It may not have a brain, but the Scarecrow doesn’t need to think to perform its job. For over 3,000 years, these figures have been used to frighten birds away from farmers’ growing crops.

Today, scarecrows are usually stuffed with hay and dressed in old clothes, but back in medieval Britain, young children were used as live scarecrows, running around the fields waving their arms and throwing stones.

And way back in 2,500 B.C., Greek farmers carved wooden scarecrows in the image of Priapus, the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, that they believed was ugly enough to scare birds away from their vineyards.

Realistically, birds aren’t that shallow. A crop’s a crop, whether the scarecrow is a straight 10 or hideous to look at.