Despite the millions of people who have claimed to have seen aliens, the precise number that have actually turned out to be aliens is the same as conspiracy theories about vaccines that turned out to have merit: Zero.

In fact, as a video that recently went viral shows, some of these "sightings" could have plausibly just been owls.

Twitter user Daniel Holland shared the video under the caption "I’m now positive that people who claim to have seen aliens have actually just seen baby owls" and frankly it's difficult not to agree.

Even after knowing that they're owls, people are still quite willing to believe they are in fact from outer space.

Yep, I'm afraid to break it to you but baby barn owls aren't the cute fluffballs you're imagining but are what's known in ornithological terms as "absolutely horrifying NOPE NOPE NOPE nightmare birbs". What did you expect from a species that can rotate its head 360 degrees and looks like this naked?

I know you're thinking "yeah OK they do look like freaky aliens but there's no way people would actually mistake them for aliens". Well, I've got news for you, because it turns out this footage was shot in 2017 where it was reported (though you should take these reports with a hefty pinch of salt) that construction workers in Visakhapatnam in India, who found them, did believe them to be aliens.

The birds are likely barn owls, given their heart-shaped faces and downward-pointing beaks, Nehru zoological park officials told the Deccan Chronicle at the time.

As for the other alienlike behavior (namely the frozen backs-to-the-wall posture): "When birds get attention, they tend to be observant in behavior, which is probably why the birds look alarmed," Shivani Dongre, a curator at Nehru zoological park, told the Deccan Chronicle in 2017. "As it was a construction site, the birds were on a flat surface. If they had a surface to grip on, we could have seen them perch."

So not aliens, but since we're discussing how weird owls are, please enjoy these bonus photos that also show how freakily long their legs are.