In Thailand, people believe that barn owls will bring them bad luck. Let's say if the bird is resting on the roof of someone's house, it is believed that death is brought there at their door step. Someone will die.
However, a group of Thais today are trying to change such superstitions, for they say that barn owls are in fact quite useful in helping farmers catch and kill rats and mice on their farms.
Such help is obvious in oil palm plantation and rice paddy fields. Usually, a barn owl catches and eats one or two rats every day, making a big dent on the rat population at 350-700 rats annually.
Having the birds in your farm then becomes a very good thing, but due to the Thai belief and ratsbane and other poisons used on farms, the number of barn owls has dropped dramatically almost to the point of extinction.
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