Aegolius

According to the surviving summaries of the metamorphosis tradition (summarized in modern references citing Antoninus Liberalis), Aegolius was one of four Cretan men (with Cerberus, Celeus and Laius) who entered the sacred, forbidden cave where the young Zeus had been hidden and reared, intending to steal the sacred honey produced by Zeus's nurse-bees. Zeus struck them, stripped them of their armor, and—after being counselled by Themis and the Moirai that no one should be killed inside the holy cave—transformed them into birds. Aegolius was turned into an owl (the name aegolius later applied in Latin to a type of screech owl).

Ancient sources record only that Aegolius was transformed 'into an owl' and do not provide an individualized physical description. Modern natural-history descriptions of owls (large forward-facing eyes, facial disc, talons, hooked beak, nocturnal form) exist in the supplied material, but those anatomical details are inferential and not specified in the mythic account itself.

The mythic sources supplied do not ascribe any special supernatural abilities or behaviors to Aegolius after his transformation; the narrative function is punitive/metamorphic rather than a catalogue of ongoing powers. General biological traits of owls (nocturnality, solitary hunting, silent flight, acute hearing and vision) are described in the provided natural-history material but are not tied specifically to Aegolius in the ancient text.