave us an owl house for our property. Dave hasn’t decided where he wants to put it yet since they can eat other birds that we are trying to attract.

In Greece, owls represented the goddess Athena and symbolized wisdom. The Romans were afraid of owls and for them, the owl was a symbol of bad luck. The Aztecs and Mayans also feared owls and believed they heralded death and destruction. The Egyptians believed owls protected the dead as they traveled to the underworld. In South Africa, owls are related to witchcraft and are bad luck.

Many associate an owl with wisdom, intuition, mystery, and the spirit world. Depending upon the tribe, Native Americans viewed owls as supernatural, spiritual, transformational, and even shapeshifters. Owls were thought to reveal mysteries of the unseen or the darkness.

I’ve noticed that any animal with super observational skills – hearing, seeing, tracking, smelling – are symbolic of intuition. Perhaps the ancients viewed keen observational skills as the same as extra sensory perception. They didn’t understand the mechanics of why these animals were so great at sensing and tracking, so they assumed they did it by intuition or some kind of magical, spiritual or mystical means.

Thus, when animals with keen skills like the owl show up in our lives, they are symbolically reminding us not only to be observant, but to also tap into all our sensory gifts – including intuition, our “sixth sense,” and any messages we’re receiving from the spirit world or the Divine.

Find more fun facts about Owls here.

Featured Great Horned Owl Image – Copyright: Isaiphoto / BigStockPhoto.com