Matt Groening Explains Why The World Of Futurama Is Overrun With Owls

In the third episode of "Futurama," called "I, Roommate," Fry (Billy West) is still sleeping at Planet Express, not yet having found a place to live. Fry is a slob, however, and his filthy detritus and unsanitary lifestyle become a nuisance for his coworkers. "Someone's been leaving food around," Hermes (Phil LaMarr) says at a company meeting, "and it's attracting owls. And I, for one, am tired of cleaning those owl traps." 

Owls? Yes, it seems that by the year 3000, owls will have replaced rats as New York City's most prolific species of warm-blooded vermin. The owls are rarely addressed directly on "Futurama," but filthy alleyways and garbage-strewn streets are always lousy with owls. From the looks of the animation, they are northern saw-whet owls, although their precise species has never been clarified. Weirdly, the owls are a joke unto themselves, and no one ever makes puns or gags at their expense. Well, other than the moment in "I, Roommate" when the audience can hear the snap of an owl trap followed by a loud, pained hoot. 

The above picture, from the episode "The Tip of the Zoidberg," is another rare owl-based gag, wherein Zoidberg and the Professor (both played by West) have replaced bags of birdseed with bags of dead mice. 

What was the thinking behind making owls into vermin in the 31st century? It turns out there was a small amount — a very small amount — of logic to the decision. On the commentary track for "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back," Groening explained that owls merely hunted rats to extinction. 

Groening explained: 

"Well, they brought the owls in to catch the rats and the owls killed all the rats and became a nuisance. That's the science fiction explanation!"

Eminently logical.

Groening's flippant "invasive species" gag is reminiscent of a joke told on an episode of "The Simpsons" which was, not incidentally, written by "Futurama" co-creator David X. Cohen. In "Bart the Mother" (September 27, 1998), Bart (Nancy Cartwright) kills a mother bird with a BB gun. To atone for his violence Bart cares for her unhatched eggs. Shockingly, when the eggs hatch, he finds a pair of baby Bolivian tree lizards instead of birds. It seems that the mother bird's eggs had already been replaced by a parasitic reptile. There is no such thing as a Bolivian tree lizard, but there are species of birds — specifically the cuckoo and the cowbird — that replace one mother bird's eggs with its own. 

The Bolivian tree lizards, it seems, are a handy way to kill off the pigeons that have overrun Springfield. Lisa (Yeardley Smith) instantly begins to imagine what might happen when the town is overrun by lizards. Principal Skinner (Harry Shearer) says that the solution is simple: ship in crates of Chinese needle snakes, the lizard's natural predator. Thereafter, the town will then ship in armies of gorillas "that thrive on snake meat." Then, he says, just wait for the winter, and the gorillas freeze to death. Easy peasy.

It seems that "Futurama" could have taken their owl joke to that extreme, and had 31st century vermin take the form of gorillas, but that might have been too arch for a background gag. The owls were weird enough.